2-Jan-14 World View -- Latvia adopts the euro

Discussion of Web Log and Analysis topics from the Generational Dynamics web site.
John
Posts: 11479
Joined: Sat Sep 20, 2008 12:10 pm
Location: Cambridge, MA USA
Contact:

2-Jan-14 World View -- Latvia adopts the euro

Post by John »

2-Jan-14 World View -- Latvia becomes 18th nation to adopt the euro currency

Palestinian ambassador to Czech Republic dies in freak explosion

** 2-Jan-14 World View -- Latvia becomes 18th nation to adopt the euro currency
** http://www.generationaldynamics.com/pg/ ... tm#e140102




Contents:
N. Korea's Kim Jong-un struggles for stability, purging 'factionalist elements'
Palestinian ambassador to Czech Republic dies in freak explosion
Latvia becomes 18th nation to adopt the euro currency


Keys:
Generational Dynamics, North Korea, Kim Jong-un,
Jang Song-thaek, Ri Sol-ju, Unhasu Orchestra,
Jamal Al Jamal, Palestine, Czech Republic,
Latvia, lat currency

psCargile
Posts: 171
Joined: Sat Apr 30, 2011 6:34 pm

Re: 2-Jan-14 World View -- Latvia adopts the euro

Post by psCargile »

Do the Chinese have a large enough investment in North Korea that if North Korea were to become too unstable, they would invade and annex?

John
Posts: 11479
Joined: Sat Sep 20, 2008 12:10 pm
Location: Cambridge, MA USA
Contact:

Re: 2-Jan-14 World View -- Latvia adopts the euro

Post by John »

psCargile wrote:Do the Chinese have a large enough investment in North Korea that if North Korea were to become too unstable, they would invade and annex?
There are a lot of people who believe that exactly that would happen.

vincecate
Posts: 2371
Joined: Mon May 10, 2010 7:11 am
Location: Anguilla
Contact:

Re: 2-Jan-14 World View -- Latvia adopts the euro

Post by vincecate »

John wrote: Palestinian ambassador to Czech Republic dies in freak explosion
I am impressed that a 20 year old booby trap still worked.

NoOneImportant

Re: 2-Jan-14 World View -- Latvia adopts the euro

Post by NoOneImportant »

Poetic justice.

Guest

Re: 2-Jan-14 World View -- Latvia adopts the euro

Post by Guest »

John wrote:
psCargile wrote:Do the Chinese have a large enough investment in North Korea that if North Korea were to become too unstable, they would invade and annex?
There are a lot of people who believe that exactly that would happen.
South Korea would never allow that to happen: they would lose northern Korea forever.

NoOneImportant

Re: 2-Jan-14 World View -- Latvia adopts the euro

Post by NoOneImportant »

John wrote:

psCargile wrote:Do the Chinese have a large enough investment in North Korea that if North Korea were to become too unstable, they would invade and annex?



There are a lot of people who believe that exactly that would happen.

Guest wrote:

South Korea would never allow that to happen: they would lose northern Korea forever.
But what would be South Korea's alternative? In the context of a reluctant, unreliable America, what could South Korea do to stop China from doing exactly that - assimilating the North.

It turns out that there is a great deal of history between China, and Korea that backs your position, but for the immediate moment what are South Korea's options? South Korea might consider an insurgency in the North, but they have 20+ active nuclear power generating reactors providing electricity for the South. Should China become existentially serious a compromise of one of those reactors, with a Fukishima style nuclear release in the south, would cripple South Korea's ability to resist, and multiple units being attacked might make large parts of the South uninhabitable, ah la Chernobyl.

Guest

Re: 2-Jan-14 World View -- Latvia adopts the euro

Post by Guest »

If China targets Korea's reactors, why wouldn't Korea target theirs? Maybe that counter threat wouldn't be much of a deterrent: China is already the most toxic place on the Earth.

NoOneImportant

Re: 2-Jan-14 World View -- Latvia adopts the euro

Post by NoOneImportant »

Putting myself in the position of the South, my initial concern would be; will the Chinese stop at the 38 parallel.

Any insurgency initiated in the Nouth by the South would provide the Chinese with plausible denyability, regarding a covert attack on an operating nuclear reactor: "... oh, what a terrible thing, who would do such a thing....", but the best of all worlds, from a Chinese perspective, would be to mask it under the guise of terror, or for the Chinese to sabotage one of the South's many nuclear units - the point being that the reactors are numerous, and are very soft targets, among many others. They are targets with an enormous psychological and geographic impact; an impact that extends far beyond the effort expended and necessary to bring it about, and it would cause the South to, prospectively, redirect their focus to what would be an enormous internal problem, and forget about the North.

The road to total war is not usually direct - very few conflicts are started by one of the adversaries saying to themselves: "... let's go get crucified by those guys...." Total war is achieved Incremental step by incremental step - there is a conditioning required for the sane to be brought to the point where they readily perform the actions of the insane. The Chinese may look at any counter attack on one of their reactors as justification to "limit the terror" by future even more aggressive actions - a ratcheting up of the conflict, if you will. The Chinese may even see it as a "hardening" of China for the prospective ultimate confrontation with the US - as the Japanese saw the brutalizing of mainland China, and Korea in WWII as a preparatory "hardening" of their soldiers for the future coming conquest of Australia, and the US.

To illustrate: at the beginning of the American Civil War, Sherman alone saw the enormity of the coming conflict. He made the mistake of telling the visiting Assistant Secretary of War that he needed 200,000 men to pacify, and protect the central part of the US; to which the incredulous Asst. SecWar replied: "... you're insane...", as Lincoln had only recently sent out the request for only 75,000 volunteers. A NY newspaper reporter was present at that meeting, and heard only the comment about Sherman's being insane. That became the headline all across America - Sherman was insane - he was relieved of his command, accused of insanity, and sent home for a period to "get a grip on himself;" the SecWar had yet to be conditioned into what was to become total war in America. History shows Sherman to have under estimated his needs. Examining the last "total war", WWII, the justification for the fire bombing of German cities that culminated in the killing of 100,000+ Germans in a single night during the bombing of Dresden, was the Blitz of London in 1940 - only long after the fact was there any critical consideration given to the morality of that Dresden action, and the consideration was only afforded by the absence of any mortal jeopardy by those offering the opinion. Additionally, consider the action of the fire bombing of every major Japanese city near the end of the war; an action that also killed prospectively over a million Japanese prior to, and paved the way for the culminating act of WWII: the bombing of Hiroshima, and Nagasaki.

The point is that the insane blood-lust lives in the heart of us all. The civilized do not immediately engage in the actions of the insane; the sane are brought to the brink of the abyss step by incremental step, until the conflict becomes total - until insanity becomes the norm, until there is no action, regardless of how barbaric, beyond being executed "for-the-cause." Moral restraint is viewed, in this context, as weakness.

In our day to day actions we keep the monster deeply buried and imprisoned within, for when the monster escapes it is the escape of a monster almost without limit - it is one aspect of the essence of Generational Dynamics, those who have seen the "monster" never seek to see him again, their choices throughout their lives are always self-arbitrated/moderated by their desire never to see him - the monster - again. He is a monster who is creative, innovative, determined, dedicated, and utterly beyond heartless.

The point is that that the South Koreans have few options, overt military confrontation with the Chinese is out; the South might see insurgency as a viable counter to any Chinese attempt to "Tibetanize" the North Korea. Is insurgency really viable; as the Chinese are an adversary who have murdered, starved to death, or worked to death 34 - 65 million people - their own people - under Mao. Well, that was then, and this is now we might say; but a cursory examination of Chinese spending reveals that China currently spends more for "internal Security"" than for defense; thus repression, and fear have a considerable history in the beyond-Mao modern China - and this a nation that has been arming to the teeth for the last two decades a nation with no perceivable external threat. Regarding repression, note the recent repression of Tibet alone - China is a nation steeped in conflict, a nation with territorial disputes with virtually everyone of its neighbors, but threatened by invasion by no one. I don't remember where I read it - it was a very long time ago, roughly 20 years - a high ranking Chinese PLA officer made the comment that in any coming war China can afford to lose 650 million people and still "win"that war - no one else can. China has a mind set that has been decades in the forming, and we have now given them the cash to implement, and realize that mind set.

China alone has seen the monster, and is undeterred - the message is: the sane don't think like the insane; at least not without some conditioning, and it has been 60 years since the end of the Korean war - those who know the horror of that armed conflict are disappearing, on both sided.

Guest

Re: 2-Jan-14 World View -- Latvia adopts the euro

Post by Guest »

Will Spain break up? Would the break away republics use their own currencies? Would they apply for EU membership?

Post Reply

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 40 guests