This Week's News

FLOODING IN PAKISTAN

I don't usually express sympathy here for the simple reason that, if I express sympathy to one group, then, in fairness, I would have to express sympathy for everything that happens everywhere and this would just be a blog of sympathy.

But Pakistan is special and this flooding is catastrophic. Any nation that can produce chapati like Pakistan does is truly special.

RECENT TURMOIL IN IRAQ AND LIBYA

There was recent political turmoil in Iraq. Libya was also in the news this week. The country is still sharply divided between east and west. This illustrated the political principle that I call "The Strong Leader Binding Phase". If a nation was put together artificially it will require an extended period of time being ruled by a strong leader of some description before it is ready to be a democracy.

The end of the First World War, in 1918, also brought the end of the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian Empires, and this brought a number of new nations into existence, including Libya. The two new nations created from remnants of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Czechoslovakia in the north and Yugoslavia in the south, lasted only as long as Communism did.

Along with Libya the end of the Ottoman Empire brought the creation of Iraq and modern Syria. In all of these nations, consisting of diverse ethnic, religious or, linguistic groups, it is necessary to have rule by a strong leader, whether a king or dictator, to bind the country together before it is ready to be a democracy.

Too many people had the idea that all that is necessary is to remove a dictator and democracy will bloom like flowers in a garden. But, as we can see by the removal of Saddam Hussein, the result is much more likely to be chaos, unless some kind of occupation force is closely managing the transition.

America went through it's Strong Leader Binding Phase under the rule of English kings before gaining independence. I believe that the underlying cause of the U.S. Civil War, of 1861-65, was the premature interruption of the Strong Leader Binding Phase, by the Declaration of Independence in 1776.

Here is a link to the original posting about Libya:

www.markmeekeconomics.blogspot.com/2014/01/a-few-words-about-libya.html?m=0 

How can we know when the Strong Leader Binding Phase is completed? Another principle is "The Second Leader Rule". If the necessary strong leader is followed by another leader who is of much lower profile, we know that the revolutionary or strong leader phase has been successfully completed. Here is the link to that posting:

www.markmeeksideas.blogspot.com/2016/12/the-second-leader-rule.html?m=0

THOUGHTS ON THE WAR IN UKRAINE

Is anyone wondering what is going to happen to all of these weapons when the war is over? The reason that the world is so awash in used weapons and military equipment is that, when wars end, much of the weaponry ends up getting sold all over the world.

Remember that much of the information that emerges in a war is less-than-believable. Does anyone remember, in the First Gulf War of 1990, there was the story that Iraqi soldiers had gone into a hospital where there were premature babies in incubators. The Iraqis were reported as having taken the incubators after having thrown the babies on the floor, leaving them to die there.

It was known that the story wasn't true but the public was allowed to believe it, until after the war, in order to build support for the war effort.

THE FORGOTTEN CAUSE OF THE SECOND WORLD WAR

Today is the anniversary of the official beginning of the Second World War. The usual story is that everything was going along just fine until Adolf Hitler suddenly appeared and wrought devastation on the world.

Except that isn't quite what happened. The Weimar Republic was a democracy that was working well. The 1920s were a time of great prosperity, especially in the U.S. With the leftover industrial capacity from the First World War factories turned out a vast array of goods, from radios to cars. 

But workers were not being paid enough to be able to afford the goods that they were producing. Industries naturally wanted to be able to sell their goods for as much as possible, while paying workers as little as possible, in order to maximize profit. Goods were just piling up in warehouses. Factories began cutting back on production, meaning that workers had even less money, and it spiralled into a devastating crash.

The 1930s were a terrible time, Germany was economically devastated by the crash. A party called the National Socialists, or Nazis, emerged with an idea. Unemployment would be absorbed by drastically expanding the armed forces. Factories would be brought back to full production making military equipment for them.

The plan worked absolutely brilliantly, the only downside is that there was a world war. A lot is made of the mistake of demanding that Germany pay the full cost of the First World War. But let's not forget that the Second World War likely wouldn't have happened without this 1929 market crash.

This market crash is also what made Communism into a major world system, an alternative to capitalism. Prior to this only a few intellectuals in the west even knew what Communism was.

MAR-A-LAGO

I know that I keep referring to the compound posting, "America And The Modern World Explained By Way Of Paris" December 2015, but it is absolutely essential.

Why would Donald Trump bring government documents about nuclear weapons to his Florida home? It emerged recently that Trump maintained a file on the private life of French President Emanuel Macron.

Remember that the Republican Party of America is really the continuation of the French Bourbon Dynasty, that was overthrown and guillotined in the revolution of 1789. This had been America's first ally and the one that helped it to gain independence.

The French Revolution might not have succeeded if not for the Storming of the Bastille, a fortress in Paris, and the seizure of the guns and ammunition stored there. This gave armaments to the revolutionaries and left the royalist forces in Paris virtually defenseless.

History is so important because we tend to repeat it, often without realizing it. The nuclear documents represent the vital guns lost in the Bastille. Donald Trump was, perhaps subconsciously, bringing them back into the security of his Mar-A-Lago estate. The modern French President represents the revolutionary forces that overthrew and guillotined America's close allies, that is what led Trump to maintain a file on him.

HISTORY REPEATS ITSELF IN THE BUFFALO AREA

Here is something in the local area where this is being written.

In 2009 a passenger plane crashed in Clarence Center, east of Buffalo, killing everyone on board. The incident led to much in the way of new regulations about issues like how much flight experience a pilot had to have, before flying passengers, and how much rest between flights.

In 1867, in the town of Angola which is about the same distance from downtown Buffalo as Clarence Center, a passenger car on a train detatched and slid down a hill. The incident is known as "The Angola Horror". At the time there were still different rail gauges and wheels were designed to slide between them, but this reduced stability. 

The Angola Horror led to the reform of passenger trains in a very similar way that the Clarence Center crash would lead to the reform of passenger planes 142 years later. Ironically the number of people killed on the train and in the plane were identical, both 49. In the plane crash an additional person was killed on the ground.