Generational Dynamics World View News

[FishbellykanakaDude]

Actually, burying yourself deep in the depths of the Taiga might not be the worst option available.

..'though I'm still going for the Marquesas or Tuomotus.

[John]

** 31-Mar-2019 Secret letter from Trump to Kim shows why Hanoi summit collapsed

It has emerged that on the morning of February 28, at the Hanoi summit
between Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un, Trump gave Kim a letter (two
versions, one in English, one in Korean) explicitly describing what
Trump meant by "final, fully verifiable, denuclearization."

The letter demanded the following of North Korea:

• "fully dismantling North Korea's nuclear infrastructure, chemical
  and biological warfare program and related dual-use capabilities; and
  ballistic missiles, launchers, and associated facilities."
• Transfer nuclear weapons and bomb fuel to the United States
• Provide a comprehensive declaration of its
  nuclear program
• Provide full access to U.S. and international inspectors;
• Halt all related activities and construction of any new facilities
• Eliminate all nuclear infrastructure
• transition all nuclear program scientists and technicians to
  commercial activities.

Kim and Trump had been exchanging what the media have been calling
"love letters," and Kim came to the Hanoi summit expecting to charm
Trump into agreeing to remove the sanctions without North Korea having
to take any serious steps to denuclearization, even the simple step of
providing a list of weapons and missiles sites.

Kim Jong-un was trying to defraud Trump in the same way that his
father Kim Jong-il had defrauded President Bush. In 2008, the North
demolished a 60-foot-tall cooling tower to prove that it was ending
its nuclear development programs. In reaction, the Bush
administration agreed to remove all sanctions. As soon as they were
removed, North Korea immediately and openly resumed its nuclear and
ballistic missile development. They had completely defrauded and
humiliated the United States and the world.

There was no way that Trump would ever allow himself to be
defrauded in the same way. Since Trump is the expert in
the "Art of the Deal," we can only speculate what his strategy
was in presenting that letter to Kim. Trump had gone along
with Kim's "charm initiative" for over a year, which was characterized
by ambiguities in the meaning of the term "denuclearization."
Through these ambiguities, Trump had allowed Kim to become
hopeful that he could defraud Trump. Trump must have decided
that, at the Hanoi summit, Kim was thoroughly emotionally
committed to believing he could default Trump, and that the
time was right to apply the ultimate pressure to Kim.

Perhaps this strategy of applying maximum pressure at exactly the
right time will work, and Kim will feel he has no choice but to take
some real denuclearization step. As I've written many time,
I don't expect that, and there is nothing that will convince
Kim to end the program of developing nuclear weapons and
intercontinental ballistic missiles.

Trump's strategy will not work, but as I've said in the past,
I'm not going to criticize Trump for taking steps to try
to prevent World War III, even if World War III is 100% certain.

--- Sources:

-- The day North Korea talks collapsed, Trump passed Kim a note
demanding he turn over his nukes
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/30/with-a- ... apons.html
(CNBC/Reuters)

[John]

** 31-Mar-2019 Ebola cases continue to sure in DRC

There were 15 new confirmed cases of Ebola in eastern Democratic
Republic of Congo (DRC) on Friday, following 14 new confirmed cases
on Thursday. The number of new cases is surging, two weeks after
health officials said that the outbreak was largely contained. At the
same time, five Ebola medical centers have been attacked since last
month, sometimes by armed assailants, forcing health workers to
suspend activities.

The new cases are all still in DRC. There have been no cases reported
across the porous borders into Uganda, Rwanda or South Sudan.

---- Sources:


-- DRC records 15 new Ebola cases in one day
https://www.africanews.com/2019/03/30/d ... n-one-day/
(Africa News/Reuters)

[John]

** 31-Mar-2019 Communist ideology and the Great Leap Forward

> Sorry to have not explained myself better. I am not blaming wars
> on religion, but rather I think that these super committed
> communists (or socialists, or national socialists) believe in
> their ideology as if it were a religion. I believe it is their
> misplaced blind faith in these systems that causes them to do
> things like put everyone on a collective farm and think its going
> to work out well. And then to start shooting people when it
> doesn't (because they are "sabotaging" what they feel should
> obviously be working).

> I certainly believe that Revenge plays a greater role in a war
> actually starting than some philosophy or even religion. That and
> ideas of ethnic superiority. Europe's history is one of two
> thousand years of moving homogeneous people together (an ethnicity
> into a nation) and securing some kind of defensible frontier. And
> then trying to expand those frontiers by attacking those who are
> "ethnically inferior".

> I'm not aware of any war or major policy launched by any country
> at any time in history simply because of religion or ideology. I
> know of plenty of wars and policies that were launched for other
> reasons, and the leaders then used religion or ideology as a
> justification.

> It doesn't even make sense to say so. Why would I launch a war
> against you just because you have a different religion or
> politics? What do I care what religion you have? But I might
> launch a war against you to get your land or because I hate you or
> want revenge, and then I would blame the war on religion or
> ideology or "religious fervor," since it's not "politically
> correct" to simply want to steal someone's land or get revenge,
> particularly for domestic consumption.

> China had been thoroughly brutalized by Japan, and had lost
> Taiwan. Mao and the Chinese were full of fury, and were not
> interested in some theoretical exercise. They did not put
> everyone on a collective farm as a social experiment. They were
> bloodthirsty, looking for revenge. Mao was looking for a quick
> solution to his desire for revenge and launched the Great Leap
> Forward out of total desperation, and used "Communist theory" as a
> justification for the media.

> Xi Jinping keeps talking about the China Dream, the "dream of
> realizing great national rejuvenation for over 170 years,"
> referring to China since the Opium Wars. China has abandoned
> Communist theory, and "Socialism with Chinese Characteristics"
> changes every decade. If you look at Chinese history since WW II,
> Communist ideology has not survived except as a media talking
> point. What has stayed the same is the "dream" of getting revenge
> against the West, and especially Japan.

> I would add that there's nothing in Marxist theory that calls for
> the genocide and ethnic cleansing of the Uighurs. That's pure
> racism.

I'm going to have to partially revise my answer to this message
to be in closer agreement with you.

I still believe that revenge was Mao's primary motivation for
the Great Leap Forward, but it seems that ideology played a
much larger role than I had assumed.

Here's what Mao wrote in 1939:

> "The socialist revolution aims at liberating the
> productive forces. The change-over from individual to socialist,
> collective ownership in agriculture and handicrafts and from
> capitalist to socialist ownership in private industry and commerce
> is bound to bring about a tremendous liberation of the productive
> forces. Thus the social conditions are being created for a
> tremendous expansion of industrial and agricultural
> production."

This stuff is so completely delusional, so completely out of touch
with reality that it's amazing that anyone could believe it, and yet
Mao not only believed it but killed tens of millions of Chinese in the
pursuit of those beliefs.

On April 15, 1958, Mao wrote "Introducing a Co-operative," saying the
following:

> "Apart from their other characteristics, the
> outstanding thing about China's 600 million people is that they
> are "poor and blank". This may seem a bad thing, but in reality it
> is a good thing. Poverty gives rise to the desire for change, the
> desire for action and the desire for revolution. On a blank sheet
> of paper free from any mark, the freshest and most beautiful
> characters can be written, the freshest and most beautiful
> pictures can be painted."

This is the cruelest part of Mao's delusion. China's people were flat
on their backs from the Sino-Japanese war and the civil war, and they
wanted to put their lives back together. Mao took advantage of these
poor, credulous people by inflicting on them one of the greatest
horrors of any nation in history, an even greater horror than the
Holocaust that the Nazis had just inflicted in the previous decade.

So obviously this insane ideology was a major driving force behind the
Great Leap Forward, but the desire for revenge must have also driven
him.


There's a comic aspect to all this. Mao completely destroyed any
credibility that communist ideology might have had. He had
tried pure Communism in the Great Leap Forward, but instead of
producing a Socialist Paradise, it killed tens of millions of
people and was a total disaster.

Mao's death in 1977 was a turning point for China. Mao had devastated
the country with the Great Leap Forward and the Great Cultural
Revolution, and the economy was in shambles. China was still as much
flat on its back as it had been after WW II, while "economic miracles"
had been occurring in Japan, Taiwan, South Korea and Hong Kong. They
were all turning into economic superpowers, while China was still a
backwater land of peasants that could barely feed itself. This was
thoroughly humiliating to China in every possible way.

So out of desperation, Deng Xiaoping introduced the 'Reform and
Opening Up' of China in 1978.

The Chinese people believe themselves the superior race, and everyone
else being barbarians and vassals. It was completely a violation of
Chinese culture to turn to the lessons of other nations, and apply
them to themselves. So it must have been an act of total desperation
when Deng Xiaoping demanded that China "open up" to other nations,
trying to catch up to Japan, which had opened up a century earlier.

The elements of Deng's reform including the de-collectivization of the
countryside, followed with industrial reforms aimed at decentralizing
government controls in the industrial sector and a much wider range of
personal rights and freedoms for average Chinese.

What's really laughable about this is that it was a complete
repudiation of Marxism, Socialism and Communism. China was no longer
a "socialist" country.

This, however, was a major public relations problem for the
government, which was still the Chinese Communist Party. This was
when various phrases started being used, like "socialist
modernization" and "socialism with Chinese characteristics." What
these phrases mean is "socialism with capitalism and free markets and
private property, but we're going to call it socialism anyway for
public relations purposes."

The phrase "Socialism with Chinese Characteristics" is used all the
time by Xi Jinping. Insofar as this phrase means anything at all,
it's the same as Hitler's "National Socialism." Basically, China is a
Fascist country, very close to launching a war against Japan.

[FishbellykanakaDude]

China as it is (at least at the moment, and possibly as it always has been) is the embodiment of "Identity Politics", as we've only recently come to understand the term.

Totalitarian (one party statist), racist ("Identityist"), resentful (incapable of forgiveness), inappropriately religiously dogmatic (dogmatic commitment to that which should not be dogma), and actively unobservant ("wishes" trump reality [utopian]) aka "anti-scientific".

There is no friendship (power-sharing), diversity, forgiveness, reason or learning.

There is only power, and it's wielding.

There is no expression of flexibility.

The inflexible shatters.

Behold the Glass Kingdom.

[Guest]

China as it is (at least at the moment, and possibly as it always has been) is the embodiment of "Identity Politics", as we've only recently come to understand the term.

Totalitarian (one party statist), racist ("Identityist"), resentful (incapable of forgiveness), inappropriately religiously dogmatic (dogmatic commitment to that which should not be dogma), and actively unobservant ("wishes" trump reality [utopian]) aka "anti-scientific".

There is no friendship (power-sharing), diversity, forgiveness, reason or learning.

There is only power, and it's wielding.

There is no expression of flexibility.

The inflexible shatters.

Behold the Glass Kingdom.

Excellent analysis (of two different problems--CC and PC), Fishy.

It's always be astounding to me how many people STILL hold up Red China as 'proof' communism works...

[Guest]

But if China attacks Japan, that means instant war with America. So wouldn't the Chinese attack the US at the same time?

[FishbellykanakaDude]

But if China attacks Japan, that means instant war with America. So wouldn't the Chinese attack the US at the same time?

If you want the yummy yummy meat of the pig in the nearby bush, why attack the bear across the river?

[Guest]

But if China attacks Japan, that means instant war with America. So wouldn't the Chinese attack the US at the same time?

If you want the yummy yummy meat of the pig in the nearby bush, why attack the bear across the river?

Because America will come to the aid of Japan instantly.

[Burner Prime]

US Halts F-35 equipment shipment to NATO ally Turkey. It's because they plan to purchase the Russian S-400 anti-aircraft missile system. With both aircraft and missile system, a user could figure out the F-35 radar detection signature, making it more difficult for the F-35 to evade.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa- ... SKCN1RD316