India will, sooner or later, simply kill about half of Pakistan. They may yet come to war, and get drawn into a larger, nuclear conflict. India is far larger and has a lot more people. They have more nukes and a better military.

If the Indians killed about half of Pakistan, believe me the fighting would stop. They might even kill a lot more. You never know.

Let’s be clear — there is a very dangerous game Jihadis play. It works only so long as the enemy does not follow the dictates of drain the sea. Kill as many Muslims as you can, as Hulagu Khan did, and you get no more attacks. That man had no trouble at all from the Assassins.

India or China may yet make a Mongol Peace. The likelihood of this is if India sells out the Dalai Lama. Then we will know (arrangements with China have been made). China of course has it’s own issues with Muslims. In the economy that is melting down, they would make a very convenient enemy. One, moreover with much oil and natural gas, which would be worth something later. I do not think the men in Beijing would trouble too much if they had to kill half of Central Asia to make it a Chinese dominated area. They might well come to a meeting of minds with India.

It’s not particularly smart to poke sticks at a large and dangerous neighbor. No matter how divided he might seem to be.

If Congress does nothing, the BJP creams them at the next election and persecution of muslims in India goes up while India confronts PK. Islamist gain

If IN and PK go to war over this, PK will lose, creating chaos inside PK. Islamists gain.

If the US and IN pressure PK into hitting the islamists inside PK, the popular backlash will be enormous and the PK state may collapse. Islamists gain (and they gain if Afstan as well, as the 100,000 PK troops on that border drain away).

The only way I can see them losing is if the Army stages a coup and conducts bloody purges of the ISI and islamists.

I think war is close to inevitable, now. The fragility of the PK government, lack of ability for Washington to repeat the brilliant performance of 2002, and drivers behind the Congress party’s decisions leave desperately little room to manoeuvre for anyone.

There may be a faint shred of hope: if IN sticks to just destroying the PK Navy as punishment. Perhaps it can be confined to the sea – but I am not hopeful.

MarkL
Canberra

“Will we get a Great Depression or is a Great Recession or a Great Stagflation more likely?”

My worthless and uninformed opinion is that it could be a Great Stagflation, i.e. hit bottom and stay there for a few decades (most of my remaining lifespan). This could be worse than the Great Depression (at least it recovered with WW-II).

Mongoose asked the following rhetorical questions:

“1) Is he [Obama] smart enough to know that FDR actually prolonged the Depression. Have the dems learned anything from Reagan et al.?”

I suspect that most of the Democratic elite think FDR’s socialist programs ended the Great Depression (WW-II actually ended it) and that Keynesian economics actually works.

“2) Do the Democrats want a depression in order to implement their socialist agenda (or even just a prolonged recession).”

The ethical Democrats (vast majority) don’t want a Depression (this is obvious). The crypto-Marxist elite within the Democrat Party are probably debating amongst themselves about the merits of using a depression to rid the world of capitalism. I’m assuming that Obama is part of the crypto-Marxist elite but he might(?) have a puppet master who is part of that elite and calling the shots.

Mongoose said:

“1) The current problems were willfully provoked by the Democrats (or some of Obama’s backers), but it got out of hand and took on a life of its own. This is not to say that there were not plainly structural issues there anyway. I really think that Soros pushed Lehman and AIG over the edge with naked shorts aimed at the CRA based derivatives, insurance, etc.”

The current recession/depression was caused by general economic misconduct, e.g. too many people living beyond their means, misuse of credit, subprime mortgages. etc. IMHO, the current recession should have started in mid-2006. However for national security reasons, the government of G.W. Bush tried to keep the economic House of Cards standing until after the end of the 2008 election. There might have been puppet masters behind Obama, who perceived this political attempt to manipulate the economy and scuttled it at a time to inflict maximum political damage (timing and the MSM’s behavior are suspect). The original economic misconduct and subsequent politics have made this recession far worse than it should have been.

The wizards have summoned a demon without knowing the spell of dismissal.

Mongoose said:

“I do not know if Paulson acted in good faith or was manipulated, but I do not think that matters. I am a more than a little miffed at Bush about this (I am not one of those that is always so down on GWB, BTW).”

I suspect Greenspan, Paulson and Soros thought they were acting for the “higher good”.

Mongoose then said:

“What galls me is that these so called “Masters of the Universe” have not had to take any lumps, and are still running things, both on Wall St. and on the Hill.”

Where is it written that “life is fair”?

Mongoose said:

“It is extremely scandalous, and the media should be ashamed of it.”

The MSM is part of the problem.

Mongoose said:

“If the electorate is stupid enough to let him [Obama] further ruin the economy, then I really do not know what to say.”

The electorate was stupid enough to vote Obama into office.

I think we’re reamed. The only real questions is if it’s a 1/2 inch diameter ream with helical flutes or 2 inch diameter ream with straight flutes. Either way, it’s going to hurt.

You have to write actual html for the links:

<a href=”url goes here”>text goes here</a>

see

published April 2008

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Argus

The people behind those tests were criminally irresponsible. They were deliberately popping off nukes just above the atmosphere simply to see what would happen (How did they know it wouldn’t blow away our atmosphere’s protection from solar radiation ?!). Check out the references at the tail end of the Wikipedia articles.

“Does anyone know actual papers with tested data of EMP on modern electronics?”

Here’s the Wikipedia article. You can track down the actual publications from that:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starfish_Prime

“Hopefully a miracle will happen and we won’t scrap the ballistic missile defense program and at some point we will have an anti-ballistic missile shield in space that is laser technology that can fry MIRV’s.”

I have to be pedantic here. A laser in not going to fry a MIRV (Multiple Independent Reentry Vehicle) because a Reentry Vehicle (RV) has a heatshield around it that can survive atmospheric reentry. A laser defense is useful only during the boost phase of an ICBM. The sides of an ICBM are not heat shielded and therefore susceptible to a laser defense system. The only defense against an RV that has separated from the upper stage bus is either a kinetic kill interceptor or high neutron nuclear explosion such as used by the abandoned Sprint and Spartan (Safeguard) ABM system. Truth to tell, the only ABM system that I think was really practical was the old Safeguard ABM system. However we can not use that approach now because the Electro-Magnetic Pulse (EMP) would knock our economy back to the 1950s (cure is almost as bad as the disease).