This morning’s key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
- Generational Dynamics World View is back!
- Taliban promises bloodbath during Saturday’s Pakistan elections
- New South China Sea confrontation between China and Philippines
- Syrian women get married for money in exchange for ‘survival sex’
- Gun-control issue dives deeper into farce over 3D printing
- Greece’s youth unemployment rate now at 64.2%
- IRS admits Nixon-like targeting taxpayers for political purposes
Generational Dynamics World View is back!
After a four-day “vacation,” Generational Dynamics World View isresuming publication.
Taliban promises bloodbath during Saturday’s Pakistan elections
Pakistan presidential candidates (L-R) Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, Nawaz Sharif and Imran Khan (BBC)
The al-Qaeda linked Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), the Pakistanbranch of the Taliban, has announced its intention to launch terroristattacks all across Pakistan on Saturday in order to disrupt the country’s presidential elections. The elections are considered historic, sincethey’ll mark the first time in Pakistan’s history that there has beena peaceful transition from one civilian government to another.
Already, more than 100 people have been killed in terrorist violencein the days leading up to the election. The TTP have beenparticularly targeting the “secular” or Shia political parties, whileleaving alone the Islamist anti-American parties, the Pakistan MuslimLeague-Nawaz (PML-N) of Nawaz Sharif and the Tehreek-e-Insaf (Movementfor Justice) party of Imran Khan. On Thursday, a son of former primeminister Yousaf Raza Gilani was kidnapped and two of his aides killed.
Nawaz Sharif is expected to win the election, but with millions of newvoters, anything might happened. Pakistanis are desperately lookingfor a “hope and change” candidate who could solve all their problemsin a moment, and Imran Khan, the former world cricket champion andinternational playboy, has been advertising himself as that candidate.
However, in a stroke of fate, Khan was hospitalized early this weekafter a campaign appearance where he accidentally took a hard fall andfractur0ed a rib and damaged three vertebrae, forcing him to give onefinal televised campaign appearance from his hospital bed. Whetherthis will sink his campaign, or conversely, whether he’ll get a bigsympathy vote, is something we may learn on Saturday. Daily Times (Pakistan) and BBC
New South China Sea confrontation between China and Philippines
Philippine authorities admitted on Friday that one of their coastguard ships opened fire on a Taiwanese ship on Thursday, saying thattheir only intention was to disable the ship, which was threatening toram the Philippines ship. Both ships were within overlapping 200-mileeconomic exclusion zones (EEZs) of Taiwan and the Philippines.
However, one Taiwanese fisherman was killed in the incident, and bothChina and Taiwan are protesting the killing. China has repeatedlymade it clear that they are going to use their vast military power totake control of the entire South China Sea, including several regionsthat have historically belonged to other countries, following a policysimilar to Hitler’s “Lebensraum” policy. They’ve announced that theyintend to begin boarding and seizing control of other countries’ shipsin the South China Sea.
The Chinese are supporting the Taiwanese inthis incident, because China has also indicated that it intends totake control of Taiwan. LA Times
Syrian refugees marrying for money in exchange for ‘survival sex’
There are over 500,000 refugees from Syria flooding Jordan, most ofthem women and children. But aid organizations do not have enoughmoney to fully support these refugees, so in order to make the moneyto feed their children, many of the women are opting for short-termmarriages in exchange for several hundred dollars. “The men areusually between 50 and 80, and they ask for girls who have white skinand blue or green eyes. They want them very young, no older than 16,”according to one marriage broker. BBC
Gun-control issue dives deeper into farce over 3D printing
The gun control farce reached new heights on Friday when the U.S. StateDepartment ordered Cody Wilson, head of Texas nonprofit DefenseDistributed, to remove from its web site the blueprints (CAD file) forthe successful manufacture of a gun using an $8,000 3D printer.
When I wrote about gun control and 3D printing in December, I pointed out that there’s no evidence thatprohibitions in the past — of alcohol, drugs, abortion andprostitution — had any actual effect in curtailing those activities, but they had a negativeeffect of creating bootleggers, organized crime, drug cartels, andprostitution rings. Gun control has already produced huge unintendedconsequences in the form of would-be gun owners buying up all the gunsand ammunition they can find for fear of losing the opportunity.
The other unintended consequence is the enormous interest in 3Dprinters, which can manufacture small objects of all kinds. Thanks tothe spur given by the farcical gun-control debate, we can soon expectto see thousands of gun manufacturers in garages and basements acrossthe country.
This reminds me of the 1971 book by Abbie Hoffman, Steal ThisBook. The book contains instructions on everything from gettingfree abortions to using a shotgun to hiding from the law. Manyattempts were made to prevent publication of the book, but when itfinally was published, it made it on to the NY Times Best Seller list.
So with all the publicity for John Cody’s CAD files for 3D printingguns, it’s not surprising that the blueprints have already beendownloaded 100,000 times. The files may have been removed from JohnCody’s web site, but they appear to be freely available on the PirateBay file sharing site. AFP and The Pirate Bay and Abbie Hoffman – Steal This Book
Greece’s youth unemployment rate now at 64.2%
February jobless figures are out for Greece, and they show that thejobless rate expanded to 27%, up from 21.9% a year earlier. Worse,almost two in every three young people aged up to 24 years are joblessas the unemployment rate for that age group reached 64.2 percent inFebruary. Kathimerini
IRS admits Nixon-like targeting taxpayers for political purposes
The Internal Revenue Service on Friday acknowledged that it flaggedpolitical groups with “tea party” or “patriot” in their names forspecial scrutiny when they applied for tax-exempt status, repeatingthe kind of actions that were in the impeachment charges that forcedformer president Richard Nixon to resign.
This comes on the same day that some members of the mainstream mediaare turning against President Barack Obama over the lies and coverupin the Benghazi matter. President Nixon was forced to resign becauseof a coverup of the Watergate matter, where nobody was killed; four people were killed in the Benghazi matter.
This is anadministration whose members believe that they can break any law orsay any falsehood and get away with it because the mainstream mediahas always been totally in the tank for Obama, and would always findsome way to support him. Friday’s turnaround could be politicallysignificant. Washington Post
KEYS: Generational Dynamics, Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, TTP,Pakistan, Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, Nawaz Sharif, Imran Khan,South China Sea, China, Taiwan, Philippines, Hitler, Lebensraum,Syria, survival sex,gun control, John Cody, Defense Distributed, 3D printing,Abbie Hoffman, Steal This Book, Greece,Internal Revenue Service, Benghazi
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