In a Lonely Place (1950, dir. Nicholas Ray)

‘I was born when she kissed me.

I died when she left .

I lived a few weeks while she loved me.’

Waiting Around to Die

A Great Run and a Fascinating Ending. 

Mission accomplished. 

And a Happy New Year

 

Summer is officially over

Leap in Void

 You never realize the holes they left until you fall into them.

Turning the lights off

Either we forget right away or we never forget.

Everything you want in life has teeth

Few people can tell the difference between denial and what used to be known as hope.

Things to do today

“I've suffered loss in my career for not being obedient.

Believe me, the loss was little compared to the fear all of you stomach every day.

When the sun sets, I can sing ‘My Way’ with Elvis, Frank Sinatra, and Francis Coppola.

What is your anthem?”

- john milius

Things we love to hate or love

We lose ourselves in things we love. 

We find ourselves there, too.

The Great War And Its Terrible Aftermath

Sarajevo Is The Fulcrum Of Modern History

By David Stockman

One hundred years ago today the world was shook loose of its moorings. Every school boy knows that the assassination of the archduke of Austria at Sarajevo was the trigger that incited the bloody, destructive conflagration of the world’s nations known as the Great War. But this senseless eruption of unprecedented industrial state violence did not end with the armistice four years later.

In fact, 1914 is the fulcrum of modern history. It is the year the Fed opened-up for business just as the carnage in northern France closed-down the prior magnificent half-century era of liberal internationalism and honest gold-backed money. So it was the Great War’s terrible aftermath—–a century of drift toward statism, militarism and fiat money—-that was actually triggered by the events at Sarajevo.

Unfortunately, modern historiography wants to keep the Great War sequestered in a four-year span of archival curiosities about battles, mustard gas and monuments to the fallen. But the opposite historiography is more nearly the truth. The assassins at Sarajevo triggered the very warp and woof of the hundred years which followed.

The Great War was self-evidently an epochal calamity, especially for the 20 million combatants and civilians who perished for no reason that is discernible in any fair reading of history, or even unfair one. Yet the far greater calamity is that  Europe’s senseless fratricide of 1914-1918 gave birth to all the great evils of the 20^th century— the Great Depression, totalitarian genocides, Keynesian economics,  permanent  warfare states, rampaging central banks and the exceptionalist-rooted follies of America’s global imperialism.

Indeed, in Old Testament fashion, one begat the next and the next and still the next. This chain of calamity originated in the Great War’s destruction of sound money, that is, in the post-war demise of the pound sterling which previously had not experienced a peacetime change in its gold content for nearly two hundred years.

Not unreasonably, the world’s financial system had become anchored on the London money markets where the other currencies traded at fixed exchange rates to the rock steady pound sterling—which, in turn, meant that prices and wages throughout Europe were expressed in common money and tended toward transparency and equilibrium.

This liberal international economic order—that is, honest money, relatively free trade, rising international capital flows and rapidly growing global economic integration—-resulted in  a 40-year span between 1870 and 1914 of rising living standards, stable prices, massive capital investment and prolific  technological progress that was never equaled—either before or since.

During intervals of war, of course, 19^th century governments had usually suspended gold convertibility and open trade in the heat of combat.  But when the cannons fell silent, they had also endured the trauma of post-war depression until wartime debts had been liquidated and inflationary currency expedients had been wrung out of the circulation. This was called “resumption” and restoring convertibility at the peacetime parities was the great challenge of post-war normalizations.

The Great War, however, involved a scale of total industrial mobilization and financial mayhem that was unlike any that had gone before.  In the case of Great Britain, for example, its national debt increased 14-fold, its price level doubled, its capital stock was depleted, most off-shore investments were liquidated and universal wartime conscription left it with a massive overhang of human and financial liabilities.

Yet England was the least devastated. In France, the price level inflated by 300 percent, its extensive Russian investments were confiscated by the Bolsheviks and its debts in New York and London catapulted to more than 100 percent of GDP.

Among the defeated powers, currencies emerged nearly worthless with the German mark at five cents on the pre-war dollar, while wartime debts—especially after the Carthaginian peace of Versailles—–soared to crushing, unrepayable heights.

In short, the bow-wave of debt, currency inflation and financial disorder from the Great War was so immense and unprecedented that the classical project of post-war liquidation and “resumption” of convertibility was destined to fail.  In fact, the 1920s were a grinding, sometimes inspired but eventually failed struggle to resume the international gold standard, fixed parities, open world trade and unrestricted international capital flows.

Only in the final demise of these efforts after 1929 did the Great Depression, which had been lurking all along in the post-war shadows, come bounding onto the stage of history.

Read more at : http://davidstockmanscontracorner.com/sarajevo-is-the-fulcrum-of-modern-history-the-great-war-and-its-terrible-aftermath/

France Praying for Miraculous Metamorphosis

Nothing Left to Lose?

by Pater Tenebrarum

In a recent article at Reuters, the hope was expressed that the approval rating of France's president Francois Hollande (lately renamed 'LOL-lande' in the French press and 'Niemandshand' in the Dutch press for reasons explained further below) has by now finally fallen to such an extremely low level, that he has nothing to lose anymore by engaging in meaningful reform. Since he cannot sink any lower, he can only win, or so the reasoning goes. What has inspired this epiphany is the recent revelation by a French tabloid newspaper that the president is involved in a secret nocturnal affair, sneaking out under the cover of darkness to presumably offer the services of his conjugal dipstick to an unknown female.

It was noticed that the allegation has failed to move the needle on his approval-meter further into the red. 80% of the population thought Hollande was a failure prior to the tryst coming to light, and 80% are still thinking so. Apparently things are as bad as they are going to get. Hence it is reckoned that he might be due for a metamorphosis, turning into a 'French Blair' or a version of Gerhard Schroeder (can you imagine a mixture of Blair and Hollande? One could probably quite easily make a successful horror movie starring that creature).  

“Yet with polls showing most French are blase about his private life, the real question is whether he will use the media event to show he is ready to tackle the double burden on the French economy: rising taxes and public spending.

"As is often the case, there are good intentions. But we will judge the deeds," said analyst Bruno Cavalier at Paris-based Oddo Securities.

The Socialist Hollande, who in his 2012 election campaign labeled the world of finance his enemy, ignited speculation of a U-turn with a New Year's address to the nation offering business leaders a "responsibility pact" trading lower taxes and less red tape for company commitments to hire more staff. Striking a new tone which has already raised hackles with unions, he also declared it was time to stamp out abuses of France's generous welfare state, and cut public spending so as to create room for tax reductions after a series of rises. Some see echoes of the about-turn made 30 years ago by Hollande's mentor Francois Mitterrand, who in 1983 halted a policy of nationalization and expansion of worker benefits just two years into his mandate as public finances crumbled.

About time too, say those who argue that public spending at around 57 percent of national output – some 12 points more than Germany's – is a burden the economy cannot afford. French debt at 93.4 percent of GDP and rising is now "in the danger zone", the national audit office warned last week.

The prospect of a policy shift has been applauded by France's main employers federation Medef, due to start talks in coming week with Hollande's government on tax cuts it hopes will restore corporate margins among the weakest in Europe. Left-wing newspaper L'Humanite dubbed him "Francois Blair" after the centrist British prime minister who dreamed up "New Labour" pragmatism, while others asked whether Hollande would follow the reforms implemented in Germany in the last decade.

"What indeed if, after 18 months of empty words and drift, Francois Hollande became the French Gerhard Schroeder?" Marc Touati of the ACDEFI economic consultancy asked, referring to the former Social Democrat chancellor who implemented painful labour market reform in the 2000s.

But he predicted: "This is a sort of bluffing tactic intended to gain time, soften up ratings agencies and investors but which will not result in hard measures." Pension and labour reforms implemented last year, while significant first steps, have hardly broken the mould. Projected 2014 French growth of just one percent will struggle to create private sector jobs.

So far, this year's budget foresees public spending cuts of 15 billion euros or some 0.7 percent of GDP. Yet the government still has to explain how the bulk of these will be achieved before it goes on to examine further possible cuts. Moreover the rapprochement with business risks alienating the moderate CFDT trade union which has so far been a vital ally to Hollande, backing pension and other reforms despite resistance from other, more hardline, labour organizations.

"I am issuing a warning: the trade unions have got to be players in all this," CFDT Secretary-General Laurent Berger said last week, insisting there could be no "blank cheque" for companies without benefits to labor as well.

[…]

Hollande may conclude he has nothing to lose now from taking a few risks. A survey by pollster Ifop released in the Journal du Dimanche newspaper this weekend showed little impact on his poll ratings from the allegations of a secret affair.

With Hollande currently enjoying little more than 20 percent of support, Ifop deputy chief Frederic Dabi noted: "He is already so unpopular that it hasn't changed anything." 

(emphasis added)

Admittedly, such metamorphoses do sometimes happen. A wily politician may well come to the conclusion that he has nothing to lose by changing course. And it is possible that Hollande will indeed decide to follow in Mitterand's footsteps and nix the socialist program in favor of a more pragmatic approach to economic policy. The reality is though that little is known about his views. We don't even know whether he truly understands the economic problems faced by France and why what he has hitherto done has made them worse. After all, he is a lifelong bureaucrat/politician and his actions to date indicate that he believes that governments are not subject to economic laws and that he 'can order nature around' as Fred Sheehan once put it.

We also cannot really tell how much of an ideologue he is. In any event, we do know that he occasionally casts a wary eye in the direction of those who try to overtake him from the left of the political spectrum and has done his best to preempt them and remain in the good graces of typical socialist client organizations such as the unions. Note the remark by union leader Laurent Berger above: "I am issuing a warning: the trade unions have got to be players in all this." Will Hollande risk a confrontation with the unions? We kind of doubt it actually.

Read more at:

http://www.acting-man.com/?p=27949

Fallujah’s lessons for Afghanistan

The alternative of western occupation can only be a recipe for the eventual deluge

By M K Bhadrakumar

The stunning occupation of the Iraqi cities of Fallujah and Ramadi in Anbar province by the al-Qaeda-affiliated Islamic State of Iraq and Lebanon over the weekend carries grim warnings for Afghanistan. Yet, it is important that the lessons learnt should be the correct ones.  

Unfortunately, despite the vehement opposition in the US public opinion to continued US troop presence in Afghanistan beyond 2014, a body of dissent is surfacing that the Iraq developments underscore the importance of the US and NATO sticking it out in the Hindu Kush. 

Unsurprisingly, this outlandish opinion dovetails with the no-holds-barred campaign against US president Barack Obama by the Republican Right who would like to caricature the White House as having ‘lost’ Iraq. Prima facie, this opinion, also seems a logical conclusion. 

As the editorial comment in Britain’s conservative newspaper Telegraph argues, here, it may seem that the western troop presence is what actually stands between Afghanistan and the deluge. In India, too, there are many votaries to this thesis.  

However, if one were to dig deeper, the real comparison between Iraq and Afghanistan is the US’ comprehensive failure in what can be called ‘nation-building’. On the one hand, the political elites whom the US sponsored after the ‘regime change’ in both countries failed to deliver, while on the other hand, the western occupation in the two Muslim countries generated alienation among the people and created pockets of resistance that incrementally expanded over time into full-blown insurgencies. In sum, the failure is both political and military. 

Fallujah, paradoxically, underscores the futility of western military involvement. Iron entered into that old city’s soul following those brutal campaigns by the US forces in 2004. What else could one expect when white phosphorous bombs, cluster bombs and nuclear-tipped artillery shells were used against unarmed civilians? Put differently, the answer to Iraq’s fragmentation does not lie in permanent western occupation. 

Clearly, in Afghanistan too, Obama should consider taking the same approach that he seems to be inclined to take over the situation in Fallujah. Secretary of State John Kerry put it nicely, “We are not, obviously, contemplating returning. We’re not contemplating putting boots on the ground. This is their [Iraqi] fight, but we’re going to help them in their fight.” [CNN]  

There are any number of regional powers who’d dearly wish to see in their self-interests that the US troops are back again in Iraq — beginning with Saudi Arabia. In the case of Afghanistan, too, Russia and the Central Asian states keep an ambivalent stance toward US-NATO involvement. But objectively speaking, Kerry’s stance is the wisest under the circumstances. 

If the US troops go into Fallujah now, they might as well prepare themselves for the long haul. Afghanistan cannot be any different, either. A continued western presence in that Muslim country, which is in an advanced stage of fragmentation on ethnic lines, will generate popular resistance and a new insurgency will take shape. And at some late stage, as the western forces are finally forced to cut and run, leaving things in such royal mess as in Fallujah today, we might get to see the black flags of the al-Qeda getting unfurled in Jalalabad or Kandahar. 

Read more at:

http://blogs.rediff.com/mkbhadrakumar/2014/01/08/fallujahs-lessons-for-afghanistan/

Whither Chile?

The malaise of success can be a much worse enemy of the free society than its ideological foes

By Alvaro Vargas Llosa

With just under 47 percent of the vote, former President Michelle Bachelet obtained a resounding victory in the first round in November’s elections in Chile, inflicting a heavy blow to the right and opening the door to a new left-wing government that, unlike the last time she was in office, will be based on a coalition that includes members of the Communist Party. She also went on to win the second round in mid-December and is now the president-elect.

This is the culmination of a process that has left observers dumbfounded. Chile’s outgoing center-right government under President Piñera has been among the most successful in the country’s history, if we judge it by the statistics that serve to measure these things. And yet the center-right has been going through a traumatic identity crisis. Its candidate, Evelyn Matthei, who obtained 25 percent of the vote, was the third figure to lead that ideological family after two previous candidates had to drop out. Several outsiders also ran in this election. One of them, Franco Parisi, a populist economist who comes from the right, took many votes from Matthei, who represented the well-established parties National Renovation and the Independent Democratic Union.

A quick look at some of the achievements of President Piñera is enough to place him among the best performers in Latin America. The economy grew at an average rate of more than 5 percent in his first three years and is growing more than 4 percent this year—against a 3.3 average rate under Bachelet’s previous government. Poverty has been reduced to 14 percent of the population and almost one million jobs have been created. Under Piñera’s predecessor, unemployment had grown substantially. Behind this success is an investment rate that nears 25 percent of GDP, four points higher than in the days of Bachelet. Foreign investors poured US$ 30 billion into the country last year, almost half of what Brazil took in despite an economy that is nine times bigger.

So, what is happening? Mauricio Rojas, a well-known analyst, thinks this is “the best and least loved government in our history.” He points to “the malaise of success”, a material progress that multiplies expectations a lot faster than the ability to meet them. I agree. I watched a similar process in Spain, where a large middle class that was the child of the booming post-Franco economy eventually became complacent and placed on the system redistributive and egalitarian demands that were incompatible with a prosperous society. The result was, in part, Spain’s recent crisis.

Could the same happen in Chile, whose progress has made it an emblem of the emerging world? Much will depend on Bachelet, who as a candidate has given in to several demands from the radical left, including proposing major changes to the Constitution, universal free education, a tax raise and the creation of a public pension system, among others. Whether she will go ahead with this is uncertain since her majority in Congress falls short of what is required for a constitutional change. But one thing is clear: Her government will be under more pressure than any other since the return of democracy in 1990 to reverse course on many of the institutional factors that have made Chile a envied liberal democracy. A significant segment of the middle class seems to have fallen for the siren song of old-fashioned socialism.

......

Read more at:

http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=4838

Merry Christmas

Water Wars

Another Kick to Malthus

We may soon be looking to our oceans for our freshwater—or more accurately, we’ll be looking underneath our oceans. A new study, the first to comprehensively survey the world’s known reserves of undersea freshwater, estimates that there are roughly 120,000 cubic miles—more than 100 times the amount of freshwater we’ve drilled from the ground since 1900—of fresh and nearly-fresh water trapped underneath sea beds. The upshot: we could be seeing more offshore drilling for water as well as oil in the future. Science Daily reports:

The water, which could perhaps be used to eke out supplies to the world’s burgeoning coastal cities, has been located off Australia, China, North America and South Africa. [...]

These reserves were formed over the past hundreds of thousands of years when on average the sea level was much lower than it is today, and when the coastline was further out, [lead author Dr Vincent Post] explains…”So when it rained, the water would infiltrate into the ground and fill up the water table in areas that are nowadays under the sea.

Some of these reserves will be fresh enough that they won’t need to go through the energy-intensive desalinization process, while some of them will be only slightly brackish, and will be easier and, importantly, cheaper to desalinate. In fact, this kind of offshore drilling for water is already happening; NPR notes that there are already operations in places like Cape May, NJ to drill for and eventually desalinate low-salinity water.

Water scarcity has been a favorite topic for the Chicken Littles of the world. Just 18 years ago the vice president of the World Bank was ominously warning that “the wars of the next century will be fought over water.” It’s easy to drum up fears of “water wars” some undetermined time in the future, but studies like this one, and discoveries of new water sources like this one in Kenya, or this one under the Sahara, suggest that these fears that have gripped Malthusians—and that Malthusians have in turn used to push through otherwise unworkable policy recommendations—are a lot less serious.

Italy's "Pitchfork Protests" Spread to Rome

Interior Minister Warns of "Drift Into Rebellion"

By Mike "Mish" Shedlock

Over the past four days "pitchfork protests" have spread to numerous cities, disrupting road and rail travel in protest of the state of the economy.

The pitchfork movement started with a loose group of Sicilian farmers concerned about rising taxes and cuts to agricultural state funds, then evolved into a nationwide umbrella grouping of truckers, small businessman, the unemployed, low-paid workers, rightwing extremists and ultras football supporters according to IBTimes.

Pitchfork Protests Spread to Rome
Reuters reports Italy's 'pitchfork protests,' in fourth day, spread to Rome. 

 Italy's "pitchfork" protests spread to Rome on Thursday when hundreds of students clashed with police and threw firecrackers outside a university where government ministers were attending a conference.

Truckers, small businessmen, the unemployed, students and low-paid workers have staged four days of rallies in cities from Turin in the north to Sicily in the south in the name of the "pitchfork" movement, originally a loosely organized group of farmers from Sicily.

"There are millions of us and we are growing by the hour. This government has to go," said Danilo Calvani, a farmer who has emerged as one of the leader of the protests.

Interior Minister Angelino Alfano told parliament the unrest could "lead to a spiral of rebellion against national and European institutions."

The protests are fuelled by falling incomes, unemployment above 12 percent and at a record 41 percent among people below 25, and graft and scandals among politicians widely seen as serving their own rather than the country's interests.

The protesters' precise aims remain vague beyond demanding the government be replaced and parliament dissolved. Targets range from tax collection agency Equitalia and high fuel prices to privileged elites and the euro.

Mario Borghezio, an outspoken Northern League member of the European Parliament, on Thursday used the protests to attack the euro and European Central Bank chief Mario Draghi.

"The wind of revolt that is blowing in Italy today is the direct result of the euro and the wrong choices made by the EU and the ECB," he said during the ECB chief's testimony to the European Parliament.

The Bailout

$14 Billion Up in Smoke

by eric peters

In Washington, they always try to announce unpleasantness during the off-hours (weekends, holidays and such) so that – hopefully – the stink will be less noticed.

In Detroit, too.

The recent announcement of the accession of Mary Barra as the new CEO of General Motors just happened to be exactly coincident with the announcement that the federal government has divested itself of its remaining partial ownership of GM.

This is good news.

The bad news – according to the Center for Automotive Research – is that $14 billion in taxpayer dollars went up in smoke as a result of the government’s “investment” in GM.

Now, this is supposedly mitigated by the recovery of GM – and the existence of all the associated jobs (and consumer spending and tax revenue) that would have disappeared had GM not been crash-carted by the federal government. That is, had the violence of the state not been used to forcibly compel ordinary Americans to subsidize the failure of a big corporation and thereby immunize it from the moral hazard (having to face up to the consequences of poor decisions) that face them – you and me – in the course of their ordinary, individual lives.

But it’s a false premise.

Why is it assumed that, had GM not been crash-carted, a zero-sum game would have ensued? Certainly, there were parts of GM that were sound. Had the corporation gone on the block, these worth-something parts would not have been thrown away. Do people throw away machine tools? Physical plants? Of course not. They are sold – and re-used.

Productively.

Consider the analogy of a guy who owns a car he can no longer afford to fix. Perhaps he is not competent to fix it. In any case, he realizes it is time for him to bow out – and hand the keys to someone who can fix it (or who can afford to have it fixed). The car is not thrown away because it needs a brake job (or even a new engine). A free exchange takes place – and both parties are benefited. The in-over-his-head former owner walks away from something he isn’t able to deal with – cash in hand, which he can use for other productive purposes. The new owner has less cash in hand, but holds title to a new (to him) car that he will repair and which, once repaired, will be of more value to him than the cash he parted with.

This analogy is simple, but it scales.

Little Kim does Pulp Fiction

In the name of revolution and the people

By Pepe Escobar 

"Despicable human scum." "Worse than a dog." A "traitor for all ages" who "perpetrated anti-party, counter-revolutionary factional acts in a bid to overthrow the leadership of our party and state and the socialist system." Fate: a swift military tribunal, and a swift execution "in the name of revolution and the people". 

So that was the date with destiny for Jang Song-thaek, 67, uncle of North Korea's leader Kim Jong-eun (arguably 30), according to state news agency KCNA. In North Korea, the revolution is definitely not a bulgogi party. 

KCNA maintains that Jang - married to Kim Kyong-hui, the very influential sister of the late Dear Leader Kim Jong-il - admitted he wanted to stage a military coup d'etat. The inevitable follow-up is - what else - a purge (at the Central Committee's administrative department). Who said all that Cold War shtick was over? 

Jang was, in theory, young Kim's Cardinal Richelieu. And then, out of the blue, he is shown on state TV dragged out of a meeting, publicly humiliated, demonized as a drug addict and womanizer, stripped of all posts and titles (chief of the Party's administrative department, vice chairman of the National Defense Commission), accused of corruption, tried and whacked, as if this was a North Korean Pulp Fiction remake. What gives? 

Re-educate or else

Let's see the reaction from the usual suspects. South Korean President Park Geun-hye said this is a "reign of terror". Japanese Defense Minister Itsunori Onodera said this is a remix of the Cultural Revolution in China. Beijing, demonstrating trademark restraint, called it just "an internal affair". 

The most obvious interpretation is Kim telling North Korea, the Korean peninsula and the world at large "I'm in charge. And don't you mess with me." 

Now for the details. Little Kim, since he acceded to the leader's throne, was already deep into a sequential reshuffle of especially the military nomenklatura (that's according to South Korea's Unification Ministry). The most probable scenario is that Jang's slow-motion purge started a few months ago. Or even before that, because Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il always suspected him of social (and especially political) climbing. Some of Jang's aides had already met the Pulp Fiction treatment, but his money manager is lucky enough to be in China, taken care of by the South Koreans. 

Make no mistake: Jang was very powerful and well connected. So powerful that the inevitable "re-education" campaign to follow - either you worship Kim or he'll go medieval - will not be that easy. 

Why the Jews left their Arab lands

Jews who had been present in Arab Muslim countries for a 1,000 years were squeezed out in the span of one generation

By David Bensoussan 

There has been a Jewish presence in Arab-Muslim countries since well before Islam was introduced and it dates back to before the 6th century before the current era. These communities have disappeared or are in the process of disappearing in the majority of Arab-Muslim countries. In fact, 865,000 Jews found themselves excluded in the very countries they were born in and felt that they had to leave. [1,2] 

The traditional legal status of non-Muslims in Muslim countries
Non-Muslim minorities in Muslim countries have the status of dhimmi, which means "tolerated" or "protected". This flows from the assertion that Jewish and Christian scripture was distorted by their unworthy depositories. It is legislated under the Pact of Umar which was amended several times with the addition of other discriminatory measures. 

A dhimmi is in an inferior position within Muslim society: they have special taxes, wear recognizable clothing, are the subject of humiliating measures, and do not have legal status when they are involved in a legal matter involving Muslims. Shi'ite Islam considers Jews to be a source of impurity. While the conditions of Jews have differed between countries, some features overlap for Jews in Morocco, and in the Ottoman and Persian Empires. 

In the 19th century, several travellers, consuls and educators, sent out by the Alliance Israelite Universelle, sent back alarming reports on the situation of Jews, including the following: daily humiliation, objects of scorn, submissive to the point of atrophy, constant insecurity, abductions, densely populated Jewish quarters, dramatic impoverishment and seriously unsanitary living conditions. They described nightmarish fanaticism on the one hand and resignation on the other.   

The difficult circumstances of Jews, who made up 0.5% to 3% of the population, depending on the country, was also raised by Muslim chroniclers. Jews automatically became the scapegoats whenever there was political instability, a military defeat or difficult economic conditions, as well as drought. Massacres and plundering happened on a regular basis. [3] 

Japan Press: "China-Japan War To Break Out In January"

The game of chicken between two great superpowers is about to begin

Following China's unveiling of its air defense identification zone (ADIZ) in the East China Sea, overlapping a large expanse of territory also claimed by Japan, the Japanese media has, as The Japan Times reports, had a dramatically visceral reaction on the various scenarios of a shooting war. From Sunday Mainichi's "Sino-Japanese war to break out in January," to Flash's "Simulated breakout of war over the Senkakus," the nationalism (that Kyle Bass so notably commented on) is rising. Which side, wonders Shukan Gendai ominously, will respond to a provocation by pulling the trigger? The game of chicken between two great superpowers is about to begin has begun.

Via The Japan Times,

Five out of nine weekly magazines that went on sale last Monday and Tuesday contained scenarios that raised the possibility of a shooting war.

...

First, let’s take Flash (Dec. 17), which ran a “Simulated breakout of war over the Senkakus,” with Mamoru Sato, a former Air Self-Defense Force general, providing editorial supervision. Flash’s scenario has the same tense tone as a Clancy novel, including dialog. On a day in August 2014, a radar operator instructs patrolling F-15J pilots to “scramble north” at an altitude of 65,000 feet to intercept a suspected intruder and proceeds from there.

Sunday Mainichi (Dec. 15) ran an article headlined “Sino-Japanese war to break out in January.” Political reporter Takao Toshikawa tells the magazine that the key to what happens next will depend on China’s economy.

“The economic situation in China is pretty rough right now, and from the start of next year it’s expected to worsen,” says Toshikawa. “The real-estate boom is headed for a total collapse and the economic disparities between the costal regions and the interior continue to widen. I see no signs that the party’s Central Committee is getting matters sorted out.”

An unnamed diplomatic source offered the prediction that the Chinese might very well set off an incident “accidentally on purpose”: “I worry about the possibility they might force down a civilian airliner and hold the passengers hostage,” he suggested.

In an article described as a “worst-case simulation,” author Osamu Eya expressed concerns in Shukan Asahi Geino (Dec. 12) that oil supertankers bound for Japan might be targeted.

“Japan depends on sea transport for oil and other material resources,” said Eya. “If China were to target them, nothing could be worse to contemplate.”