Generational Dynamics World View News

[DaKardii]

What's going on? Are they okay?

My wife has terminal breast cancer. It recently moved aggressively into her liver. She is on chemo, but only as a way to forestall the inevitable. I think that she has about a year.

Hey, I just logged on for the first time in four months. I'm praying for you and your family.

[Trevor]

It is a shame John's no longer with us. When he first predicted we'd be at war with China, all the way back in 2002, public opinion toward China was positive or at least neutral. Plenty believed that as they developed economically, they'd become freer, but if anything, the opposite has happened. However, he'd expected things to blow up long before now, like around 2011-2012. It's 2025 and somehow things haven't exploded, even if we're still on the same trend line.

I've suspected for some time that NATO will fall apart in the coming conflict, if not before. Most of Europe don't see China as a threat the way we do, and for the United States, Russia isn't a high priority. They've gotten used to us doing the heavy lifting, meaning that a lot of Americans are resentful of it. We're not talking poor countries for whom such helplessness is understandable; they're the wealthiest countries in the world, and so much more "civilized", as they never miss an opportunity to point out.

It's fashionable to compare the United States to Rome. However, under such conditions, Europe would bear a strong resemblance to Greece: formerly powerful, dynamic civilizations a ruin of their former self, with only their cultural legacy remaining. Until recently, we had to do the heavy lifting with the Ukraine war despite being half a world away. Whether it's the Balkans, the financial crisis, and Ukraine, they've shown a stunning lack of ability to put up a united front.

XXXXXXXXXX
I don't think we'll know until it's over, but I think October 7 was a "regeneracy" moment for Israel. Hamas and the Palestinians have always counted on world opinion to restrain Israel. It allows them to win a political victory, make Israel appear like monsters, all the while they gain political support at home and abroad.

However, Israel no longer gives a damn about world opinion, having decided that they're going to be loathed no matter what. Comparisons have been made to September 11th, but I think Pearl Harbor is a better analogy. From what I've seen of Israeli media, even those who were once sympathetic to the Palestinians are screaming for blood and retribution. Ethnic cleansing of Gaza holds majority public support, and prominent politicians refer to them as vermin. The United Nations might be calling it genocide, and in a different era, the public outrage would convince Israel to show restraint. Not this time.

There's far less regard for civilian casualties, given that tens of thousands of Palestinians had died, and the indirect deaths might push this to over 100,000. Hezbollah's been devastated and since Israel took the gloves off, neither they nor Iran have dared to launch a direct strike.

[tim]

https://www.generationaldynamics.com/pg ... 151109.htm

9-Nov-15 World View -- Political crisis in Iran grows over nuclear agreement

The coming regime change in Iran

Ten years ago I predicted, based on a Generational Dynamics analysis, that Iran would become America's ally. At the time, that prediction seemed insane, so it's been astonishing to see Iran move step by step in that direction during the last five years.

For this article, I wanted to go more deeply in the reasoning behind that prediction ten years ago. In order to do that, I went back through my archive of news articles that I've cut, pasted and saved (currently totally about 80,000 articles since the 1990s) to find some news articles about Iran that influenced me.

Here are some excerpts from a Washington Times article that appeared on July 11, 2002, about ten months after 9/11:

"Iranians Stage Pro-American Protest Against Ayatollahs
"Death to the Islamic Republic, the Taliban of Tehran." This is the challenge tens of thousands of Iranians chanted to their government yesterday, marking the third anniversary of peaceful demonstrations that left students lying dead outside of their dormitories. The United States should listen to what the people within Iran are demanding since it may affect the outcome of our war against terrorism.

The U.S. war against terrorism is about rolling back Islamic fundamentalism. The enemies of America are not ordinary Muslims living in Tehran, Istanbul, Baghdad or Dearborn. Those who wish to see us dead are the self-proclaimed radical Islamists who have been inspired, supported and funded by the Islamic Republic of Iran, among others, for more than 23 years. If the United States is interested in winning the war against terrorism, then it must pay attention to what happened in Iran yesterday because, for the first time in 23 years, the people of Iran are taking the lead in exposing the bankruptcy of Islam as a form of governance."

The article is referring to July 9, 1999, when tens of thousands of Iranian college students held anti-government protests for six days. Iran's security forces brutally massacred the students, killing many of them, and the protests spread to cities across the country. The above article is about new protests being held on the 3rd anniversary of those protests.

The next year, the government took some steps to contain the fourth anniversary of the 1999 massacre. This article is from the Iran Press Service, dated June 23, 2003:

"Iran Bans Off Campus Protests
TEHRAN — The Iranian government said on Tuesday that it would not allow any protests meeting to be held in the future outside universities.

Abdollah Ramezanzadeh, the official spokesman for the government said, in answer to questions concerning the anniversary of the student's anti-regime revolt of July 9, 1999, "no further demonstrations would be allowed outside universities' campuses."

"The Interior Ministry is opposed to any gathering outside university campuses and no permit has been issued by the government for holding special commemoration meetings, Ramezanzadeh stated, adding that however, the government "will not interfere in any gathering held inside universities." ...

Ramezanzadeh said the government and many students were still "dissatisfied" since the masterminds of the July 9, 1999 disaster have not been properly dealt with."

"We expect that those behind recent events and the culprits involved in the 9 July 1999 crimes, irrespective of their factional affiliation, are confronted," he added, quoted by the official news agency IRNA."

Here's another article from my archives, from the LA Times on July 2, 2003:

"Iran Shuts Out Porn, Dissent Web Sites
TEHRAN — Iran is blocking access to Web sites containing pornographic material and dissent against the country's Islamic establishment, an official said Tuesday.

More than 140 Web sites promoting dissent, dancing and sex have been blocked since the crackdown began last month, said Farhad Sepahram, a Telecommunications Ministry official.

Religious hard-liners are increasingly worried about Iranians' access to information from the outside world, apparently concerned that communications are playing a role in stirring reform sentiment such as the recent anti-government protests by young people.

Sepahram said most of the blocked Web sites belong to opposition groups. They include one run by Reza Pahlavi, son of the late Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, who was toppled by the 1979 Islamic Revolution, and one by Abolhassan Bani-Sadr, Iran's first elected president after 1979 who now opposes the cleric-dominated establishment.

Also blocked are the Voice of America's Persian-language service and radiofarda.com, a U.S.-financed Persian-language audio program."

So how did I know ten years ago that Iran was going to become America's ally? It was because reading all these articles, and others like them, made it clear that what was going on in Iran was the same as what went on in America in the 1960s.

In America's Awakening era in the 1960s, we had girls burning their bras, marches on Washington, violence in the streets of Los Angeles, Chicago and Detroit, and student anti-war protests. These are the kinds of things that are typical of any society 20-30 years after the end of a generational crisis war. Student protests are particularly common during these eras because they represent the rise of the first post-war generation.

It was just like that in Iran ten years ago. So I could see that many college students were protesting against the hardliners, and were pro-American and pro-Western. (They didn't like America's 2003 ground invasion of Iraq, and they didn't like President Bush's characterization of "Axis of Evil," but they were still pro-American because they really hated their own government more than anything else.)

And now, of course, those college students are 30-40 years old, and have moved into positions of power, as I knew ten years ago that they would. Today, they're the reporters who write the news stories and are being accused of supporting an "infiltration network" (a phrase that they undoubtedly think is hilarious), and they're the scientists working in the nuclear plants.

America's Awakening era finally climaxed in 1974 with the resignation of Richard Nixon, resulting in a victory of the younger generation over the older generation. Iran is headed in the same direction. The Watergate issue triggered the political coup that ousted Richard Nixon, and it's possible that the nuclear deal may be the trigger for the eventual coup that ousts Iran's Ayatollah Khamenei and the other older generation hardliners.

[tim]

https://www.generationaldynamics.com/pg ... 180102.htm

2-Jan-18 World View -- Escalating violence in Iran protests brings calls for Iran-Israel friendship

Trump and Netanyahu express solidarity with Iranian protesters

As long-time readers are aware, I predicted over ten years ago, based on a Generational Dynamics analysis, that Iran would be a United States ally in the approaching Clash of Civilizations world war.

Ten years ago, the idea that Iran and the US would become allies seemed fantastical and insane. But during the Barack Obama administration, whatever one thinks of the Iran nuclear deal, Iran and America overcame much of the vitriolic rancor that separated them.

The reason that Iran and the US are becoming allies is generational. The hardliners in Iran are in the dying generations that fought in the 1979 Great Islamic Revolution, and considered the Iranian Hostage Crisis a great victory for them. However, those people are dying off, and the generations growing up after the war are pro-Western and pro-American. At some point, there will be an "Awakening climax" in Iran, like the resignation of Richard Nixon in 1974, that signals the victory of the younger generations over the war survivors, and the end of the hardline regime. A likely outcome is that Iran will become the same kind of ally as it was under the Shah of Iran, prior to 1979.

So we're seeing Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu expressing friendship and support for Iran -- but not for the old geezers in the hardline regime, but for the young generation of protesters.

Donald Trump tweeted as follows:

"Big protests in Iran. The people are finally getting wise as to how their money and wealth is being stolen and squandered on terrorism. Looks like they will not take it any longer. The USA is watching very closely for human rights violations!
Many reports of peaceful protests by Iranian citizens fed up with regime’s corruption & its squandering of the nation’s wealth to fund terrorism abroad. Iranian govt should respect their people’s rights, including right to express themselves. The world is watching!

The entire world understands that the good people of Iran want change, and, other than the vast military power of the United States, that Iran’s people are what their leaders fear the most."

Israel's president Benjamin Netanyahu posted a video in which he said the following:

"Iran’s cruel regime wastes tens of billions of dollars spreading hate. This money could have built schools and hospitals. No wonder mothers and fathers are marching in the streets. The regime is terrified of them, of their own people.
This regime tries desperately to sow hate between us. But they won’t succeed. And when this regime finally falls, and one day it will, Iranians and Israelis will be great friends once again. I wish the Iranian people success in their noble quest for freedom."

The possible friendship between Netanyahu and the Iranian people exposes an important conflict in the geopolitics of the Mideast.

Recently, Israel has been closely allied with Egypt in fighting Islamist terrorists, especially in Egypt's northern Sinai. Egypt has also been an ally of Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates (UAE) in the Arab split that led to the blockade of Qatar over its close relations with Iran.

Israel has also recently been closely allied with Saudi Arabia because of their common enmity to Iran.

If you connect all those dots and now throw in a possible future détente between Israel and Iran, then you quickly arrive at a conflict. This is not a trivial situation, and will almost certainly lead to some kind of conflict not currently anticipated.

Generational Dynamics predictions that I've been posting for years haven't changed. Generational Dynamics predicts that the Mideast is headed for a major regional war, pitting Sunnis versus Shias, Jews versus Arabs, and various ethnic groups against each other. Generational Dynamics predicts that in the approaching Clash of Civilizations world war, the "axis" of China, Pakistan and the Sunni Muslim countries will be pitted against the "allies," the US, India, Russia and Iran. Reuters and Jerusalem Online

[Phong Tran]

Thanks for finding and posting those Tim.

Does anyone remember if John mentioned anything about why he doesn't mention Europe in his Clash of Civilizations world war?

[Navigator]

Unfortunately, I see zero hope in the short term of Iran becoming an ally of the west, let alone reproachment with Israel.

First off, let me congratulate the Israeli's on what seems to be a very successful initial strike on Iran. Such action has been needed for DECADES.

The US has technically been in a state of war with Iran since the Embassy takeover in 1978. The fanatical nut jobs (first Khomeini and now his son) will NEVER give up the path that they are pursuing as per their interpretation of Shia Islam. They are doing this to the utter detriment of their population, and while the majority of Iranians have no love of their regime, they are powerless to affect any kind of change. As was seen years ago during small scale demonstrations, any dissent is brutally and bloodily crushed by the quasi-militia forces that hold substantial power over the broad population.

The Iranians were NEVER going to give up their quest for atomic weapons. This had to be done. It should have been done to the North Koreans in the late 1980s or early 1990s, but no US President had the guts to do it. And now look at the nightmare in northern Asia that resulted.

It seems to me that the Trump administration understood this, and we were playing along with the Iranians in "negotiations" while the Israelis finished their plans and preparations. Israel had already done quite a bit of damage to the Iranian infrastructure last year. They should finish that job along with taking out any kind of technological industry or wherewithal that the Iranians have.

However, when a foreign country (Israel) bombs your country (Iran), the response is generally increased support for the local regime. This means that Iranians, out of their own national pride, will, at least in the short term, most likely rally to the flag of the Ayatollahs.

The next potential nightmare is that the Ayatollahs, out of desperation, take military measures to close the Straights of Hormuz, blocking oil tanker traffic in/out of the Persian Gulf. Yes, the Iranians are very dependent on their own oil revenue, but if they feel that their "back is against the wall", they may do this. This would mean that the US would become involved militarily, and would most likely require occupation of coastal areas (to stop the launching of anti ship missiles and deployment of mines into the Gulf. This is because the Gulf is so critical to the world economy.

Such a scenario would drag the US into yet another middle east war, which obviously would be highly unpopular in the US, and even more so in Europe. And if you think the anti-ICE riots are bad, just wait for this.

[spottybrowncow]

I knew a woman about 10 years ago who was married to an Iranian.
They mentioned that his brother, who lived in Iran, had been recently hanged for belonging to a pro-western group.
I had been following this forum for a few years at that point, so I said to him "I'm very sorry. I understand, from reading, that the average Iranian is actually pro-western, and doesn't like the repressive regime. Why don't they band together and take over the government?"
He looked me in the eye, and said very deliberately, "because they have all the guns."
I have no doubt about what the democrats / globalists have planned for us, if they get control. On the 2A I'm a one-issue voter.