Generational Dynamics World View

[John J. Xenakis]

** 24-Mar-2021 World View: Trump's legacy

A web site reader asked me to comment on an article on Trump's legacy.
The following are excerpts from my response to him:

The problem I'm having with this article is that it's making a number
of political judgments that may seem true today, but which could turn
out to be false at any time in the future, even a few months from now.
Making these judgments is definitely not the domain of Generational
Dynamics.

Most likely, the only thing that will matter ten years from now is
whether and how well the country survives the war with China. The
current political nonsense will end with a "regeneracy event." This
is a concept in generational theory, referring to an event that
regenerates civic unity for the first time since the end of the
previous crisis war. It's an event that presents a strong existential
threat to the nation or society, and forces all sides to put aside
their political differences and unite behind the leadership for the
common survival.

In 1941, it was the Pearl Harbor attack and the Bataan Death March.

Today, it might be a missile attack on an American city, or it might
be a major military loss overseas. Today, it's most likely going to
be whatever event triggers war with China.

So if you take a look at the article, and evaluate the remarks in the
context of a Chinese missile attack on the United States, then you can
see that nothing that it says is something that anyone would care
about.

How will future historians evaluate Trump's presidency? Maybe they
will praise him for increasing military spending. Of maybe they will
condemn him for some policy that caused a Chinese advantage in a way
that we don't yet even know about.

These are the kinds of issues that I watch for and write about. The
creation of a Stalinist state by the Democrats, mainstream media and
Big Tech is probably the scariest domestic development in my lifetime.
The mindless destruction of the country by the Biden administration in
order to stay in power is heartbreaking.

And yet, I can't really say whether Biden's policies will help or hurt
during a war with China. For example, Biden's Open Borders policies
is creating a massive cartel force in Mexico using children for sex or
as slaves or drug mules. The Democrats are doing this because they
assume that these abused children will vote for Democrats. How will
these cartels act when there's a Chinese invasion?

Trump is promising to launch a new "Trump Big Tech Platform" within
the next 2-3 months, and he expects his 74 million supporters to
become subscribers. That may be the next event that will define
Trump's legacy. And then we might begin to see whether your article
is relevant.

[John J. Xenakis]

** 25-Mar-2021 World View: North Korea launches two ballistic missiles, violating UN resolutions

• Kim Jong Un

North Korea launched two ballistic missiles into the Sea of Japan on
Thursday, in violation of UN resolutions.

Earlier this week, North Korea fired two short-range missiles into the
sea. Those launches were legal under UN resolutions, and were largely
ignored by the US and its allies. However, the launch of ballistic
missiles is a clear violation of UN resolutions, and will require a
response from the Biden administration and other countries.

The missiles landed outside Japan's territorial waters and exclusive
economic zone and there have been no reports of harm caused to
aircraft or ships. Both Japan and South Korea have lodged formal
protests.

The timing is interesting. Thursday is the day of Joe Biden's long
awaited press conference, where he will take questions from reporters.
In the past, Biden's handlers have carefully selected the questions in
advance, and Biden simply read the answers from what appeared to be a
notebook. Reporters will have many questions about the North Korea
missile launch, but it will be interesting to see if most of them are
censored and suppressed.

---- Sources:

-- North Korea fires two ballistic missiles into Sea of Japan
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-56518998
(BBC, 25-Mar-2021)

-- First North Korean National Brought to the United States to Stand
Trial for Money Laundering Offenses
https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/first-nor...g-offenses
(DoJ, 24-Mar-2021)

-- North Korea test-fires ballistic missiles in message to US
https://apnews.com/article/donald-trump-...b2d2350a3a
(AP, 25-Mar-2021)

-- Reaction to North Korea's ballistic missile launch
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-north...SKBN2BH068
(Reuters, 25-Mar-2021)

-- Biden laughs off question about North Korean missile test
https://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2021...ot-vpx.cnn
(CNN, 24-Mar-2021)

-- North Korea missile launch tests Biden administration and Tokyo
Olympics
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2021/0...ea-launch/
(JapanTimes, 25-Mar-2021)

-- EXPLAINER: N. Korean missile tests follow same old playbook
https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/new...d-playbook
(AP, 25-Mar-2021)

• What missiles does North Korea have?

[John J. Xenakis]

** 25-Mar-2021 World View: Xenophobia today

Bob Butler" Wrote:> World War II had strong racist and xenophobic elements. Count 6
> million Jews plus assorted Gypsies, homosexuals and others among
> the victims. While there is no doubt that Germany should hold the
> brunt of the blame, in the years after the war some counted the
> allies and the US as sharing some of the guilt. When people under
> threat tried to immigrate, they were for the most part turned
> away. Refusing the chance for asylum was a death warrant.

> The result was guilt trip based immigration and asylum laws. If
> anything like the holocaust started again, the US would not turn
> folks away. Some of this is still on the books, still is the
> official policy.

You're fighting the last war. If there was xenophobia during WW II,
then there's xenophobia on steroids today.

One obvious example is the xenophobia that you and other Democrats
feel towards the 74 million Trump supporters, to the extent of setting
up Stalinist censorship, and discriminating against them in other
ways. You, of all people, are in no position to deny the truth of
that.

But forget domestic xenophobia. The Chinese are full of xenophobia,
racism and hatred -- toward the Japanese, toward the Filipinos, toward
the Indians, toward the Russians. And don't forget the Uighurs, the
Tibetans and the Taiwanese. And having just published a book on
Vietnam, I can assure you it's also directed at the Vietnamese. So
from China alone, the xenophobia is massive.

Leaving China, there's Pakistan vs India, the Taliban vs ISIS, the
Jews vs the Arabs, the Sunnis vs the Shias.

As for the Holocaust, I've already pointed out that there are three
Holocausts going on today, in China, in Burma and in Syria.

So yeah, xenophobia is everywhere today.

[John J. Xenakis]

** 25-Mar-2021 World View: Predictions

Cool Breeze" Wrote:> It will happen some time, but I don't know when. If I had to
> guess, my guess would be in my lifetime, but not in the next 10
> years.

Since thousands of people have believed something similar for
the last 2000 years, and they've all been proven wrong, you must
have some reason to believe that "This time it's different." Do you
have such a reason?

Cool Breeze" Wrote:> I haven't written books and made predictions on the parousia, nor
> have I made a forum about it, nor have I guaranteed anything about
> it. So it's not really a great analogy, but I've played your game
> even so. The point of the parousia is not to predict, so in that
> sense, you are missing a great deal of the theology around it
> already.

It's a good analogy because it provides a point of comparison. I guess
your point is that the Second Coming is entirely a matter of faith, with
no basis in reason or historical analogy. (Correct me if I'm wrong.)

As an analyst, I would say that if 2000 years of predictions have all
failed, then they're likely to fail for the next 2000 years, unless
there's some reason to conclude otherwise.

Cool Breeze" Wrote:> Are you admitting that you have religious devotion to your ideas
> though? That could be a big breakthrough here, John. Very
> interesting where we have come.

Not at all. When I set up my web site in 2003, my expressly stated
purpose is that I would post analyses and predictions, and leave them
there for all to see. If they had been proven wrong, then no
"religious devotion" would have helped. I would have dropped
Generational Dynamics like a hot potato, and would probably have gone
on to be a much happier person, with more friends. As things stand,
those analyses and predictions have always been right, so I'm stuck.

The prediction of a likely war with China is entirely analytical, for
reasons I've posted many times. Briefly:

• Based on the cycles of history, Generational Dynamics predicts
  a world war around this time.
  
  
• There were two world wars in the last century, and massive additional
  wars on every continent. In fact, there have been massive wars on
  every continent every century for millennia, so it's nearly certain that
  there will be massive wars and one or two world wars this century.
  
  
• If there were a way to assign a numeric measure to xenophobia, then
  that number would be going up in China towards Japan, Taiwan, the Phillipines,
  Russia, India, Kazakhstan, etc. These numbers have been growing steadily,
  with no sign of leveling off. Applying the rule that "If something can't
  go on forever, then it won't," there has to be a war.

So the evidence for the Generational Dynamics prediction of war is entirely
analytical, and has no "religious devotion" component at all.

Cool Breeze" Wrote:> I read your Singularity article and it was interesting. I suspect
> you are a scientific materialist, which explains quite a bit.

I don't know what a "scientific materialist" is, but it sounds
interesting.

Have you read Tom Mazanec's short story on the Singularity?

** 'Maybe we'll get it right this time' by Tom Mazanec
** http://www.generationaldynamics.com/pg/w...090309.htm

[John J. Xenakis]

** 26-Mar-2021 World View: Prediction guarantees

Cool Breeze" Wrote:> If you have been predicting war since 2003, how have you "always
> been right"? Before you basically made guarantees in your posts
> about the coming war at a certain time. That's the only time I
> ever piped up and objected, precisely because your predictions
> haven't come true, yet (I agree, they may come soon, but I don't
> claim to know like you seem to claim).

> I have said many times that I predict a "likely war with China" as
> well. So I agree with you. But again, you have said in prior posts
> that you guarantee at this point that it'll happen (in 3-4 years
> very likely, and in 10 a guarantee). If you would like to retract
> that, fine, I have no problem understanding that you are
> correcting maybe a prior error in use of language. So please set
> the record straight.

OK, how about this. Generational Dynamics predicts that we're headed
for new world war "soon." Analyzing trends, such as increasing
nationalism and xenophobia in various countries, makes it appear that
the world war will pit China vs US. It seems likely that it will
begin in the next 3-4 years, but it may begin later, with the
probability increasing with each year.

As the saying goes, "it is what it is." I can provide more analysis
to support those views, but I can't say, "war with China will begin on
July 23, 2025." That's impossible. And you're wrong when you say
I've been wrong, since I always use probabilistic language with
indefinite timings. If I name a specific date, then it's a typo. If
you'd like, search through my 2004 postings, and you'll find a place
where I did name a date. I was just starting out, and that was a
mistake, and I learned my lesson.

Back in the early days, I did try to assign probabilities, based on
data I'd collected. See the following:

** Six most dangerous regions in world (20-Nov-2004)
** http://www.generationaldynamics.com/pg/w...041120.htm


If you read through to the end, then you'll find that I computed the
probability of a crisis war in 2005 in one of the six dangerous
regions to be about 21%:

Code:

1 - (1-.0432)*(1-.0283)*(1-.0432)*(1-.0436)*(1-.0283)*(1-.0431)
    = .2089 = 20.89% ;

If it didn't happen in 2005, then the probability would go up a little
bit each year.

This approach didn't pan out, but it was an interesting approach to
trying to analyze probabilities.

I kept struggling with the concept of assigning probabilities. I
wrote the following article out of frustration:

** A beautiful mind? The world is paralyzed into a 'Nash equilibrium' (17-July-2006)
** http://www.generationaldynamics.com/pg/w...17nash.htm


I was trying to use a the concept of a "Nash equilibrium" to try to
explain why you couldn't predict dates and probabilities. I pretty
much gave up after this.

Around that time, I started looking at incorporating the concepts of
Chaos Theory into Generational Dynamics, and I developed the concept
that the start of a war would be a "chaotic event in the sense of
Chaos Theory," meaning that it could happen at any time, and would be
triggered by some random, unpredictable event. (Just as a butterfly
flapping its wings in China could cause a chain reaction leading to a
hurricane in America.) And I developed the concept of a "trend
value," something that's reasonably measureable, that grows worse with
time, where the saying "If something can't go on forever, then it
won't" applies. As time goes on, the probability that a random event
will trigger the chaotic event increases with time (since the trend
value is worsening).

Here's an analogy: A forest fire (chaotic event) can start when a
random spark (also a chaotic event) is applied to dry underbrush.
When the underbrush is wet, then a random spark will have no effect.
But as the underbrush dries out over time (trend value), then the
probability that a random spark (chaotic event) can trigger a forest
fire (chaotic event) increases with time. At some point, as the
underbrush becomes dryer and dryer (trend value), and the probability
that a random spark will start a forest fire increases, even the
tiniest spark can trigger a forest fire.

In the 1930s, tensions between Japan and China worsened constantly
(trend value). In 1937, a random event (chaotic event) occurred where
a Japanese soldier had to pee and got lost in the woods. This random
event triggered World War II: The Japanese accused the Chinese of
abducting him, and military actions began.

It's interesting that once the chaotic event occurred, things happened
very quickly. Within just a couple of months, the "Rape of Nanking"
occurred, for example.

Returning to the forest fire analogy, the underbrush must have been so
dry that once a tiny fire started, it became a huge forest fire very
rapidly.

So today, I'm saying that the underbrush is very dry (trend value), as
measured by rapidly increasing xenophobia and nationalism in many
countries, and all it needs is the right random trigger, a chaotic
event, to start a world war. And so: WW III could start tomorrow, or
next week, or next year, or five years from now. It's impossible to
predict when that will happen, but the underbrush gets dryer each day
(trend value), and the probability that a random event will trigger a
war grows every day.

[John J. Xenakis]

** 26-Mar-2021 World View: David and Goliath in the Suez Canal

• David and Goliath: This lone backhoe is dredging sand, but
  it's no match for the Ever Given

Salvage experts are now projecting that it will take one to three
weeks to free the monster cargo ship Ever Given from the Suez Canal.
The ship got wedged Tuesday in a single-lane stretch of the canal,
about 3.7 miles north of the southern entrance, near the city of Suez.

The name of the ship is Ever Given. It is owned by the Japanese firm
Shoei Kisen KK. It is leased by a Taiwanese shipping company, the
Evergreen.

The blockade is holding up $10 billion of goods every day. Over 200
vessels are waiting near the canal, waiting to go through. In
addition, more than 100 ships are en route, although many of these are
now considering an alternate route, around the Cape of Good Hope at
the southern tip of Africa, adding 14 days to the trip.

Various dredgers and tugs are heading to the region to try to help
out. The US Navy is sending a team of dredging experts on Saturday.

The tide is coming in on Monday, and they hope to refloat the Ever
Given then. There's always the possibility that the Ever Given will
break up, resulting in an even greater disaster. If all else fails,
they'll have to try to remove some of the cargo, but that will require
very specialized equipment and will take weeks.

• Infographic showing how the Ever Given is wedged in the Suez Canal

--- Sources:

-- The ship stuck in the Suez Canal — the Ever Given — is still
there. Here's what we know about the mission to dislodge it
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-03-26/s.../100030284
(Australian Broadcasting, 26-Mar-2021)

-- Ever Given / Maritime traffic jam grows outside blocked Suez Canal
https://www.nwaonline.com/news/2021/mar/...d-suez-ca/
(AP, 26-Mar-2021)

[John J. Xenakis]

*** 28-Mar-21 World View -- North Korea's ballistic missiles stoke the Denuclearization Delusion

This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com

• North Korea's ballistic missiles stoke the Denuclearization Delusion
  
• Analysis of North Korea's nuclear weapons program
  
• Sanctions and the Denuclearization Delusion
  
• Contrasting negotiating styles: Joe Biden vs Donald Trump
  
• Myanmar / Burma becomes toxic and explosive
  

****
**** North Korea's ballistic missiles stoke the Denuclearization Delusion
****


Kim Jong-un and Joe Biden

North Korea launched two ballistic missiles into the Sea of Japan on
Thursday, in violation of UN resolutions. The missiles landed outside
Japan's territorial waters and exclusive economic zone and there have
been no reports of harm caused to aircraft or ships. Both Japan and
South Korea have lodged formal protests.

The timing was interesting, because Thursday was the day of President
Joe Biden's long awaited press conference, where it was promised that
he would take questions from reporters. As expected, Biden's handlers
carefully selected the questions in advance, from carefully chosen
reporters, and the order in which they would be asked, so that all
Biden had to do was follow along in a notebook on his podium and read
the answers out loud. The reporters and questions were all fawning,
such as referring to Biden "as a moral, decent man," and the Fox News
reporter was carefully sidelined.

There was one question where Biden seemed totally unprepared, and that
was the question about North Korea's ballistic missile launch, which
had just occurred several hours before the press conference. Biden
looked down at the podium and read a prepared statement supplied by
his handlers. Here's what he said:

<QUOTE>"Let me say that, number one, U.N. Resolution 1718 was
violated by those particular missiles that were tested — number
one. We’re consulting with our allies and partners. And there will
be responses — if they choose to escalate, we will respond
accordingly.

But I’m also prepared for some form of diplomacy, but it has to be
conditioned upon the end result of denuclearization. So that’s
what we’re doing right now: consulting with our
allies."<END QUOTE>

Denuclearization is a delusional fantasy, as I'll describe below.

This is a reasonable statement, but if you watched the press
conference, as I did, Biden didn't appear to understand what he was
reading, and had a difficult time reading it. That portion of the
press conference appears right at the beginning of the al-Jazeera
video referenced below, so you can watch it and judge for yourself.
You can blame me as a wild-eyed ideologue for saying that Biden
appeared to be, at the least, cognitively challenged or worse, but my
perception is not important. What's important is that leaders around
the world were watching carefully and analyzing, and they know that
Biden is mouthing words, but doesn't know what he's saying. To me, it
was painful to watch, and almost cruel for his handlers to stand him
up and put him and the country through that.

Before proceeding with the analysis, I want to make it clear that it
makes no difference what Biden said. From the point of view of
Generational Dynamics, there is a powerful "March of History" going on
here. As I've been saying for years, North Korea is on a path to
develop nuclear weapons and missiles, and nothing that Clinton, Bush,
Obama, Trump or Biden could say or do will stop it (short of a
pre-emptive missile attack on all of North Korea's facilities, which
Trump threatened, but which was never going to happen). Diplomacy is
a worthless delusion in the March of History.

****
**** Analysis of North Korea's nuclear weapons program
****

I now want to quote excerpts from the best analysis of the North Korea
that I've seen in years (not counting some of my own). It appeared in
the al-Jazeera show Inside Story, and you can watch the whole thing by
following the link in the sources below.

The analysis was done by Tariq Rauf, former head of Verification &
Securiity Policy, at the IAEA, which is the United Nations nuclear
inspection agency.

He began by giving a summary of North Korea's current capabilities (my
transcription):

<QUOTE>"North Korea has one of the oldest nuclear programs in
the world. It started in 1953 [right at the end of the Korean
War].

They now have a complete nuclear fuel cycle -- uranium mining,
uranium enrichment, enriching to reactor grade uranieum, also to
weapons grade uranium, which is over 90%. They also have a
plutonium separation capability.

And they've obviously demonstrated that they can make nuclear
warheads. They carried out six nuclear tests, and if one looks at
the yields of the six nuclear tests, each one of them has been
bigger than the previous one. The last test in 2017 was nearly
140 kilotons.

And so North Korea, in its six tests, has demonstrated much more
advanced nuclear weapons capability than India or Pakistan did so
in 1998. Therefore it is a full program."<END QUOTE>

He said that their missile program is equally advanced: "They also
have a full suite of ballistic and cruise missiles. They have short
range or battlefield missiles, they have medium range missiles, and
they also have long range missiles."

He added that their nuclear program is pretty much completed, and the
only question left is the number of weapons they have in their
arsenal. "We believe they have 30, 40 or 50 nuclear weapons, can
apparently make 7 to 12 more per year per year."

****
**** Sanctions and the Denuclearization Delusion
****

For years, America and the United Nations have been using
sanctions to try to convince the North Koreans to denuclearize.
This was true under the Clinton, Bush, Obama and Trump administrations,
and it's still true in the Biden administration, since Biden
has not made any statement about removing the sanctions.

During the al-Jazeera show, Tariq Rauf gave a lengthy discussion of
why sanctions have absolutely no chance of succeeding:

<QUOTE>"As for sanctions, nobody can point to a single case
in history where sanctions have reversed their nuclear, chemical
or biological weapons program in a country.

Sanctions did not affect South Africa, Iraq, Iran, didn't stop
India or Pakistan, and it's clear that they didn't stop North
Korea.

The leadership has shown in Pakistan, Iran, Iraq and also North
Korea that if the population has to tighten its belt, that's what
they will do.

And North Korea has also seen how Iraq, Libya and Iran have been
squeezed because they didn't have nuclear weapons.

Nobody threatens North Korea with an attack, nobody says all
options are on the table, so North Korea knows. They also know
that India and Pakistan have been accepted as [i]de facto
nuclear weapons states."<END QUOTE>[/i]

So Rauf makes it clear that North Korea's nuclear program is here to
stay, and sanctions will do nothing.

As I said, there is a March of History, and sanctions will not affect
it. By the time the world war ends, every one of North Korea's
nuclear weapons will be used somewhere -- on America, on Japan, on
South Korea, on China, on Russia, or elsewhere.

****
**** Contrasting negotiating styles: Joe Biden vs Donald Trump
****

Tariq Rauf also gives a comparison between Joe Biden and Donald Trump
in handling the North Korea situation:

<QUOTE>"Biden has already insulted the Russian president, the
Chinese president, has insulted Kim Jong-Un as a Hitler and as a
thug. How does he expect them to have a meaningful dialog?

President Biden who is also known for rash decisions, and for
insulting foreign leaders, needs also to be restrained. We
criticize president Trump quite justifiably, but president Biden
is no angel either. He's not going to wave a magic wand and
things are going to fall into place."<END QUOTE>

This gives rise to a comparison of the two negotiating styles,
always keeping in mind that the March of History will be same,
irrespective of the American president's negotiating style.

As I described many times, I was initially quite contemptuous of
Trump's lack of knowledge of the world, until the unexpected happened:
He selected as his principal advisor Steve Bannon, who is an expert on
both military history and Generational Dynamics, as I worked with him
off and on for several years. Bannon educated Trump on what was
happening in China, South Korea and elsewhere, and Trump used that
knowledge, combined with this own "Art of the Deal" skills, in his
relations with foreign leaders. Thus, he developed a friendly
father-son relationship with Kim Jong-un, and repeatedly complimented
Xi Jinping as a great leader, although that changed dramatically in
March 2020, when the CCP infuriated Trump by announcing that the
coronavirus had been inserted into Wuhan province by the American
army.

At his press conference on Thursday, Joe Biden emphasized that he
had a long relationship with China's president Xi Jinping:

<QUOTE>"I’ve known Xi Jinping for a long time. Allegedly, by
the time I left office as Vice President, I had spent more time
with Xi Jinping than any world leader had, because President Obama
and the Chinese President Hu decided we should get to know one
another since it was inappropriate for the President of the United
States to spend time with the vice president of another
country. But it was obvious he was going to become the new leader
of China.

So, I spent hours upon hours with him alone with an interpreter —
my interpreter and his — going into great detail. He is very, very
straightforward. Doesn’t have a democratic — with a small “D” —
bone in his body. But he’s a smart, smart guy. He’s one of the
guys, like Putin, who thinks that autocracy is the wave of the
future and democracy can’t function in an ever — an ever-complex
world.

So, when I was elected and he called to congratulate me, I think
to the surprise of the China experts who were — his people were on
call as well as mine, listening — we had a two-hour
conversation. For two hours. ....

And earlier this month — and apparently it got the Chinese’s
attention; that’s not why I did it — I met with our allies and how
we’re going to hold China accountable in the region: Australia,
India, Japan, and the United States — the so-called Quad. Because
we have to have democracies working together.

Before too long, I’m going to have — I’m going to invite an
alliance of democracies to come here to discuss the future. And so
we’re going to make it clear that in order to deal with these
things, we are going to hold China accountable to follow the rules
— to follow the rules — whether it relates to the South China Sea
or the North China Sea, or their agreement made on Taiwan, or a
whole range of other things. ....

And the third thing, and the thing that I admire about dealing
with Xi is he understands — he makes no pretense about not
understanding what I’m saying any more than I do him — I pointed
out to him: No leader can be sustained in his position or her
position unless they represent the values of the country. And I
said as — “And, Mr. President, as I’ve told you before, Americans
value the notion of freedom. America values human rights. We don’t
always live up to our expectations, but it’s a values system. We
are founded on that principle. And as long as you and your country
continues to so blatantly violate human rights, we’re going to
continue, in an unrelenting way, to call to the attention of the
world and make it clear — make it clear what’s happening.”

And he understood that. I made it clear that no American President
— at least one did — but no American President ever back down from
speaking out of what’s happening to the Uighurs, what’s happening
in Hong Kong, what’s happening in-country.

That’s who we are. The moment a President walks away from that, as
the last one did, is the moment we begin to lose our legitimacy
around the world. It’s who we are."<END QUOTE>

Biden was making the point that he has a relationship with Xi Jinping,
though apparently a fairly hostile one -- but that's better than
no relationship. However, he has no similar relationship with
Russia's Vladimir Putin, whom he recently called a "killer,"
nor with Kim Jong-un, whom he has called a thug, a dictator
and a tyrant.

We have to mention that the Trump administration spoke out forcefully
about human rights in China, and about the Uighurs. Biden's claim
otherwise may be a lie, or more likely he doesn't know, since his
handlers didn't bother to tell him. However, world leaders who
watched Biden stumble through his press conference are well aware that
he lied. (See "20-Jan-21 World View -- Pompeo bashes China over genocide, virus, Taiwan on last days of Trump administration"
)

So it's not surprising that North Korea's media made a particularly
harsh response to Biden's statement:

<QUOTE>"We cannot but build invincible physical power for
reliably defending the security of our state under the present
situation in which south Korea and the U.S. constantly pose
military threats to the Korean peninsula while persistently
conducting dangerous war exercises and introducing advanced
weapons.

We express our deep apprehension over the U.S. chief executive
faulting the regular testfire, exercise of our state's right to
self-defence, as the violation of UN "resolutions" and openly
revealing his deep-seated hostility toward the DPRK.

Such remarks from the U.S. president are an undisguised
encroachment on our state's right to self-defence and provocation
to it.

It is a gangster-like logic that it is allowable for the U.S. to
ship the strategic nuclear assets into the Korean peninsula and
launch ICBMs any time it wants but not allowable for the DPRK, its
belligerent party, to conduct even a test of a tactical weapon.

We clearly remember that after the appearance of the new
administration in Washington there have been exploitation of every
opportunity to make words and acts provoking the sovereignty and
dignity of our state in which we were branded as the most serious
"security threat".

The bellicose stance of the new U.S. administration awakens us to
the way to be followed by us and convinces us of the justice of
the work to be done by us once again."<END QUOTE>

It's worth remembering that North Korea is a vassal of Communist
China. Kim Jong-un occasionally throws a temper tantrum and does
something the CCP doesn't like, but basically Kim does as he's told.
I consider it likely that the CCP gave Kim the OK for Thursday's
ballistic missile launches.

In my opinion, North Korea will not launch any military attacks
without China's permission, and that means it will be done in
coordination with China's invasion of Taiwan or Japan or an attack on
the United States, at some point in the future.

So that's the state of the relations between America and North Korea
today.

****
**** Myanmar / Burma becomes toxic and explosive
****

I want to add a brief word about a different subject.

The situation in Myanmar (Burma) is becoming toxic to the point of
being close to explosive. Some 50-80 people peaceful protesters were
killed on Saturday alone, with no provocation. These included
children and even babies in their homes. The violence by the army is
becoming horrific and unrestrained. Furthermore, other ethnic groups,
including the Kachin and the Shan, are threatening to intervene unless
the violence stops.

Burma's generational crisis war was an extremely bloody multi-ethnic
civil war following independence (1948-1958). It's been 65 years
since the end of that civil war, and so Burma is due for a new one,
and that appears to be happening.

This is going to trigger large refugee flows into Thailand, India and
China, so those countries may be brought into the war. Russia,
incidentally, is supporting Burma's army, and so probably expects to
gain from a Burma civil war.

Sources:

• Biden Press Conference (White House, 27-Mar-2021)
  
• Will the US take a new approach to North Korea? (Al-Jazeera, Inside Story, 27-Mar-2021)
  
• North Korea says Biden administration took wrong first step over latest missile test (Reuters, 27-Mar-2021)
  
• Biden: US will respond if North Korea escalates following new missile launches (ABC News, 25-Mar-2021)
  
• North Korea responds to Biden's criticism of ballistic-missile test, accusing administration of 'gangster-like logic' (Business Insider, London, 26-Mar-2021)
  
• North Korea / Ri Pyong Chol Expresses Deep Apprehension over U.S. President's Statement Faulting DPRK's Regular Testfire (KCNA, North Korea, 27-Mar-2021)
  
• North Korea fires two ballistic missiles into Sea of Japan (BBC, 25-Mar-2021)
  
• North Korea test-fires ballistic missiles in message to US (AP, 25-Mar-2021)
  
• Reaction to North Korea's ballistic missile launch (Reuters, 25-Mar-2021)
  
• Biden laughs off question about North Korean missile test (CNN, 24-Mar-2021)
  
• North Korea missile launch tests Biden administration and Tokyo Olympics (Japan Times, 25-Mar-2021)
  
• EXPLAINER: N. Korean missile tests follow same old playbook (AP, 25-Mar-2021)

Related Articles:

• US envoy visits S. Korea to prepare for North Korea 12/31 threat (15-Dec-2019)
  
  
• South Korea's weapons industry boosted by end of North's 'Charm Offensive' (29-Apr-2019)
  
  
• North Korea 'Charm Offensive' appears to have run its course (17-Nov-2018)
  
  
• North Korea plays hardball to get sanctions lifted (12-Nov-2018)
  
  
• China, Russia demand that that some North Korea sanctions be lifted (29-Sep-2018)
  
  
• US imposes new North Korea sanctions on Chinese and Russian shipping companies (17-Aug-2018)
  
  
• NY Times publishes a generational analysis of South Korea (30-Jan-2018)
  
  
• Trove of leaked China documents detail jailing of Xinjiang's Muslim Uighurs (18-Nov-2019)
  
  
• China claims Muslim Uighurs released from concentration camps (31-Jul-2019)
  
  
• China clamps down on Uighurs in Xinjiang province (22-Feb-2017)
  

KEYS: Generational Dynamics, North Korea, Kim Jong-un, Sea of Japan,
March of History, Tariq Rauf, IAEA, China, Xi Jinping, Uighurs,
South Africa, Iraq, Iran, India, Pakistan, Libya,
Donald Trump, Steve Bannon, Joe Biden,
Quad, Australia, India, Russia, Vladimir Putin,
Myanmar, Burma, Thailand

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

[Tim Randal Walker]

John, I think you had a good idea when you came up with the forest fire metaphor!

[John J. Xenakis]

*** 29-Mar-21 World View -- Myanmar/Burma protests turn into ethnic civil war

This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com

• Myanmar/Burma protests turn into ethnic civil war
  
• The 'silent strike' threatens a complete economic and healthcare collapse
  
• As the violence increases, clashes with ethnic groups grow
  
• General Min Aung Hlaing thanks Russia for its support
  
• Conflicting strategies of Russia versus China in Myanmar
  
• Irony and Karmic retribution
  

****
**** Myanmar/Burma protests turn into ethnic civil war
****


Friday meeting between Russia's defense minister Sergei Shoigu and Myanmar's army leader Min Aung Hlaing to discuss Russia's support for the slaughter (Tass)

Saturday was the deadliest day yet of violence by the Myanmar/Burma
army since the February 1 military coup, and installation of a junta
headed by army leader General Min Aung Hlaing. In cities across the
country, some 80-100 peaceful protesters were killed on that day
alone, with no provocation, as the violence by the army is becoming
horrific and unrestrained.

These included children and even babies in their homes. Hundreds of
people have been killed, including a seven-year-old girl reportedly
shot dead in her home this week. Soldiers have also occupied major
public hospitals and attacked healthcare workers, including emergency
responders trying to help injured protesters.

According to reports, the security forces have occupied 36 hospitals
around the country and, in some cases, patients have been evicted from
these hospitals. (This is reminiscent of another war criminal,
Syria's Bashar al-Assad, specifically targeting hospitals with
missiles to prevent medical care.)

****
**** The 'silent strike' threatens a complete economic and healthcare collapse
****

Because peaceful street protests are being met with increasingly
horrific violence by the army, protesters are trying a new tack -- a
"silent strike." Starting Wednesday of last week, a growing number of
public servants, bankers, and employees in other key industries are
deserting their jobs en masse in a civil disobedience movement to
demand an end to the violence.

The junta has responded in the only way it knows how -- by going to
the homes of the strikers and arresting them. Several hundred public
servants and bankers have been arrested, according to reports.

Many doctors and nurses at major public hospitals have joined a
nationwide civil disobedience movement, which has severely constricted
healthcare delivery. The result is that the public health system has
come to a near standstill and the public health system teeters on the
brink of collapse.

****
**** As the violence increases, clashes with ethnic groups grow
****

As the violence grows into full-scale civil war, there are now growing
ethnic conflicts.

On Sunday morning, army fighter jets launched air strikes against a
region along the Thai border populated by the Karen ethnic group,
killing eight people. As a result of the air strikes, at least 3,000
people fled across the border into Thailand. There are already more
tha 7,500 refugees who have been living in refugee camps along the
Thai-Burma border.

The air strikes were in retaliation for attacks on the Burmese army by
the Karen National Union (KNU) on Saturday. At least seven members of
the military were captured. That was just the latest in a series of
skirmishes between the KNU and the army since the February 1 coup,
which the KNU opposed.

The Karen have been persecuted throughout Burma's history. In 2004, a
ceasefire between the Karen and the Burmese government was brokered,
but human rights abuses continue, including forced labor, village
burnings, arbitrary taxation, rape, and extrajudicial killings.
140,000 refugees from Burma, mostly Karen, are living in refugee camps
in Thailand, some for as many as 20 years.

Another ethnic group, the Kachin, have also been in clashes with
government security forces.

The Kachin Independence Army (KIA) launched simultaneous attacks on at
least four of the junta’s police battalions in a Kachin State township
early on Sunday morning. Up to 20 policement were killed, and the KIA
seized weaponry from the sites.

This situation is growing into a repeat of Burma's last generational
crisis war, an extremely bloody civil war (1948-1958) following
independence, and involving multiple ethnic groups, along with
intervention by the Chinese.

According to the Generational Dynamics 58-Year Hypothesis, which by
now has been well proven, a new ethnic civil war will not begin less
than 58 years from the end of the previous ethnic civil war. That's
because 58 years is precisely amount the time when the generations of
survivors of the preceding all die or retire, all at once, and the
younger post-war generations come to power. It has now been 63 years
since the end of the last ethnic civil war, so Myanmar is fully ripe
for a new ethnic civil war, and that seems to be what's happening.

****
**** General Min Aung Hlaing thanks Russia for its support
****

On Saturday, while Burma's army were slaughtering innocent Burmese
people peacefully conducting pro-democracy protests against the
February 1 coup, Burma's army held a massive parade and weapons
exhibition to celebrate Armed Forces Day, which commemorates the
army's rebellion in 1945 against Japanese occupation. At the
ceremony, the army leader Senior General Min Aung Hlaing said that the
military would protect the people and strive for democracy.

Many countries in the international community had been expressing
horror at the ongoing violence in Myanmar. And yet, despite the
horrific ongoing violence, there were eight countries that sent
representatives to join Hlaing in the celebrations: Russia, China,
India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Vietnam, Laos, and Thailand.

During his speech, Hlaing singled out one of these eight countries --
Russia. He welcomed the presence of the Russians at the ceremony and
said, "Russia is a true friend," having previously referred to Moscow
as a "loyal friend."

And indeed, Russia is a friend to war criminal Hlaing. Russia has
been a leading supplier of weapons to Burma's army. If you see
armored vehicles on the streets of Myanmar in videos, those vehicles
were almost certainly supplied by the Russians.

****
**** Conflicting strategies of Russia versus China in Myanmar
****

In Western media, Russia and China are often portrayed as having
similar relationships to Myanmar. This largely comes from the fact
that Russia and China jointly veto any attempt in the United Nations
Security Council to condemn Myanmar for its war crimes and genocidal
violence.

However, from Myanmar's point of view, the two countries are quite
different. Russia is geographically remote, while China shares a long
border. This means that Russia is simply a weapons provider, and
really doesn't how the slaughter in Myanmar evolves. General Hlaing
has cultivated defense ties with Moscow over the past decade to avoid
dependence on China, which is Myanmar's largest weapons supplier.

But the situation is much more complex for China. China is heavily
involved in building Myanmar's infrastructure, including a joint
construction project to build the China-Myanmar Economic Corridor
(CMEC), which is part of China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). The
CMEC focuses on 12 areas including basic infrastructure, construction,
manufacturing, agriculture, transport, finance, human resource
development and telecommunications.

Thus, it is critical for China that the Myanmar people not blame the
Chinese for the ongoing violence. There have already been attacks on
Chinese factories by groups claiming that the Chinese are supporting
the army violence.

That's why the Russians are able to express open support for the army,
while the Chinese are holding back, waiting to see what happens. The
Russians couldn't care less how many innocent civilians are
slaughtered, and don't care if they're blamed for it in some way. The
Chinese don't care either, but they have business interests in Myanmar
that outweigh any other considerations.

****
**** Irony and Karmic retribution
****

Buddhists are into Karma, and so it must have occurred to many of them
in Myanmar that there a great deal of irony in the the country's
situation, as well as Karmic retribution.

Since 2011, Burma's army has been committing atrocities on Muslim
ethnic Rohingyas living in Rakhine State, and I've written many
articles about this. The atrocities included gang rape, violent
torture, execution-style killings and the razing of entire villages,
in a scorched earth campaign. These atrocities have been cheered by
the ordinary Myanmar people, most of whom apparently hate the
Rohingyas.

Aung Sang Suu Kyi became a "useful idiot" for the army by presenting a
sympathetic, tired, weary, female face to the world, defending the
army to deflect the horrors and atrocities that are occurring in their
country. In 2019, the International Court of Justice in the Hague
held a trial on Burma's genocide, and Aung Sang Suu Kyi came and
defended the army, saying that nothing had happened.

So now, the worm has turned, as the old saying goes. The army had no
more use for the useful idiot Aung Sang Suu Kyi, so she's now in jail.
The horrors and atrocities that the army perpetrated on the Rohingyas
are now being perpetrated on Buddhist civilians. That is truly Karmic
justice.

I saw a Burma citizen being interviewed on the BBC about the violence.
He was asked about the Rohingyas, and asked how he felt about the
genocide and ethnic cleansing that went on. He said that he couldn't
speak out for the Rohingyas when the genocide was going on because he
would have been punished. But now, he says, the Rohingyas are his
beloved "brothers," and he welcomes their return to the country. It
makes you want to vomit, doesn't it.

I've been around a long time, and I've learned to believe in Karma.
People who do evil things eventually become the victims of their own
evil. It's sometimes phrased as "what goes around comes around,"
meaning that the evil circles back to the evildoer. There's no easy
explanation, except that people who are evil do stupid things, and
their stupid evil acts catch up with them. I've seen this many, many
times in my life, and the Karmic retribution going on in Myanmar today
is one of the best examples I've ever seen.

Sources:

• Burma / Cities terrorised as junta escalates lethal violence against public on Armed Forces Day (Myanmar Now, 27-Mar-2021)
  
• Myanmar air strikes send ethnic Karen fleeing to Thailand (AP, 28-Mar-2021)
  
• Myanmar army launches air strikes in Karen state, group says (Reuters, 28-Mar-2021)
  
• Burma (Myanmar) Karen Cultural Profile (World Relief North Texas, 26-Apr-2018)
  
• Myanmar’s post-coup healthcare breakdown (New Humanitarian, 25-Mar-2021)
  
• Myanmar embraces Russian arms to offset China's influence (Nikkei, 9-Feb-2021)
  
• Chechnya / Why the Myanmar crisis makes Russia choose between Muslim and Buddhist minorities inside (ISPI, Italy, 7-Sep-2017)
  
• Burma / Myanmar junta holds military parade with Russian attendance (Nikkei, 28-Mar-2021)
  
• Russia says it is seeking to strengthen military ties with Myanmar (Reuters, 26-Mar-2021)
  
• Russia to Deepen Ties With Myanmar Military Junta, Top Defense Official Says in First Visit After Coup (Moscow Times, 26-Mar-2021)
  
• Burma / Kachin Independence Army / KIA attacks police battalions in Hpakant (Myanmar Now, 28-Mar-2021)
  
• Burma / Thousands of Karen villagers flee as military continues airstrikes (Myanmar Now, 28-Mar-2021)

Related Articles:

• Myanmar (Burma) military coup as army arrests Aung San Suu Kyi government officials (02-Feb-2021)
  
  
• Thousands of ethnic Kachins flee from violence by Burma (Myanmar) army (29-Apr-2018)
  
  
• China puts army on high alert along border with Burma (Myanmar) (22-Nov-2016)
  
  
• Devastating UN report on Burma shows scale of ghastly atrocities by Buddhists targeting Muslim Rohingyas (04-Feb-2017)
  
  
• Meiktila, Burma, violence has echoes of Kristallnacht (05-Apr-2013)
  
  
• Generational history of Burma (Myanmar) (26-Sep-2007)
  

KEYS: Generational Dynamics, Myanmar, Burma,
Min Aung Hlaing, Thailand, China, Russia,
Karen ethnic group, Karen National Union, KNU,
Kachin, Kachin Independence Army, KIA,
Aung Sang Suu Kyi, Rohingyas, Rakhine State, Karmic retribution

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]

** 28-Mar-2021 World View: Forest fires

(03-28-2021, 06:01 PM)Tim Randal Walker Wrote: > John, I think you had a good idea when you came up with the forest
> fire metaphor!

Yes, I agree. I'm planning on expanding it. It works a lot better
than the straw breaking the camel's back metaphor.

[John J. Xenakis]

*** 2-Apr-21 World View -- Russia massing forces on Ukraine border, apparently planning imminent invasion

This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com

• Russia massing forces on Ukraine border, apparently planning imminent invasion
  
• Russia fires back at reports of a potential invasion of Ukraine
  

****
**** Russia massing forces on Ukraine border, apparently planning imminent invasion
****


A trainload of tanks in southwestern Russia headed in the direction of the border with Ukraine earlier this week

The US armed forces European Command has raised its threat watch
assessement to its highest level -- "potential imminent crisis" --
because of growing reports of trains loaded with large amounts of
Russian military hardware, including aircraft, tanks and other heavy
armored vehicles, as well as heavy artillery and ground troops, headed
toward the border with Ukraine.

In 2014, Russia troops invaded Ukraine in support of Russian
separatists in eastern Ukraine. The purpose was to break off
the entire eastern portion of Ukraine and annex it to the Russian
Federation.

That didn't happen, but Russia also invaded Ukraine's Crimea peninsula
and annexed it and made it part of the Russian federation.
It's been assumed that Russia has wanted to complete the job of
annexing eastern Ukraine, and there are concerns the Russians plan
to do exactly that right now.

Russia may have decided to strike now because of the new Biden
administration in Washington. Last Thursday press conference by Biden
was undoubtedly analyzed closely by the Kremlin, and it was clear that
Biden has no idea what's going on. In addition, the world can see
that the Biden administration has completely lost control of its
southern border. The Kremlin analysts may have decided that it would
take a long time for the Biden administration to do anything, if the
Biden administration did anything, and that therefore they can invade
Ukraine with impunity. (See "28-Mar-21 World View -- North Korea's ballistic missiles stoke the Denuclearization Delusion"
.)

****
**** Russia fires back at reports of a potential invasion of Ukraine
****

Russia's mealy-mouthed spokesman Dmitry Peskov issued a statement
saying that there's nothing to see here:

<QUOTE>"Russian Federation is moving its troops within its
territory, at its own discretion. Nobody should be concerned
about it. It poses no threat to anyone."<END QUOTE>

At this point, it's worthwhile to make a list of previous Russian lies
related to the 2014 Russian invasion of Ukraine:

• Russia always denied that there were Russian army troops in
  Ukraine, and when it was proven there were, the Russians claimed that
  they were just "volunteers." That also turned out to be
  disinformation, as 80% of Russia's army is a volunteer army. America
  has an all-volunteer army. So saying that Russian troops in Ukraine
  are "volunteers" is like saying that America's troops in Afghanistan
  are "volunteers."
  
  
• Russia lied about invading east Ukraine when it had Russian
  troops in east Ukraine.
  
  
• In July 2014, the Russians in eastern Ukraine shot down Malaysia
  Airlines Flight MH17 passenger plane with a Russian Buk 9M38 missile
  that was transported by a Volvo truck from Russia, as was confirmed in
  2015 by a Dutch report following a lengthy investigation. Russia made
  one moronic claim after another, everything from the claim that MH17
  fell out of the sky by itself to a claim that the US shot down MH17 to
  embarrass Putin.
  
  
• Russia lied about invading Crimea, and then invaded Crimea.
  
  
• 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.

According to US estimates, Russia has about 32,700 military personnel
in Crimea, some 28,000 personnel in "separatist" units in areas of
eastern Ukraine known collectively as the Donbass who have been
fighting the government in Kiev since 2015.

A member of the Generational Dynamics forum, Navigator, an expert on
military history, says:

<QUOTE>"You do not move this kind of stuff [tanks and armored
vehicles] around unless you mean to use it. Russia wants the
traditional Ukraine back. This is up to the line of
Odessa/Vinnetsa. They will probably allow Ukraine to remain in
what was once the Austro-Hungarian province of Galicia, centered
around the city of Lvov. Given Europe's current state, plus a
weak US administration, they know they will be able to get away
with this.

My bet is that Putin will go all in after Ukraine. After that he
will take a breather to get ready for the Baltics. Going after
the Baltics will require a NATO response. But my guess is that
they will appear so weak due to an almost non-existent response to
the Ukrainian campaign that the threat of this will not dissuade
him. He could also have intel that the Chinese will be going
after Taiwan at the same time he will be prepared to go into the
Baltics. This is my guess."<END QUOTE>

So now more Russian troops ("volunteers?") are headed for the border
with Ukraine, and Peskov says, "Nobody should be concerned about it."

However, the Pentagon is concerned about it, as evidenced by the rise
in the threat watch assessement to its highest level -- "potential
imminent crisis."

According to Pentagon spokesperson John Kirby: "We obviously don’t
want to see any more violations of Ukrainian territory. We’ve been
very clear about the threats that we see from Russia across domains
... we’re taking them very seriously."

Sources:

• EUCOM raises threat level for Ukraine as Russia builds up forces (Stars and Stripes, 31-Mar-2021)
  
• Today's D Brief: Ukraine, Russia escalate; Chinese fishing boats, unwanted; Small carrier, unneeded?; Lessons from Suez; And a bit more. (Defense One, 31-Mar-2021)
  
• Pentagon ‘watching’ as Russia steps up aggression in Eastern Europe (Politico, 31-Mar-2021)
  
• Russia Fires Back at U.S. Alarm Over Ukraine (US News, 1-Apr-2021)
  
• The West waits for Putin's next move as Russia-Ukraine tensions rise (CNBC, 1-Apr-2021)
  
• Russian Armor Floods Toward Border With Ukraine Amid Fears Of An 'Imminent Crisis' (The Drive, 31-Mar-2021)
  
• Ukraine plans Black Sea bases as US steps up presence in region (Stars and Stripes, 10-Feb-2021)
  
• As Russian Tanks Move Toward Ukraine, The Globe Braces For World War 3 (Economic Collapse Blog, 31-Mar-2021)

Related Articles:

• North Korea's ballistic missiles stoke the Denuclearization Delusion (28-Mar-2021)
  
  
• Ukraine and Turkey develop closer relationship amid Russia's aggression (05-Dec-2018)
  
  
• 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)
  
  
• 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)
  
  
• Turkey shoots down Russian warplane, evoking memories of many Crimean wars (25-Nov-2015)
  
  
• Crimean Tatars and Ukraine seek help from Sunni Muslim countries (25-Apr-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, Russia, Ukraine, Donbas,
European Command, EUCOM, Crimea, Dmitry Peskov,
Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17, Buk 9M38 missile,
John Kirby

Permanent web link to this article
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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]

Solutions for Burma:

1. It must greatly shrink its military. Not since Thug Japan has there been a sizable country so much under the thrall of its armed forces that the People need to be relived of it. We all know how the Japanese Armed Forces were reduced in size and influence, and under what conditions. The only good thing I can say about the Burmese Army is that it has never committed an act of aggression that could start a dangerous war. A country nearly surrounded by two superpowers (China and India) and a significant power in Thailand must act with due care. It would be extremely unwise to mess with India in part because India has one of the best intelligence networks in existence. Apparently it got much of its training from the Israeli Mossad.

Under a dictatorship that bleeds and beats people with impunity, any invader can find itself with fifth columns quickly at its disposal at low cost for the invader or occupier. "Treat us well" may be enough.

2. Burma needs to become more of a free-market society. "Barracks socialism" is good for empowering the Armed Forces and keeping people obedient, but that is about all that it is "good" for.

3. Give control over the land of the Rohingya Muslims to Bangladesh. I cannot imagine any better result. Microstates fare badly unless they are super-prosperous (let us say Luxembourg).i

[pbrower2a]

(03-27-2021, 09:49 PM)John J. Xenakis Wrote: ** 24-Mar-2021 World View: Trump's legacy

A web site reader asked me to comment on an article on Trump's legacy.
The following are excerpts from my response to him:

The problem I'm having with this article is that it's making a number
of political judgments that may seem true today, but which could turn
out to be false at any time in the future, even a few months from now.
Making these judgments is definitely not the domain of Generational
Dynamics.

As with Strauss and Howe, one has at most generalities about the powerful tendencies in histories that follow cyclical patterns without expressing the details. The details are either how the "little people" do about overwhelming realities (such as machine-gun fire, ecological catastrophes, economic meltdowns, or dangerous epidemics) or the quirks of the  Great Men (and hyper-villains) of history. Some people fulfill their roles well (Sir Winston Churchill); some bungle them badly (Alexander Kerensky), and some fail due to their own vices (pick a high-level Nazi -- any high-level Nazi!). 

We can compare our contemporaries in a Crisis Era to the other leaders... and as I saw movies from this Crisis Era about Abraham Lincoln and Sir Winston Churchill and tried to figure out how Donald Trump would face analogous challenges to the survival of the orders for which Lincoln and Churchill stood, I could see Donald Trump coming up far short. Okay, okay, okay. We all have our preconceptions of what can work and what cannot... and what, even if successful for immediate objectives leads only to larger calamities. Donald Trump is a textbook example of a pathological narcissist, and although nearly all successful politicians have higher-than-average levels of narcissism, the effective ones can rein it in, at least on the public stage, when such is necessary. Many of us men might have pornographic fantasies, but we know enough that we cannot have a "casting couch" for subordinates (Harvey Weinstein), do date rape (Bill Cosby), or show self-made porn to our associates (which will likely take down Representative Matt Gaetz if something else related doesn't). Donald Trump is intellectually hollow, which makes him especially prone to being taken in by someone who knows how to press the right buttons on his personality.    

We've all read some Freud, have we not? One cannot understand any time after the start of the twentieth century without applying Freudian thought to him. In that light, Trump looks really, really bad. Good people do not mock the handicapped. Good people do not burn others in business dealings. A truly-good businessman tries to make others do repeat business, which distinguishes someone like Ray Kroc (McDonald's). Akio Morita (Sony), or Sam Walton (Wal-Mart) from Donald Trump. The best businessmen leave their customers in better condition than they were in before making the deals. Fleeces are good for one profitable, one-sided transaction after which one needs another to replace someone who can never be a customer again. I have seen him on the commercial stage for most of his adult life, and I never saw anything about him that made me want to have any dealing with him.

So much about him is cringe-worthy, including his inability to recognize a failure when it happens as such (good people learn from their mistakes), his expressions of ethnic and religious bigotry (obsolete and dangerous), his quickness to anger, his serial divorces, his connections to gangsters, his sadistic streak, his steadfast allegiance to falsehoods that have since proved "inoperable" (as one Watergate figure called such a lie), and a lack of faith in anything other than himself. Involvement with a porn star? Now that is reckless. I look at the virtues that I associate with political figures at their best, and I instead see cruelty, selfishness, hollowness, bigotry, deceit, greed, and irresponsibility. Were I in the position of hiring someone for a job with responsibility toward others, then those traits would cause me to give a resolute NO! to the proposition.                

Quote:Most likely, the only thing that will matter ten years from now is
whether and how well the country survives the war with China.  The
current political nonsense will end with a "regeneracy event."  This
is a concept in generational theory, referring to an event that
regenerates civic unity for the first time since the end of the
previous crisis war.  It's an event that presents a strong existential
threat to the nation or society, and forces all sides to put aside
their political differences and unite behind the leadership for the
common survival.

Or perhaps averting a war.  I can think of two regimes that I would gladly feed to the Panda. One is the military regime in Burma. The other -- you will see soon enough. 

Quote:In 1941, it was the Pearl Harbor attack and the Bataan Death March.

Today, it might be a missile attack on an American city, or it might
be a major military loss overseas.  Today, it's most likely going to
be whatever event triggers war with China.

North Korea. with leadership far more brutal and erratic, seems far more dangerous than the People's Republic of China. The official position of the PRC is its desire for a nuclear-free Korea. North Korea at the least is hemmed in by dangerous powers . one of which (China) could destroy the regime. Any two of the others (Japan, South Korea, and Russia) could also do so. Xi Jinping has some cause for caution in dealings with other countries. The Emperor-in-all-But-Name of North Korea has no caution.   

Quote:So if you take a look at the article, and evaluate the remarks in the
context of a Chinese missile attack on the United States, then you can
see that nothing that it says is something that anyone would care
about.

How will future historians evaluate Trump's presidency?  Maybe they
will praise him for increasing military spending.  Of maybe they will
condemn him for some policy that caused a Chinese advantage in a way
that we don't yet even know about.

Many foreign leaders who could not rely upon him to do the right thing (Angela Merkel is about as blatant an example as is possible) chose to wait him out, expecting him to be defeated in the upcoming election. Xi Jinping, who could not make a coherent deal with him, made none. Donald Trump is simply too erratic. Maybe one pulls off fait-accompli  after another upon an inattentive leader. Donald Trump is not a hands-on leader unless his ego or personal assets or indulgence is at stake. Good leaders can make personal sacrifices for something bigger, at the least as an example for others in a rough time.    
  

Quote:These are the kinds of issues that I watch for and write about.  The
creation of a Stalinist state by the Democrats, mainstream media and
Big Tech is probably the scariest domestic development in my lifetime.
The mindless destruction of the country by the Biden administration in
order to stay in power is heartbreaking.

As it is inappropriate to compare someone to Adolf Hitler unless showing some of the salient characteristics of Hitler's ideology or practice, like racism, mass murder, racism, militarism, despotism, and the personality cult it is unfair and inappropriate to compare someone who does not do what Stalin did to the vile tyrant himself. Then again, I see far more warning signs in Donald Trump than in any prior President or his one successor.

Yes, I know -- 74 million people voted for Trump in 2020 despite all that went wrong under him, so after he is off the political stage someone with a similar ideology but fewer troublesome eccentricities and much more political savvy might get elected. This sort of figure has supporters who want super-cheap labor, lax regulation, low taxes on themselves, Big Government that serves their interests that the Common Man pays for but gets little from  except for threats, the destruction of labor unions, and privatization on the cheap of government assets to be managed by monopolistic exploiters. 

That Donald Trump was able to egg people on into breaking into the Capitol building to disrupt the formality of recognizing his electoral defeat indicates the level of fanaticism  among some people on the Hard Right. The people who broke into the Capitol building were not dregs of society, like addicts, lunatics, the mentally-retarded, and hardened criminals. Many were people who seemed mainstream enough before January 6. These people did not become losers until January 6, when they lost their credibility and put their positions and assets at grave risk.    

Quote:And yet, I can't really say whether Biden's policies will help or hurt
during a war with China.  For example, Biden's Open Borders policies
is creating a massive cartel force in Mexico using children for sex or
as slaves or drug mules.  The Democrats are doing this because they
assume that these abused children will vote for Democrats.  How will
these cartels act when there's a Chinese invasion?

These children are coming almost entirely from countries poorer and less stable than Mexico. Those countries have internal violence fueled by by funds that came from American addicts whose purchases become blood money. You can be sure that the INS does check for drugs in possession... and many of those children have good cause to hate drugs. America has plenty of people to take them in and guide them -- a large and well-entrenched Mexican-American community that does much well. Mexican-Americans "underuse" drugs and even smoke less than other Americans.  

I see no reason for these children to grow up to be supporters of the PRC in a struggle with the USA.   

Quote:Trump is promising to launch a new "Trump Big Tech Platform" within
the next 2-3 months, and he expects his 74 million supporters to
become subscribers.  That may be the next event that will define
Trump's legacy.  And then we might begin to see whether your article
is relevant.

The legacy that Trump has left is that 81 million people voted against him, and that even after he was defeated he disgraced his Presidency with his promotion of an insurrection. His approval numbers were short of what was necessary go get re-elected even after a spirited and competent campaign, or at least one in which the opponent had the metaphoric hands tied behind his back. He got close, even miraculously close, to winning a re-election. 

He scared me when I saw images of Chevrolet Suburban vehicles with a US flag and a Trump banner letting out people who harassed protesters. Like or dislike Antifa, that is how one of the aspects of a dictatorship emerges: a secret police. Trump got his supporters to commit crimes on his behalf and even risk their lives of death from a pandemic, the response to which he bungled severely. He refused to advocate any lockdown at all.

[John J. Xenakis]

*** 9-Apr-21 World View -- The Troubles: Violence in Northern Ireland revives as consequence of Brexit

This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com

• The Troubles: Violence in Northern Ireland revives as consequence of Brexit
  
• Brief generational history of violence in the Isle of Ireland
  
• The beginning of 'The Troubles'
  

****
**** The Troubles: Violence in Northern Ireland revives as consequence of Brexit
****


Hijacked cars burn at the Peace Wall as rioting broke out in West Belfast, Northern Ireland on Wednesday (AP)

The last week in Belfast, Northern Ireland, has seen the worst ethnic
street violence in decades. There is a concrete "Peace Wall" in
Belfast, separating the two warring neighborhoods. People have been
lobbing bricks and Molotov cocktails across the Peace Wall in both
directions. The violence worsened when the gate in the Peace Wall was
smashed open. At least 55 police officers have been injured over
several nights of rioting.

The violence has been triggered by the consequences of the Brexit
deal that took the United Kingdom (England, Wales, Scotland,
Northern Ireland) out of the European Union. There were many
difficult issues that had to be resolved, but the most intractable
was the fact that Northern Ireland is part of the UK, while the
Republic of Ireland (Southern Ireland) is part of the EU. This
is the only place (if you don't count Gibraltar) where there is
a land border separating the UK and the EU after Brexit.

So the biggest deal in the Brexit negotiations was that Ireland and
Northern Ireland must have a "frictionless border," so that people and
goods could pass freely back and forth without customs and border
checks. So a Spanish company that wants to ship goods to England
without paying British tariffs could simply trans-ship them through
Northern Ireland -- that is, ship them to Ireland, send them across
the "frictionless border" to Northern Ireland, and then ship them
across the Irish Sea to England. Similarly, an English firm could
ship goods to Spain by trans-shipping in the opposite direction, and
avoid paying EU tariffs.

Well, that could never work. No politician is going to voluntarily
give up tariffs. So the solution is that there has to be a
"customs border in the Irish Sea." So goods shipped back and
forth between England and Northern Ireland now have to go
through customs and result in tariff charges.

During the Brexit negotiations, politicians said that if there were a
customs check between Northern Ireland and Ireland, then this would
infuriate the "Catholic republicans," and would trigger a revival of
"The Troubles," the three decades violence in Northern Ireland. So
they did it the other way, and put in a customs check in the Irish
Sea, and this has infuriated the "Protestant loyalists," and this is
triggering a revival of The Troubles anyway.

****
**** Brief generational history of violence in the Isle of Ireland
****

Northern Ireland's indigenous Gaelic Irish people (usually Catholic,
republican, nationalist, "green") have been at war with the
descendants of invading English and Scottish people (usually
Protestant, loyalist, unionist, "orange") off and on since the 1400s.
The Republicans want Northern Ireland to merge with the Republic of
(Southern) Ireland, while the Loyalists want to remain loyal to the
British crown and have Northern Ireland remain in the UK.

There have been clashes between the two groups since the 1400s, but
the most important pattern of wars was set by the Nine Years War
(1594-1603), where the Irish Gaelics attempted to overthrow English
rule. The result was the Plantation of Ulster, which Gaelics today
refer to as genocide and "ethnic cleansing," because the British drove
the Gaelics from their land, took it over as landlords, and used the
Gaelics as servants.

The next crisis war for Northern Ireland was the Williamite-Jacobite
war, climaxing in a victory of the British with the Battle of the
Boyne on July 12, 1690. This was the date of the victory of
Protestant William of Orange over the Catholic King James II, and it
followed England's Glorious Revolution of 1688, where the Dutch Prince
William "invaded" England and overthrew King James without firing a
shot. Sectarian violence in Northern Ireland tends to increase as
July 12 approaches, as it's commemorated by groups like the Protestant
Orange Institution.

The border across Ireland first appeared in 1921 as a result of the
British-Irish treaty that partitioned the island and ended the Irish
War of Independence, with the new borderline running across farms and
villages.

****
**** The beginning of 'The Troubles'
****

"The Troubles" began in 1969, when hostilities broke out in Northern
Ireland, and the border was reinforced with British Army watchtowers
and bomb-proof and mortar-proof inspection facilities. All of those
reinforcements were removed as a result of the 1998 Good Friday
Agreement, with a new power-sharing accord that was supposed to break
down some of the barriers between south and north, including the
physical barrier at the border.

The "Good Friday Agreement" has achieved almost mythic status among
politicians, and its terms were frequently cited during the Brexit
negotiations as inviolable, lest The Troubles begin again. The result
was the "frictionless border" between Ireland and Northern Ireland,
but instead there's a customs border between Northern Ireland and
England, and The Troubles seems to be starting again anyway.

There's a lot of finger-pointing now as to the cause of the new
violence, with many people blaming Boris Johnson for his "betrayal" of
the Northern Ireland loyalists. But from the point of view of
Generational Dynamics, the revival of The Troubles is not surprising,
inasmuch as a full generation has passed since the Good Friday
agreement, and young kids are not going to care about a piece of paper
or an ancient agreement that was signed before many of them were even
born.

Sources:

• How lingering tensions over Brexit ignited Northern Ireland (Christian Science Monitor, 8-Apr-2021)
  
• Northern Ireland leaders call for calm after night of rioting (Fox News, 8-Apr-2021)
  
• N Ireland leaders call for calm after night of violence (AP, 8-Apr-2021)
  
• Bus torched in more Northern Ireland violence as British and Irish leaders call for calm (CNN, 8-Apr-2021)
  
• Northern Ireland unrest: Four key questions answered (Al-Jazeera, 8-Apr-2021)
  
• Spilling onto the streets - Brexit is the catalyst for rioting in Northern Ireland (Economist, 8-Apr-2021)
  
• Northern Ireland's hidden history: Archaeologist works to identify unmarked mass graves (NBC News, 8-Apr-2021)
  
• The tone and economics of Northern Ireland’s political debate has to change. (Slugger OToole, Northern Ireland, 8-Apr-2021)
  
• Boris Johnson’s Brexit ‘betrayal’ is factor behind Northern Ireland violence, Stormont minister says (Yahoo, 8-Apr-2021)

Related Articles:

• The Brexit comedy continues as the UK Supreme Court repudiates Boris Johnson (25-Sep-2019)
  
  
• Brexit appears headed for worst of all possible worlds for UK (19-Oct-2018)
  
  
• Ireland hiring 1,000 new customs and veterinary inspectors for hard Brexit (20-Jul-2018)
  
  
• Ireland border issue continues to confound Brexit negotiations (17-Mar-2018)
  
  
• Sectarian violence in Northern Ireland grows again (23-Jun-2011)
  

KEYS: Generational Dynamics, The Troubles, Northern Ireland, Belfast,
Ireland, Republic of Ireland, England, Wales, Scotland,
European Union, Catholic, Protestant, Gaelics,
Nine Years War, Plantation of Ulster,
Williamite-Jacobite war, Battle of the Boyne, Glorious Revolution,
Good Friday Agreement

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

[Tim Randal Walker]

I seem to recall someone mentioning that Ireland is in a 2T. Is that correct?

[John J. Xenakis]

** 09-Apr-2021 World View: Ireland generational era

(04-09-2021, 09:07 AM)Tim Randal Walker Wrote: > I seem to recall someone mentioning that Ireland is in a 2T. Is
> that correct?

Ireland's last generational crisis war was the Irish War of
Independence (1919-1921). Thus it would seem that Ireland should be
deep into a Fifth Turning -- like Mexico, Turkey, Morocco, Saudi
Arabia and Russia.

However, WW II was extremely devastating, and caused a full or partial
"First Turning reset" in many countries, and that's true of Ireland.
"The Troubles" was not a war, but 2nd-3rd Turning generational
conflict, with street riots complicated by the combination of conflict
between the generations and the ethnic conflict between Gaelics and
British. So Ireland's generational era is tied into the generational
timeline of the UK and the EU, and has characteristics of a Fourth
Turning and Fifth Turning.

[John J. Xenakis]

** 09-Apr-2021 World View: We're shocked!! China puts Americas, Brits, etc., on a watchlist

Politicians and reporters are expressing shock and surprise to learn
that, of all things, the Chinese are collecting personal information
on anyone who visits China, and storing it in their database.
Ohmigod, how horrible! How could those nice Chinese be doing
something so awful?

Actually, as regular readers know, I've been writing about China's
monster "social credit system" database for years. That database is
keeping track of every Chinese citizen. It collects data from online
transactions, from bus trips, from street surveillance cameras, and so
forth. Any interaction of the internet with a citizen generates a
record that's merged with information about that citizen in the social
credit system database. Based on that data, people will be evaluated
by algorithms that will determine whether they pose a threat to the
one-party state, or even whether they'll be allowed to a purchase
train ticket.

The particular focus has been on tracking Uighurs in East Turkestan
(Xinjiang Province). Using this database, the Chinese can quickly
round up Uighurs for "re-education camps," where they're beaten,
tortured, raped, sterilized, and enslaved.

So now Australian activists have obtained a leaked database,
apparently a part of the social credit system database, and it's
discovered that any Westerner who visits China -- tourists,
executives, wives, children -- all go into the same database. And
this discovery is producing shock waves.

This is hardly a surprise. The Chinese regularly hack into private
and government databases in countries around the world, as well as
personal iPhones, and collect data on every person, so that they can
collect military and commercial intelligence to use in preparation for
the coming war.

However, this new development is suddenly scaring a lot of idiots who
thought the nice people in China's military would never do something
so awful. This issue is gathering steam, and may come to a head in
the next few months.

Of particular concern is the 2022 Olympics in China. If China has its
way, then thousands of people from around the world will visit China,
and China will collect a vast trove of personal information about
them. This realization may affect whether the West decides to boycott
China's Olympics. The first shot may already have been fired last
week when the North Koreans said that they would boycott the upcoming
Olympics in Japan in a couple of months.

NOTA BENE: If you DO visit China, for any reason,
understand that your phone will be confiscated long enough to steal
data and plant a spy malware program. THEREFORE: If you MUST visit
China, then leave your phone at home and get a burner phone. Take
that with you to China, and then throw it out (or disinfect it) when
you return home.

---- Sources:

-- China keeping a top-secret watchlist of US travelers — from celebs
to everyday folks
https://nypost.com/2021/04/07/china-keep...travelers/
(NY Post, 7-Apr-2021)

-- Australians flagged in Shanghai security files which shed light on
China's surveillance state and monitoring of Uyghurs
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-04-01/s.../100040896
(Australian Broadcasting, 1-Apr-2021)

-- Exclusive: British citizens routinely being placed on Chinese
police watchlist
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/03...watchlist/
(Telegraph, London, 31-Mar-2021)

----------- Related article:

** 27-Jan-19 World View -- George Soros speech at Davos marks significant global shift against China
** http://www.generationaldynamics.com/pg/x...tm#e190127

[John J. Xenakis]

*** 11-Apr-21 World View -- Myanmar ethnic groups in Shan State launch coordinated attack on Burmese military

This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com

• Myanmar ethnic groups in Shan State launch coordinated attack on Burmese military
  
• Repeating the genocide and ethnic cleansing of Muslim Rohingyas
  
• War with the Karen ethnic group on the Myanmar / Thailand border
  
• Peaceful protests continue in cities across Myanmar, heading for catastrophe
  

****
**** Myanmar ethnic groups in Shan State launch coordinated attack on Burmese military
****


Burmese soldiers in Shan State after an attack by ethnic groups in 2019 (AFP)

An alliance of ethnic armies in Myanmar / Burma on Saturday attacked a
military police station in Shan State, killing at least 10 policemen.
The attackers were from an alliance that includes the Arakan Army, the
Ta’ang National Liberation Army, and the Myanmar National Democratic
Alliance Army. Normally, these ethnic groups oppose each other, and
occasionally fight each other, but this is the first time that they've
allied, in the face of the army coup, which makes this very
significant.

As we've been expecting, the Myanmar / Burma military crackdown on
peaceful civilian protesters, following the coup that replaced the
democratically elected government with a dictatorial military junta,
is rapidly turning into a full scale civil war, involving multiple
ethnic groups.

This situation is growing into a repeat of Burma's last generational
crisis war, an extremely bloody civil war (1948-1958) following
independence, and involving multiple ethnic groups, along with
intervention by the Chinese.

This attack on the police station outpost in Shan State seems to me to
have special significance, in view of the genocide and ethnic
cleansing of the ethnic Rohingyas in previous years.

****
**** Repeating the genocide and ethnic cleansing of Muslim Rohingyas
****

Starting in 2011, Buddhists began attacking Muslim Rohingyas in
villages across Burma, particularly the 1.1 million ethnic Rohingyas
in Rakhine State. Mobs of Buddhists attacked Muslims, conducting
atrocities including torture and rape, killing hundreds and forcing
hundreds of thousands to leave their homes to flee from the attacks.
In some cases, the Buddhists burned down entire Rohingya villages to
the ground.

However, the most horrific Buddhist violence against the Rohingyas
began after August 25, 2017, when Rohingya insurgents carried out a
series of coordinated attacks against 30 Burma police outposts and an
army base. Using knives, some guns and homemade explosives they
killed at least a dozen Burmese security force members.

The army responded with a sweep of violence against Rohingyas, causing
thousands of them to flee their villages and head for the Bangladesh
border, where they hoped to cross and reach a refugee camp. The
Burmese army shot them as they were fleeing, including women and
children, killing dozens. The attack on the police posts was the
beginning of mass genocide and ethnic cleansing.

This is a standard pattern used by genocidal autocrats. I've
described how this works in detail in "12-Jan-21 World View -- America and the standard Genocide Playbook"
. Autocratic regimes use an isolated terrorist
incident as an excuse to conduct a massive overreaction against an
entire group. In America, the Democrats are using the January 6
incident to declare that all 74 million Trump supporters are racists,
white supremacists and terrorists, and are using that as an excuse for
massive censorship and extrajucicial arrests.

So in Myanmar, we now have a situation similar to the one on August
25, 2017, when Rohingyas attacked police outposts. Saturday's attack
by ethnic groups -- the Arakan Army, the Ta’ang National Liberation
Army, and the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army -- could
well bring about a repeat of what happened to the Rohingyas.
We should know within the next few days.

The unifying of different ethnic groups is being described as highly
significant by analysts. Over the decades, since the last crisis war,
the Burmese military has been able to deal with the different ethnic
groups separately, and after the February 1 coup, the military
negotiated with each one to keep them out of the fighting. But now
it's clear that has failed, and we can expect all out war with the
ethnic groups.

These groups are on the border with China, and there are many
people of Chinese ancestry living in Shan State. So this may be
the trigger that leads to intervention by the Chinese, although
the Chinese will not intervene unless events force them to.

****
**** War with the Karen ethnic group on the Myanmar / Thailand border
****

As a separate issue, Burmese regime fighter jets have been dropping
bombs on ethnic Karens in territory controlled by the Karen National
Union (KNU), as we reported last week. The Karens are the largest
ethnic group in Burma. The bombing began on March 27 and has
continued almost every day. It was triggered by an attack by the KNU
on a military barracks outpost, killing 20.

Some 10,000 Karens have fled across the border into Thailand to escape
the violence. This is not new. In the 1990s, a war between the
preceding Burmese military junta and the Karens led to some 100,000
refugees in camps along the border between the two countries. This has
caused a political problem for the Thai government, which is also led
by a military junta that overthrew a democratically elected government
in 2014. (See the following: "23-May-14 World View -- Thailand's army seizes power in major victory for 'yellow shirt' elites"
)

Thailand's last generational crisis war (the Cambodian Killing Fields
war) climaxed in 1979, so Thailand is in a generational Unraveling
era, with little chance of a new ethnic civil war at this time.
(Burma, of course, is well into a generational Crisis era.)
Therefore, Thailand's coup did not lead to civil war, but Burma's coup
is doing so.

So the thousands of refugees pouring into Thailand present a problem
for the Thai military junta, who basically are aligned with the
Burmese military junta. So even though Thai prime minister Prayuth
Chan-o-cha has assured that "human rights will be respected," the
result is that many of the Karen civilians fleeing violence by
crossing the border into Thailand are being pushed back into Myanmar
by the Thai police.

There are also refugees pouring into India and China.

****
**** Peaceful protests continue in cities across Myanmar, heading for catastrophe
****

There were peaceful protests in multiple cities across Myanmar on
Saturday, with large marches in Yangon and Mandalay.

This despite the fact that on Friday, 80 peaceful protesters were
killed by the army in random gunfire in the city of Bago, near Yangon.
The army had thought that escalating violence would cause the protests
to fizzle out, as they did in 2007, during Burma's generational
Unraveling era. But they're not going to fizzle out now.

News reports from Myanmar these days are just filled with more details
about the army slaughtering innocent unarmed civiians. Analysts say
that the solution is for the UN Security Council to pass a resolution,
which is hilariously laughable. Others say that the Association of
Southeast Nations (ASEAN) should hold a meeting, which is also
laughable. I heard one analyst say that the United States has to
intervene militarily to stop the carnage. That guy must have been
hopped up on some of the drugs currently pouring into the USA through
the open southern border.

Both Russia and China are supplying weapons to the Burmese junta, and
neither country would be willing to take any step to end the carnage.

So the bottom line is this: I cannot think of a scenario, nor have I
read or heard of a scenario, that will stop the violence in Myanmar /
Burma from escalating into a full-scale multi-ethnic civil war in the
next few days, weeks and months. Like a Greek tragedy, the characters
in this play are heading unstoppably into catastrophe. After that,
the only question is whether it will spread to other countries, and
whether it will be the trigger that leads to a new world war.

Sources:

• 10 Myanmar police killed in attack by ethnic armies: Reports (Al-Jazeera, 10-Apr-2021)
  
• An Old War Is Rekindled On The Myanmar-Thailand Border (World Crunch, Le Monde, 10-Apr-2021)
  
• Existing conflicts with ethnic groups add fuel to the fire. (Foreign Policy, 8-Apr-2021)
  
• Myanmar's security forces kill 82 in Bago: report (Deutsche Welle, 10-Apr-2021)
  
• Myanmar Junta Kills Scores of Protesters in Bago, Decrees Death Penalty for 19 in Yangon (RFA, 9-Apr-2021)

Related articles:

• Myanmar/Burma protests turn into ethnic civil war (29-Mar-2021)
  
  
• Thailand's army seizes power in major victory for 'yellow shirt' elites (23-May-2014)
  
  
• America and the standard Genocide Playbook (12-Jan-2021)
  
  
• Devastating UN report on Burma shows scale of ghastly atrocities by Buddhists targeting Muslim Rohingyas (04-Feb-2017)
  
  
• Meiktila, Burma, violence has echoes of Kristallnacht (05-Apr-2013)
  
  
• Generational history of Burma (Myanmar) (26-Sep-2007)
  

KEYS: Generational Dynamics, Myanmar, Burma,
Min Aung Hlaing, Thailand, Prayuth Chan-o-cha, China, Russia,
Karen ethnic group, Karen National Union, KNU,
Shan State, Arakan Army, Ta’ang National Liberation Army,
Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army
Aung Sang Suu Kyi, Rohingyas, Rakhine State,
Bago, Yangon, Mandalay,
Association of Southeast Nations, ASEAN, Greek Tragedy

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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]

** 11-Apr-2021 World View: China's Uighur problem

Guest Wrote:> The Turks cut the water supply to the Chinese embassy on
> Saturday. Anger over the mass rape and genocide in East Turkestan
> is the reason.

John Wrote:> ***** Turkey Cuts Water Supply To Chinese Embassy After China Attacks
> Ankara Mayor Over Uyghur Comments
> https://swarajyamag.com/insta/turkey-cut...r-comments

> ***** Turkey cuts off water supply to Chinese embassy as tempers boil over
> https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/142...ter-row-vn

DaKardii Wrote:> Keep in mind that this is a feud between the CCP and the municipal
> government of Ankara. Erdogan had nothing to do with this.

> Meanwhile, it's likely that Erdogan will side with the CCP on this
> matter, for pragmatic reasons. Although he too has voiced concerns
> about the situation in Xinjiang, his ideological leanings indicate
> that he is more concerned about building a pan-Islamic alliance
> than a pan-Turkic one. And because of the inevitable alliance
> between China and the (Sunni) Muslim world, more likely than not
> Erdogan will embrace the CCP as a necessary evil when push comes
> to shove.

This is interesting because you've described the issue from Turkey's
point of view, while from China's point of view, this is part of a
growing political disaster.

Consider the following: Erdogan has nothing to do with this, as you
say, even though the Chinese Communists are arresting, beating,
torturing, sterilizing, raping, and enslaving millions of Muslim
Turkic people -- the Uighurs -- Erdogan's people. How is that
possible?

But this crisis erupted despite Erdogan's desires, and because the
Chinese Communists cannot tolerate even a mention of the Uighur
enslavement.

So several minor Turkish politicians criticized China's Uighur policy.
Instead of simply ignoring these "nobody" politicians, the infuriated
Communists in Ankara's Chinese embassy had a hysterical response:

Quote: "The Chinese side resolutely opposes and strongly
condemns any challenge by any person or power to China’s
sovereignty and territorial integrity.

The Chinese side reserves the right to a justified
response."

What the hell was the Chinese embassy talking about? So no "person or
power" is permitted to criticize any of China's policies? Are you
kidding me? So the embassy responded with what many people thought
was a threat, and this infuriated a lot of Turkish people, leading to
the shutdown of the Embassy's water supply.

So here's the problem for the Chinese Communist government:

• Everybody in the world knows that China is committing crimes
  against humanity against the Uighurs, just as the Nazis did against
  the Jews.
  
  
• But the Chinese cannot tolerate anyone even saying so, and they're
  willing to use threats, bribery, extortion and boycotts to force
  governments to keep quiet about the subject.
  
  
• But that can't stop individuals, like the Turkish politicians,
  from speaking out, and the Chinese cannot tolerate even that. Hence
  the threat from the Ankara embassy.

So this puts the Chinese Communists into an impossible situation,
since they can threaten, extort and bribe individual governments,
but they can't do the same to every person in the world who
might speak out.

There's another angle to this: censorship. Are the diplomats
in the Ankara embassy even aware of China's enslavement of
the Uighurs?

In America, most Democrats are totally ignorant of many things that
have been going on, because they depend solely on mainstream media
that reports only what the Democrats want people to know. Last year,
individual Democrats were totally ignorant of the antifa-blm violence
in multiple cities, the Hunter Biden laptop, and the massive voter
fraud in the election. This year, they're totally ignorant of the
massive humanitarian catastrophe on the southern border, where young
people are being packed together in "pods," where Covid is spreading
without control, and where rape and sexual assault are common. Both
sides of all of these issues were reported continually on Fox News,
but unless a Democrat watches Fox News, he's aware of only the narrow
censored version of the news that the mainstream media provide.

So I'm speculating that the same thing is true for the Chinese
diplomats in the Ankara embassy. Do they ever read/watch the BBC? I
assume not, since the BBC is banned in China, and the BBC's Beijing
correspondent John Sudworth was recently forced to flee with his
family to Taiwan for their safety. So it's doubtful that the Chinese
diplomats are aware of China's Uighur policy, and they probably only
read the "Chinese mainstream media," which means state-sponsored media
like People's Daily.

So the Chinese Communists are making the same kinds of hysterical
statements about the BBC as the American Democrats are saying about
Fox News. The Chinese Communists hate the BBC for the same reason
that the Democrats hate Fox News -- for telling the truth about news
they want censored.

So that might partially explain the hysterical response by the Ankara
embassy. These people have no clue what's going on in China, just as
most Democrats have no clue what's going on in America, and so when
the Turkish politicians complained about China's Uighur policy, they
may have thought that the Turkish politicians really were lying.

In America, the Chinese face a similar problem. Many Republicans are
talking about China's horrific Uighur policy, but this is censored by
the mainstream media that Democrats read. So you have this bizarre
situation where Major League Baseball is condemning Georgia for a law
they haven't even read, but they're perfectly comfortable being in bed
with the Chinese Communists killing democracy in Hong Kong and
enslaving millions of Uighurs.

If we look at trends, the Uighur issue has been getting more prominent
all the time. I've been writing about it for years, but the public
worldwide didn't care. Now it's becoming increasingly discussed in
America, and in the UK and Australia it's become a major political
issue. I beieve that it will be a major political issue in America
before long, like the UK and Australia, especially as the Beijing
Olympics approaches.

[John J. Xenakis]

*** 13-Apr-21 World View -- Investing in Decentralized Finance (DeFi) and Smart Contracts

This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com

• Investing in Decentralized Finance (DeFi) and Smart Contracts
  
• Automated processing on IBM mainframes in the 1960s
  
• Intentional sabotage in automated processing
  
• Sabotage and fraud in DeFi and Smart Contracts
  
• Due diligence in DeFi and Smart Contract investments
  

****
**** Investing in Decentralized Finance (DeFi) and Smart Contracts
****


How Smart Contracts Work (Deccan Herald)

I've been asked about investing in the crypto-currency (Bitcoin)
related technologies, Decentralized Finance (DeFi) and Smart
Contracts, which use the same internet-based blockchain technology as
Bitcoin.

For over a decade, crypto currencies have been the highly stylish,
fashionable rock star finance technology, but lately they've been
losing their glamor and lustre as compared to a newer technology,
"decentralized finance" (DeFi) and "smart contracts."

It was just a few years ago that people were saying that the world was
just a stone's throw away from having a universal currency (Bitcoin)
that was independent of any nation. Last week, I read one analyst
saying, "We are a stone’s throw away from the global financial
industry running on a common software infrastructure." Well, that
stone would have to land something like 20-30 or more years in the
future, and if humans haven't figured out how to do it by then, then
perhaps our computer overlords will do it for us.

What's happening now is that there's an explosion of financial
applications and services, normally provided by banks, brokers, and
other financial institution, that are now being provided on blockchain
platforms as "smart contracts." There are really an unlimited number
of possible apps and services -- insurance, lending, borrowing, asset
management, gaming, day trading, savings, payments, billing, and so
forth. Smart contracts are "self-executing," meaning that once a
particular smart contract is set up, any action that would normally be
taken by a human intermediary in a bank or financial institution would
now be executed automatically by the smart contract.

Another way of looking at it is to compare a smart contract to
workflow software that has been around since the 90s. The software is
set up with a set of workflow rules, and the appropriate conditions
specified by the rules are satisfied, then the workflow software sends
out e-mail messages to the appropriate people, telling them to take
the appropriate action.

DeFi applications are more powerful because typically they have
control of crypto assets, so when the right conditions are met, the
app does not send out an e-mail saying "buy a new car." Instead, it
automatically issues the paperwork to buy a new car.

There are several ways to invest in DeFi technology. You can set up a
financial relationship with someone else using a smart contract. Or
you could invest in companies that develop these apps or offer
services using this technology.

The following web site provides a pretty extensive list of companies
offering such apps and services at the current time: https://defipulse.com/defi-list/

****
**** Automated processing on IBM mainframes in the 1960s
****

Although Decentralized Finance and Smart Contracts are a brand-new,
shiny technology, there are problems and dangers that can be learned
from history. Let's look at some historical examples.

Back in the 1960s, accounting systems were developed for IBM mainframe
systems, and they were only a stone's throw from never needing human
accountants again, according to experts.

The transaction processing systems used magnetic tapes. A typical
processing run required three tapes -- an input tape of existing
account records, an input tape of new transaction records, and an
output tape of updated account records. The two input tapes are
pre-sorted by account number so that they can be processed
simultaneously in order of account. It's therefore possibe to update
the accounts with only one pass through the transaction tape, writing
the updated accounts to the output tape, which would be the existing
accounts input tape for the next day's run.

So let's take a look at some of the issues. The most obvious one is
that the mainframe might be down, so that the transaction processing
run could not take place. Another issue is that mag tapes are
somewhat fragile, and data could be lost.

Another possible problem is that the transaction processing software
could have a bug, since all software has bugs. So if the bug affects
several thousand accounts, then it's possible that a single run could
result in several thousand errors caused by the bug, and they wouldn't
be caught until much later.

That's when people started saying things like, "To err is human. To
really screw things up takes a computer."

****
**** Intentional sabotage in automated processing
****

Another problem was intentional sabotage. The mag tape transaction
processing that I described was subject to a very interesting form of
sabotage.

Some transactions involve division of two numbers, and result in an
amount with a fraction of a penny. The correct algorithm would round
to the nearest penny, and the resulting amount would be used in the
transaction. But one developer did something different. His software
contained secret code that deducted the fractional penny from the
amount, and credited it to his own account. Tens of thousands of
fractions of a penny adds up to real money. He made a lot of money
that way, but the consequences of what he had done were not discovered
until much later.

The thing that makes this kind of sabotage possible is that managers
don't understand what the programmers are doing. There was a similar
problem with the financial crisis of the 2000s. The Gen-X financial
engineers got their Masters Degrees in the 1990s, and applied those
skills to create fraudulent synthetic securities based on subprime
mortgages. Their managers in the financial institutions had no idea
how they worked, except that they made lots of money, and the result
was the financial crisis. In the late 2000s I was working on a
government system where the lead programmer was sabotaging the code
(my code, in particular). I complained repeatedly to my boss, but he
refused to believe me. Eventually, the lead programmer screwed around
with someone else's code, someone really important, and my manager
apologized to me. This shows that the consequences of sabotage are
not usually discovered until much later.

Another example was the Obamacare website Healthcare.gov. President
Obama launched Obamacare on the afternoon of Oct 1, 2013, and he had
no idea that the web site wasn't even working. When he announced the
launch, he had no idea a disaster had unfolded several hours earlier.
As I wrote in my 2015 article, massive fraud had occurred among all
the consuting firms, and they propagated lies all the way up the
chain. The entire White House had no idea of the disaster until it
was too late. (See: "Healthcare.gov -- The greatest software development disaster in history")

So there was massive fraud in the development of Obamacare, which no
one cares about since caring about Obamacare fraud is politically
censored. Similarly, with tens of millions of mail-in ballots sent
out last year there was massive fraud in the 2020 election that no one
cares about, since caring about fraud in the 2020 election is
politically censored.

The reason for mentioning all this is that the DeFi technology will be
a huge target for sabotage and fraud, and the people benefiting from
the fraud may want it censored. This concern is being politically
censored because the major beneficiaries -- Silicon Valley, the
Chinese, the Democrats, hedge funds -- don't want it discussed.

****
**** Sabotage and fraud in DeFi and Smart Contracts
****

Blockchain technology has this magical, mystical reputation as being
incorruptible -- open source, "tamper-proof data," transparency,
permissionless access, etc. Obamacare had the same magical, mystical
reputation, and the amount of fraud was massive. The mainstream media
didn't want to see it, because it was censored. The housing bubble of
the early-mid 2000s was obvious (I was writing about it, Alan
Greenspan was talking about it), but mainstream media didn't want to
see it until 2009, when millions of people had lost their homes or
went bankrupt. The mainstream media don't want to see the massive
voter fraud in the 2020 election.

So there's no doubt that as DeFi grows, there will be lots of bugs and
plenty of fraud, sabotage and corruption. This will be done at
technical levels, and managers won't even know that it's going on
until there are severe consequences and it's too late. In particular,
it's absolutely certain that China's military is already developing
tools to hack into DeFi applications, to control them.

There's another issue that's analogous to the 1960s IBM mainframe
being unavailable, and this applies to all blockchain technologies:
There may be a crisis (flood, hurricane, Chinese sabotage, malware,
war), and the internet could become unavailable, or large numbers of
servers along the blockchain could be destroyed.

****
**** Due diligence in DeFi and Smart Contract investments
****

So you can invest in DeFi at any of several levels. You can invest in
companies developing core low-level technologies, or in companies
developing mid-level API platforms, or in companies developing the top
level apps that people and corporations actually use in their
business. Or, you could invest by using one of the apps for its
business relationships. The investment at any of these levels would
be subject to the same concerns that I've raised.

So how do you do due diligence on such an investment? I believe that
the biggest advantage of DeFi is also its biggest disadvantage and
biggest risk -- the "self-executing" feature of "smart contracts."

Here's the investopedia definition of Smart Contracts:

<QUOTE>A smart contract is a self-executing contract with the
terms of the agreement between buyer and seller being directly
written into lines of code. The code and the agreements contained
therein exist across a distributed, decentralized blockchain
network. The code controls the execution, and transactions are
trackable and irreversible.

Smart contracts permit trusted transactions and agreements to be
carried out among disparate, anonymous parties without the need
for a central authority, legal system, or external enforcement
mechanism.<END QUOTE>

In other words, a "smart contract" is just a software program. It will
also certainly contain bugs -- because all software programs contain
bugs -- and it will be subjected to sabotage, malware and hacking.
And since the whole point of smart contracts is that they're
"self-executing," without human involvement, and since management
won't understand what's going on anyway, the bugs and sabotage won't
be detected until a disaster has occurred.

Perhaps a good solution is to require "human oversight" of any smart
contract. That is, if a self-executing smart contrast tells you "kill
your mother or pay a large fine" (and this isn't as far-fetched as it
might seem, given my experience with software developers in the last
20 years), then there has to be a way for a human being on each side
of the smart contract to review the self-executing action, and
override it under the right circumstances.

This means that every party to a "smart contract" should have, as a
backup, a printout or a pdf of a written contract that can be
referenced if the internet goes down, or if there's a failure in or
sabotage of the smart contract.

Unfortunately, this will only work at a small scale. DeFi
applications are going to become larger and more complex, with a
single app consisting of hundreds or thousands of interlocking smart
contracts, and these will really be a disaster waiting to happen. But
they're coming anyway. Watch for the buzzword: DAO (distributed
autonomous organization), an entire business which is just a
collection of smart contracts.

Sources:

• Smart Contracts (Investopedia, 25-Mar-2021)
  
• What is DeFi and why is it the hottest ticket in cryptocurrencies? (The Conversation, 26-Aug-2020)
  
• How to (not) make thousands of dollars with DeFi? (Alfa.Cash, 9-Sep-2020)
  
• Are Blockchain smart contracts all they touted to be? (Deccan Herald, 23-Oct-2019)
  
• What’s The Big Deal About DeFi And How Do You Invest In It? (Forbes, 21-Mar-2021)
  
• DeFi Update - The Future Of The Platform (Seeking Alpha, 4-Apr-2021)
  
• Compound Hits $15 Billion In Total Lending Value as DeFi Boom Continues (Decrypt.co, 6-Apr-2021)
  
• Blockchain for Decentralized Finance (DeFi) (Consensys)
  
• The DeFi List [1]The DeFi List Application (DefiPulse, 6-Apr-2021)
  
• App: Compound (DefiPulse/Compound, 6-Apr-2021)
  
• What are smart contracts on the blockchain? (Tallyfy, 10-Dec-2019)

Related Articles:

• Financial Crisis Inquiry hearings provide 'smoking gun' evidence of widespread criminal fraud (14-Apr-2010)
  
• How Priceline, Orbitz, FTD, 1-800-Flowers, Pizza Hut, and Continental Airlines are scamming you online (24-Nov-2009)
  
  
• Fraud and subversion in Healthcare.gov - the greatest IT disaster in history (23-Aug-2015)
  
  
• Healthcare.gov -- The greatest software development disaster in history (23-Aug-2015)
  
• For academics: Dysfunction, subversion, sabotage and fraud in software development projects (23-Aug-2015)

KEYS: Generational Dynamics, Decentralized Finance, Defi, Smart Contracts,
blockchain, crypto-currency, bitcoin,
Obamacare, Healthcare.gov, distributed autonomous organization, DAO

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John J. Xenakis
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