Steve Bull's Blog, page 48
April 26, 2024
Why societies grow more fragile and vulnerable to collapse as time passes
Getty ImagesDo societies become more fragile over time? (Credit: Getty Images)An analysis of hundreds of pre-modern states suggests that civilisations tend to have a ‘shelf-life’ – a pattern that holds lessons for today’s ageing global powers.
The rise and fall of great powers is a cliche of history. The idea that civilisations, states, or societies grow and decline is a common one. But is it true?
As a group of archaeologists, historians and complexity scientists, we decided to put this idea to the test. We undertook the largest study to date to see if societal ageing can be seen in the historical record. Our results, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, suggest that states do age, becoming gradually more likely to terminate over time. Could there be lessons here for the present day?
Comment & Analysis
Luke Kemp is a research associate with the Notre Dame Institute for Advanced Study, and a research affiliate with the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk at the University of Cambridge.
The mortality of states
Defining civilisations or societies is tricky, and the former often carries unsavoury baggage. We instead restricted our analysis to pre-modern “states”: centralised organisations that enforce rules over a given territory and population (much like the nation-states of the US and China today).
We took a statistical approach across two different databases. We created our own “mortality of states” dataset (Moros, named after the Greek God of Doom) which contains 324 states over 3,000 years (from 2000BC to AD1800). This was compiled from numerous other databases, an encyclopaedia on empires, and multiple other sources. We also drew on the Sehat databank, the world’s largest online depository of historical information curated by archaeologists and historians, which had 291 polities.
Getty Images…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
It’s Not Me, It’s You: Blaming the Public’s “Perception of the Economy”
If you think you spent twenty years being ripped off while a generation of rent-seeking scam artists was showered with public subsidies, experts agree: your “perception” needs correcting
You only think eggs cost too much.“People are really tying Bidenomics and their perception of the economy to the inflation rate,” said Matt Monday of Morning Consult, in a new Bloomberg story titled, “Biden’s gains against Trump vanish against deep economic pessimism, poll shows.” It’s the latest entrant in an intensifying campaign to describe voters, especially in key electoral swing states, as morons and partisan haters who’ll deny reality itself out of political spite.
This campaign has been weirdly perverse in its mockery. Seattle Times cartoonist David Horsey recently tossed off a visual of the reality-denying swing voter, rendering him as a pudgy, confused hominid in the mode of Monty Python’s duncelike Gumbys. Having negative feelings about “the best performing [economy] in the world” is equivalent to denying who won the Super Bowl:
Left, the Swing Voter. Right, Gumbys.When the Wall Street Journal a few weeks ago ran “What’s Wrong With the Economy? It’s You, Not the Data,” I thought the “It’s not me, it’s you” framing had to be ironic, a spoof of these increasingly numerous “perception of the economy” pieces. Nope:
Noting that 74% of respondents in a recent poll said they felt inflation in the “past year” was going in the wrong direction, author Greg Ip noted flatly “it’s not true,” adding:
I’m not stating an opinion. This isn’t something on which reasonable people can disagree. If hard economic data count for anything, we can say unambiguously that inflation has moved in the right direction in the past year.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Designing Collective Security | Olivia Lazard
We’re breaking all kinds of records at the moment: cities are boiling at 62C, ocean temperatures are literally off the charts, and governments have increased the global defence budget to an alarming $2440 billion.
War costs life, and not just human life. The environmental impacts of war are colossal, with one study already showing that the first few months of Israel’s assault on Gaza emitted more carbon dioxide than 20 climate-vulnerable nations do in one year. Our ecosystems are at their breaking point, with six of nine planetary boundaries crossed. We need global collaboration to commit the huge systems overhaul necessary to survive the planetary crises and mitigate the catastrophic decisions of the last centuries.
Olivia Lazard, environmental peacemaker and research fellow at Carnegie Europe, joins me to discuss just how complex that task is, detailing the five steps of the Anthropocene and how violence increases at each step. We discuss these legacy systems of extraction and violence and how they are embedded into decisions being made around A.I., creating security risks in a resource-scarce world. We also cover the dematerialisation of our economies, the myths that blind us to energy and materials, before discussing the balance of power tipping our planet and human systems further into crisis.
Europe’s historic temperature shift, from summer to winter in just one day
Europe has experienced one of the most rapid temperature flips on record in April 2024 — moving from numerous record-breaking summer-like temperatures at the beginning of the month to record-breaking late April records and frost. Climatologist Maximiliano Herrera said Europe has never seen a month like that extreme.
Temperatures across Europe during the first two weeks of April were marked by numerous record-high temperatures, with summer-like temperatures bringing the feeling of upcoming summer and promoting early blooming in many plants. However, this was followed by an abrupt weather reversal in mid-April, bringing unusually cold temperatures, freezing rain, and snow.
“Europe, the crib of meteorology, is experiencing its most extreme month ever seen,” said weather historian and climatologist Maximiliano Herrera.
Slovenia has become a notable example of this sharp climatic shift. On April 16, following more than ten days of summer-like weather with highs exceeding 30 °C (86 °F), the country reported a drastic change. Temperatures fell to icy levels accompanied by wind, rain, and snow, causing not only agricultural concerns but also traffic disruptions and minor damage from weather conditions.
As we reported on April 21, the most significant temperature drop was recorded in Podčetrtek, a town in eastern Slovenia, where temperatures fell from 27.2°C (81.0 °F) on the afternoon of April 15 to just 1 °C (33.8 °F) by 15:00 LT the following day, marking a record decline of 26.2 °C (47.2 °F).A similar rapid temperature shift was recorded across central Europe, severely affecting the region’s agriculture, particularly fruit trees and vineyards now vulnerable after early blooming.Winemakers in France and other affected regions fought frost with anti-frost candles, evoking a familiar scene that we’ve seen repeating over the past several years. This sequence marks yet another year where early-season warmth promoted plant blooming, only to be followed by a destructive frost.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Protect the Arctic Region: Already Threatened Arctic Ecology Can be Devastated Further by Rapid Militarization
The Arctic region is warming at twice the global rate, leading to rapid melting of ice–some have even predicted ice-free summers by year 2034. This has brought unprecedented threats to various species of the region including the polar bear. Some species are threatened by the shrinking, even vanishing habitats where they have always lived safely and happily, some are threatened by the fast reducing access to their staple food, while some are threatened by weather extremes.
Despite this there is still relentless march to exploit the vast natural resources of the region, including oil, natural gas, rare earth and other minerals. Partly due to the huge natural resources and partly due to strategic and geo-political reasons, big power confrontation in this remote region can also increase.
In fact melting of ice increases the possibility of higher exploitation of natural resources as well as carving out of new maritime routes with all its strategic and commercial implications. Another complication is the increasing confrontational situation of NATO and Russia which may get extended, tragically, even to the Arctic region with very heavy costs to ecology and to native people.
The Arctic region is spread over 8 countries, 7 of which are NATO members. These are USA, Canada, Iceland, Denmark (Greenland), Norway, Sweden and Finland. The eighth country is Russia.
While Russia has a well-established military presence here, this is largely defensive as Russia has important strategic interests to protect here spread over a vast area. With Finland and Sweden recently becoming NATO members and with the situation in Ukraine not working out to be favorable to NATO plans, the USA may just be tempted to try to create difficulties for Russia in this region…
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Congress Just Supercharged the Dollar’s Downfall
Confiscation, Weaponization, and De-Dollarization
“The dollar’s role as the world’s primary reserve currency is a boon for the United States but a bane for the rest of the world.”
~ Barry Eichengreen
The U.S. Senate has predictably voted to give $95 billion to Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan, just three days after the House of Representatives green-lit the assistance in a rare Saturday session.
But beyond the big spending, there was a little something tucked into the Ukrainian aid bill that’ll have major implications for you as an American: the confiscation of Russian dollar assets.
The passage of the Rebuilding Economic Prosperity and Opportunity (REPO) Act, as it’s called, adds a whole new dimension to the story that Matt Smith brought to your attention on Monday.
The Dollar Weapon
Once President Biden signs it into law, he’ll gain the authority to seize more than $6 billion in Russian assets held by U.S. institutions.
Now, in case you’re wondering why Russia held these billions of dollars outside of Russia, it’s because that’s what countries do when they have surplus dollars; they put them to work in the safe and trustworthy nation of America.
The joke’s on you, Russia…
But the $6 billion is just the tip of the iceberg.
You see, it’s not about the amount; it’s about how the U.S. sets a precedent for other Western countries to confiscate the nearly $300 billion in Russian state assets currently frozen under their jurisdiction.
To be fair, it’s not the first instance of the U.S. government’s “weaponization” of the dollar… far from it.
But it has become especially pronounced in recent years, targeting adversaries such as Iran, Cuba, Venezuela, Afghanistan, North Korea, China, and, of course, Russia.
But it never affects just these countries alone…
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
April 25, 2024
‘We were in disbelief’: Antarctica is behaving in a way we’ve never seen before. Can it recover?
Antarctic sea ice has been disappearing over the last several summers. Now, climate scientists are wondering whether it will ever come back.
A small boat glides around patches of sea ice in the water off Deception Island in Antarctica. Sea ice in the region grows from a minimum in summer to a maximum in winter, but in the last several years, the sea ice extent has been shrinking in summer. (Image credit: karenfoleyphotography / Alamy Stock Photo)
Look out over Antarctica in the summer, and time seems frozen. The South Pole’s midnight sun appears to hover in place, never dropping below the horizon for weeks between November and January.
But the Antarctic’s timelessness is an illusion. Only a decade ago, on summer nights across the coast, the sun would glide ever so slightly over the ocean, dusting its ice floes in golden light.
Yet today, much of this sea ice is nowhere in sight. And scientists are increasingly alarmed that it may never come back.
“Antarctica feels very distant, but the sea ice there matters so much to all of us,” Ella Gilbert, a polar climate scientist at the British Antarctic Survey, told Live Science. “It’s a really vital part of our climate system.”
Until recently, Antarctic sea ice fluctuated between relatively stable summer minimums and winter maximums. But after a record minimum in 2016, things began to shift. Two record lows soon followed, including the smallest minimum ever in February 2023 at just 737,000 square miles (1.91 million square kilometers).
As winter began in March of that year, scientists hoped the ice cover would rebound. But what happened instead astonished them: Antarctic ice experienced six months of record lows. At winter’s peak in July, the continent was missing a chunk of ice bigger than Western Europe.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…The Rich Get Richer and the Poor, Poorer – But Why?
A Brief Digression into Heterodox Economics
The rich get richer and the poor get poorer. The Parable of Talents, found in Matthew 25:24-30, is perhaps the earliest written statement of this famous aphorism:
For unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance: but from him, that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath.
Because of this verse, the entire phenomenon of “the rich getting rich and the poor getting poor” is often called the Matthew Effect.
However, the aphorism was first stated in its modern formulation by the great Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. In his 1821 book A Defence of Poetry, Shelly criticized the “utilitarians” of his day by remarking that under their administration “the rich have become richer, and the poor have become poorer.” Today the aphorism is commonly expressed in present indicative tense, expressing a seemingly unchanging pattern observed over time: “the rich get richer and the poor get poorer”
Whatever its source and tense, no one disputes the truth of the Mathew Effect. Indeed, its factuality is in evidenced everywhere! The Guardian reports:
The world’s five richest men have more than doubled their fortunes to $869bn (£681.5bn) since 2020, while the world’s poorest 60% – almost 5 billion people – have lost money.
The details come in a report by Oxfam as the world’s richest people gather from Monday in Davos, Switzerland, for the annual World Economic Forum meeting of political leaders, corporate executives and the super-rich.
The yawning gap between rich and poor is likely to increase, the report says, and will lead to the world crowning its first trillionaire within a decade. At the same time, it warns, if current trends continue, world poverty will not be eradicated for another 229 years.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Iran Vs Israel: What Happens Next Now That Shots Have Been Fired?
In October of 2023 in my article ‘It’s A Trap! The Wave Of Repercussions As The Middle East Fights “The Last War”’ I predicted that a multi-front war was about to develop between Israel and various Muslim nations including Lebanon and Iran. I noted:
“Israel is going to pound Gaza into gravel, there’s no doubt about that. A ground invasion will meet far more resistance than the Israelis seem to expect, but Israel controls the air and Gaza is a fixed target with limited territory. The problem for them is not the Palestinians, but the multiple war fronts that will open up if they do what I think they are about to do (attempted sanitization). Lebanon, Iran and Syria will immediately engage and Israel will not be able to fight them all…”
So far, both Lebanon and Iran have directly engaged Israeli military forces and civilian targets. Syrian militias are also declaring they will once again start attacking US military bases in the region. In my article ‘World War III Is Now Inevitable – Here’s Why It Can’t Be Avoided’ published on April 5th I noted that:
“I warned months ago…that the war in Gaza would expand into a multi-front conflict that would probably include Iran. I also warned that it would be to Israel’s benefit if Iran entered the war because this would eventually force the US to become directly involved. To be sure, Iran has already been engaging in proxy attacks on Israel through Lebanon, but Israel’s attack on the Iranian “embassy” or diplomatic station in Syria basically ensures that Iran will now directly commit to strikes on Israeli targets.”
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Everything You Need to Know About EMPs from a NASA Expert
EMPs (Electromagnetic Pulse) are a trope that is often used in prepper fiction. We often think of an EMP attack as the worst-case, end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it scenario that is just around the corner. There’s little doubt that it would change everything, but what’s the truth?
Here’s what an expert has to say about EMPs
Nobody knows this better than Dr. Arthur T. Bradley. Dr Bradley is a NASA engineer and the leading expert on EMPs in the preparedness community. He’s the author of Handbook to Practical Disaster Preparedness and the must-have Disaster Preparedness for EMPs and Solar Storms. I’ve had the opportunity to speak with him before myself, and you couldn’t ask for a nicer, more down-to-earth person. He really knows what he’s talking about and he shares information without hyperbole. He is the person I trust the most for information in this genre.
In this compelling interview, Brian Duff interviews Dr. Bradley to get the real answers. If you want to separate fact from fiction, watch this video.
What are your thoughts about EMPs?
After watching the video, did any of Dr. Bradley’s information on the result of EMPs surprise you? Based on this, are you making any changes to your long-term preparedness plan?
Let’s discuss it in the comments section.
