Steve Bull's Blog, page 1207
January 29, 2018
The Peace Fallacy
Furthermore, we have about 50% of the world’s wealth but only 6.3% of the its population. . . . In this situation, we cannot fail to be the object of envy and resentment. Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity without positive detriment to our national security. To do so, we will have to dispense with all sentimentality and day dreaming; and our attention will have to be concentrated everywhere on our immediate national objectives. We need not deceive ourselves that we can afford today the luxury of altruism and world-benefaction.
. . . . This process cannot be a liberal or peaceful one. . . .–George Kennan in a 1948 memorandum
Andrew Bacevich is a leading commentator on and critic of America’s senseless “habit for war,” as he puts it. His foremost concern is our going-on-sixteen-year debacle in Afghanistan, though he is naturally troubled by our other misadventures in Iraq and North Africa, as well as our propensity for international violence in general.
Bacevich has recently asked when we might see “A Harvey Weinstein Moment for America’s Wars?” When, in other words, will something like the “sudden shift in the cultural landscape” that was precipitated by the brave women who stood up against Weinstein be seen in response to “our penchant for waging war across much of the planet”? Although he remains deeply disappointed by the distracted acceptance of these wars by the American public, he claims to find some reason for optimism in the recent “Weinstein moment”: “on some matters, at least, the American people retain an admirable capacity for outrage.”
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Ending Pollution Requires a Change in Attitudes
Pollution has become an everyday affair; a murderous way of life which, according to a report published in The Lancet, is responsible for the deaths of at least nine million people every year. The air we breathe is poisoned, the streams, rivers, lakes and oceans are filthy, — some more, some less — the land littered with waste, the soil toxic. Neglect, complacency and exploitation characterize the attitude of governments, corporations and far too many individuals towards the life of the planet, and its rich interwoven ecological systems.
The Lancet Commission on Pollution and Health, which is yet another cry for urgent collective action, found that pollution is responsible for a range of diseases that “kill one in every six people around the world”. This figure, while shocking, is probably a good deal higher because “the impact of many pollutants is poorly understood.” The landmark study establishes that we have reached the point when “deaths attributed to pollution are triple those from Aids, malaria and tuberculosis combined.”
Our selfish materialistic way of life is having a devastating impact on all forms of life; unless there is a major shift in attitudes the numbers of people dying of pollution will increase; contamination of the oceans will increase, deforestation and desertification will continue, and the steady destruction of all that is beautiful and naturally given will intensify. Until one day it will be too late.
Plastic oceans, poisoned air
Even climate change deniers cannot blame the natural environment for the plastic islands that litter the oceans, or the poisoned water and contaminated air. Pollution results from human activity, it “endangers the stability of the Earth’s support systems and threatens the continuing survival of human societies.” A sense of intense, life-threatening urgency needs to be engendered, particularly amongst the governments and populations of those countries that are, and have historically been, the major polluters — the industrialized nations of the World.
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Inside the Dead Zone
It was at a point when linguistics, cultural anthropology and continental philosophy were converging that philosopher Martin Heidegger proclaimed ‘language is the house of the truth of being.’ The problem at hand was conceiving the role of language in an experiential (phenomenological) sense that closed the distance between the Western inheritance of Cartesian dualism, and with it the need for ‘transcendence,’ and the world.
As abstruse as this probably reads, the political, economic and cultural subtexts of Western modernity: social control, economic concentration and commodification of the social realm, tie through the all-purpose apologia of neoliberal capitalism to shared premises about the structure and nature of the world. What then is to be done regarding the colloquialism ‘don’t shit where you eat’ when the world is home.
Image: Oceanic ‘dead zones’ where climate change, industrial pollution and agricultural runoff, have depleted oxygen levels to the point where nothing lives, surround the U.S., developed Europe, Britain and Japan. The common link is capitalism. One would think the term ‘dead zones’ would cause reconsideration on the part of those causing them. What relationship with the world explains treating it is a garbage dump?
At the nexus of linguistics and cultural anthropology is the otherwise banal observation that different peoples approach ‘the world’ differently. The Western, predominantly Platonic / Cartesian, conception of ‘the world’ as an external object has rough corollary in the astrophysicist’s distinction between the ‘big bang’ as expansion of, rather than in, space. In the prior conception there is no dimension in which to put space. Allow for a moment that this problem of dimensionality applies to key conceits of the Western worldview.
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The Doomsday Weapon
The Doomsday Weapon
While we agonize over such life and death questions as clumsy men groping women and the crucial need for gender and racial ‘inclusion,’ let me spare a few seconds thought to something really important and scary: Russia’s doomsday nuclear torpedo.
Code-named by NATO ‘Kanyon,’ it’s reportedly something new and terrifying, a ‘third strike’ weapon designed to obliterate the US east and west coasts in a nuclear war. US intelligence seems to think this doomsday weapon is very real indeed.
I just re-watched for the umpteenth time the wonderful, 1964 Kubrick film, ‘Dr. Strangelove’ and marveled anew at how prescient this razor-sharp satire was. In the film, the Soviets admit they ran out of money to keep up the nuclear arms race with the United States. Their answer was to create a secret, automated doomsday nuclear device that would destroy the entire planet in the event of a major war.
Now, the Russians appear to have responded to a new, trillion dollar US program to develop and deploy an anti-missile system that would negate their ballistic missile system: the ‘Kanyon.’ Fact imitates fiction.
This revelation comes just after the Trump administration has also embarked on new programs to deploy an entire new generation of lower yield nuclear weapons that can be used for tactical war-fighting purposes. North Korea and Iran are the evident targets, as well as Afghanistan. But there is now talk aplenty in Pentagon circles about waging a limited tactical nuclear war against Russia. New US bomber and drone programs are being speeded up. War talk is in the air. Military stocks are booming.
‘Kanyon,’ according to the right-wing Heritage Foundation, a cheerleader for military spending, is a mammoth 100-megaton nuclear device carried by an unmanned submarine.
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January 28, 2018
Asia Is About To Be Hit By The “Worst Oil Tanker Spill In Decades”
The Sanchi disaster is even worse than many initially expected, according to a chilling new report published by Britain’s National Oceanography Centre that shows the ship’s cargo – the equivalent of nearly 1 million barrels of ultra-light crude, plus its own fuel – snaking across the East China Sea into the northern Pacific, according to a series of visualizations created by Reuters.
The Panama-registered vessel burst into flames after colliding with a cargo ship off the east coast of China while on its way to South Korea. The disaster, which took place in the East China Sea, is the worst oil spill since Exxon Valdez.
The Sanchi tanker and a cargo ship collided 260km (160 miles) off Shanghai on Jan. 6. Afterward, the tanker – which burned for a weekbefore exploding and sinking – then drifted south-east towards Japan.
At the time, the Iranian press reported that all 32 crew members – 30 Iranians and two Bangladeshis – died in the accident. The tanker was carrying 136,000 tonnes of ultra-light crude. The always-credible Chinese media claimed that no oil slick had formed.
Authorities have had trouble pinning down how big the spill is, as it changes by the day amid strong ocean currents. But concerns are growing about the potential impact to key fishing grounds and sensitive marine ecosystems off Japan and South Korea, which lie in the projected path of the oil, according to Britain’s National Oceanography Centre.
“An updated emergency ocean model simulation shows that waters polluted by the sinking Sanchi oil tanker could reach Japan within a month,” the center said a report posted on Jan. 16. “The revised simulations suggest that pollution from the spill may be distributed much further and faster than previously thought, and that larger areas of the coast may be impacted.”
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January 27, 2018
UK Defense Secretary: “Russia Is Ready To Kill Us By The Thousands”
Brits woke up to read the following brazenly fearmongering headline in their daily paper today: “‘Russia is ready to kill us by the thousands’: Defence Secretary warns that Moscow could cause mass casualties by crippling crucial energy supplies.”
Recently installed in office, UK Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson is already beating the drums of a new Cold War while seeking to expand Britain’s defense budget, claiming a new ‘Russian invasion’ of sorts is coming. In an interview with The Telegraph Williamson warned that Russia is actively seeking to bring about Britain’s economic collapse by attacking its infrastructure which he said will cause “thousands and thousands and thousands of deaths”. Meanwhile, Russian officials were quick to mock the scenario as “worthy of a Monty Python sketch”.
Tory Defence Secretary Williamson, considered by many to be a possible successor to Prime Minister Theresa May described the ‘Russian threat’ as more subtle than an outright conventional military invasion, saying “The plan for the Russians won’t be for landing craft to appear in the South Bay in Scarborough, and off Brighton Beach.” Instead, he explained “the real threat” as term of a cyber and electronic warfare doomsday scenario of “creating total chaos within the country.”
“What they [Russians] are looking at doing is they are going to be thinking ‘How can we just cause so much pain to Britain?’. Damage its economy, rip its infrastructure apart, actually cause thousands and thousands and thousands of deaths, but actually have an element of creating total chaos within the country.”
And Williamson’s evidence for such sensational claims of an impending attack that would bring down nearly overnight civilizational collapse?
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According to the Doomsday Clock, the End Is Near
The hypothetical “Doomsday Clock” is closer to midnight – the hour of doom – than it has been since 1953, the year that the US and the USSR both tested hydrogen bombs at the beginning of the global nuclear arms race.
The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (BAS) announced on Tuesday that the time on the clock was now two minutes to midnight. The BAS is a group of science and policy experts who assess human advancement…and risk…say that we’re getting alarmingly close to the Zero Hour. Their statement said:
To: Leaders and citizens of the world Re: Two minutes to midnight Date: January 25, 2018
In 2017, world leaders failed to respond effectively to the looming threats of nuclear war and climate change, making the world security situation more dangerous than it was a year ago—and as dangerous as it has been since World War II.
The greatest risks last year arose in the nuclear realm. North Korea’s nuclear weapons program made remarkable progress in 2017, increasing risks to North Korea itself, other countries in the region, and the United States.Hyperbolic rhetoric and provocative actions by both sides have increased the possibility of nuclear war by accident or miscalculation.
But the dangers brewing on the Korean Peninsula were not the only nuclear risks evident in 2017: The United States and Russia remained at odds, continuing military exercises along the borders of NATO, undermining the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF), upgrading their nuclear arsenals, and eschewing arms control negotiations.
In the Asia-Pacific region, tensions over the South China Sea have increased, with relations between the United States and China insufficient to re-establish a stable security situation.
In South Asia, Pakistan and India have continued to build ever-larger arsenals of nuclear weapons.
And in the Middle East, uncertainty about continued US support for the landmark Iranian nuclear deal adds to a bleak overall picture.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
The Flu Is FAR WORSE Than We’re Being Told: Tens of Thousands of Americans Are DYING
We all know that this year’s flu season is bad. I have been pouring over numbers and reports over the past few days, and it’s actually even worse than we’re hearing about. Tens of thousands of Americans are dying. It’s now worse than the 2009 swine flu outbreak and is on track with the 2014-15 strain. And it’s not showing any signs of slowing down.
Despite this, the media is downplaying the severity of the flu and the government makes the statistics pretty difficult to find. Are they trying to avoid a panic? Do they know something we don’t?
Here’s what you need to know about why this year’s flu is so dangerous.
This Year’s Flu Strain Is More Deadly
The dominant Influenza strain this year is H3N2. This particular strain has a history of causing more hospitalizations and more deaths. According to the CDC:
In the past, H3N2-predominant seasons have been associated with more severe illness and higher mortality, especially in older people and young children, relative to H1N1- or B-predominant seasons. Between 1976 and 2007, for example, CDC estimates that an average of 28,909 people died from flu during H3N2 seasons, compared to 10,648 people during non-H3N2 predominant years.
That’s a difference of 18,261 adults each year. And that’s in a good year.
In addition to H3N2 producing a more serious infection in general, this year’s particular H3N2 influenza virus is particularly virulent. The number of deaths due to influenza or complications to the flu, such as pneumonia (a secondary bacterial infection following influenza), varies from year to year.
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The Antidote to Optimism
It is always brightest before they turn the lights out.
You can quote us on that, Dear Reader.
Just when you thought things couldn’t get better… guess what?
They don’t. They go dark as a dungeon.
Antidote to Optimism
Our task today is to show that however wonderful things may appear in today’s markets and economy, they may not be all that great.
We put our backs into this grim work neither for love nor for money, but simply out of a sense of stern duty.
If not us, who? If not now, when?
Someone must put forward an antidote to the optimism now raging through markets around the world.
Someone must make the case for cynicism, suspicion, and mockery.
Someone must take the other side of the trade.
And so… the work, like shucking oysters on a cold day, falls to us. We open them up… hoping to find a pearl.
Donald Trump, Davos ManInstead, we find claptrap.
“The elite gathering at Davos [including Donald Trump],” begins a Financial Timesarticle, “takes place against a backdrop of improving economic activity across the world.”
The IMF says it is the “broadest synchronized global growth upswing since 2010.”
The FT goes on to tell us that the world economy is supposed to grow a healthy 3.9% “this year and next” thanks, at least in part, to the sweeping tax reform measure just implemented in the U.S.
Well, well, well. Gosh, it looks as though we were wrong about everything. You can predict the future after all.
As for the tax cut, we didn’t believe that the tax measure would have any positive consequences other than giving us more money.
What economic benefit could be reaped by taking money from one pocket and putting it in another?
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Turkey tells USA to leave Manbij immediately
Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu speaks to reporters in Ankara, January 27, 2018 (Photo by Anadolu news agency)DAMASCUS, SYRIA (05:35 PM) – As Turkish and allied militant forces from the so-called Free Syrian Army (FSA) advance further upon Kurdish positions in northern Syria, Turkey has called upon the United States to vacate its military bases in the Syrian district of Manbij.
Speaking to reporters on Saturday, Turkish foreign minister Melet Cavusoglu said that Ankara is calling upon the US, its official ally in NATO, to cease any and all support to Syrian Kurdish forces and militias.
Cavusoglu’s statement came mere hours after an official telephone talk between Turkey’s Presidential Spokesman Ibrahim Kalin and US National Security Adviser Herbert Raymond McMaster about the ongoing Turkish invasion of Syrian soil.
McMaster is reported to have promised during the talk that the US would no longer provide weapons to the YPG militias, while both agreed to increase coordination and clear up “misunderstandings” regarding Syria.
While both Turkey and the United States are in violation of international law by entering Syria with military forces without permission by Damascus or a UN mandate, both countries have vastly different interests in the country.
The United States has for years supplied weapons and training to Kurdish militias in northern Syria, causing concerns that they seek an eventual secession of Kurdish-occupied lands from Syria. Turkey on the other hand, having supported so-called moderate rebel groups such as the FSA since at least 2015, actively seeks to prevent the existence of a YPG-controlled area to its southern border, as it sees the Syrian Kurdish units as an affiliate of the banned Kurdistan Workers’ Party, which is active within Turkey.
