Paul Handover from the site “Learning From Dogs” penned a very well written essay around some of the issues I worry most about and we should all worry most about. After I complained I had little energy to write essays, Paul replied:”But you inspire productive outcomes in others! My latest post is entirely down to you.”
Indeed it was. Paul’s essay is reblogged below, after my own, suitably apocalyptic, introduction.
Thanks Paul for helping with this problem, a problem potentially as big as one hundred world war twos, potentially unleashed anytime. Some will scoff, but Obama just took the largest sanctions since the cold war. (Against the advice of his foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, Putin said he will not retaliate; Wikileaks is saying the leaks come from the USA, some hint they come from the NSA, as Podesta, Clinton’s chief of staff, is listed as a foreign agent).
I will reblog your entire essay, which is much better written than I can master, as soon as I have time….
Thanks again, and happy new year for you and your readers!
PatricePeople whine a lot about World War One and World War Two. Whining is good, as long as it leads to examination of the causes of what went wrong.
World War One was pretty much started, in first order of appearance, through the will of five men, five Prussians (one of them the Kaiser, a plutocrat, eldest grandson of queen Victoria, cousin to the Tsar Nicholas II). Those men actually had planned to attack within 18 months, on December 11, 1912.
Would they have engaged on that “preventive war” without the assassination in Sarajevo, and the subsequent ultimatum of Austria-Hungary to Serbia? We don’t know (the assassinated Archiduke was a strong, albeit grouchy, advocate of peace at nearly any cost, and a close friend of the Kaiser).
However a fact is carefully ignored by history textbooks and history university professors: on June 1, 1914, the adviser of racist US president Wilson, Colonel House, proposed to the Kaiser a world government, with the UK, explicitly adverse to the “racially inferior French”.
https://patriceayme.wordpress.com/2013/11/11/plot-against-france-1912-2013/Little noticed by textbooks and historians is the fact that the USA, with the help of the “neutral” Netherlands, enabled the Kaiser to keep on fighting in spite of the Franco-British naval blockade (which was absolute). The Kaiser needed cotton for his high performance explosives, and it came from the US.
Conclusion? A trio of men can start a world war, if they have the power to do so: the Kaiser, the US president, and Von Moltke.
The usual conclusion of textbooks is that Europe was a powder keg ready to explode, and that’s good enough to explain what happened. It is basically a lie: Great Britain had no army, and the entire French government was on vacation in late July-early August 1914. So France and Britain were completely innocent. However, the fact remains one had built a machine which enabled a trio to assassinate world peace
The same general context was true for World War Two. through their actions, both the US and the UK rebuilt Germany as a war machine and an economic powerhouse, as a partially owned subsidiary. After the fall of Spain to the Nazis and fascists, Great Britain decided to support the French Republic in opposing Hitler by all means necessary (February 1939).
After France and Britain declared war to Hitler for his invasion of Poland, US President Roosevelt could have made the war stop early by delivering on the “guarantees” he had given France. But he did not. As a result, what should have been a short war against the Nazis, turned into a vast holocaust.
Conclusion: if one sets up a situation where things can go very wrong, given enough time, they will. The Obama administration engaged in a one trillion dollars nuclear weapons program, but did nothing to reduce the nuclear weapon threat. An obvious strategy for peace would have been to withdraw the land based ICBMs (Britain never had any. France dismantled its own; only three countries have them now, including the USA). Those are launched on warning, and are extremely dangerous.
In this, as in so many other matters, Obama has been an immense disappointment. People who want progress, should push for progressive ideas under the Trump administration. We cannot just hope that Trump will trump his critics (as he did so far). We have to push him in the right direction. The fate of humanity is at stake. And it could be gone in a flash, thanks to our previous, highly criminally derelict leaders.
Happy New Year To All!
…. there’s no doubt!
My title and sub-title comes from commercial aviation. It’s one aspect of the safety culture that safely the millions of passengers who embark on a commercial flight each year. (IATA estimate that it will be 3.6 billion in 2016.) In other words, if the flight crew have even an inkling of an issue with the aircraft while in flight they will make an immediate decision to land.
Why I chose this title will become clearer as you read on.
The end of the Second World War so far as Europe was concerned came on May 8th, 1945. In other words: VE Day. London was not a pretty sight in 1945.
Toni Frissell’s famous image of an abandoned boy clutching a stuffed animal in the rubble of 1945 London. (Image taken from this website page.)
What’s the relevance of May 8th, 1945 to me?…
View original post 1,799 more words
Tags: Land Based ICBM, Paul Handover, V2
Patrice Ayme's Thoughts 
December 30, 2016 at 7:51 pm |
[Sent to LfD and refurbished with link about Podesta.]
Thanks Paul for helping with this problem, a problem potentially as big as one hundred world war twos, potentially unleashed anytime. Some will scoff, but Obama just took the largest sanctions against Russia since the cold war.
Against the advice of his foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, Putin said he will not retaliate; Wikileaks is saying the leaks come from the USA, some hint they come from the NSA, as Podesta, Clinton’s chief of staff, is listed as a foreign agent.
More exactly Podesta is co-founder of the “Podesta Group”, which gets $140,000 from the Saudi government, each MONTH. The co-founder, his brother Tony Podesta is registered as a Saudi agent.
http://thefreethoughtproject.com/clinton-podesta-campaign-saudi-arabia/
In the immediate entourage of Hillary Clinton there were several other Sasudi Arabia and Sharia agents (like Clinton’s “adoptive daughter” and her mother…)
Paul, I will reblog your entire essay, which is much better written than I can master, as soon as I have time….
Thanks again, and happy new year for you and your readers!
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December 31, 2016 at 3:54 am |
Susan Leighton
December 30, 2016 at 06:14
Definitely some food for thought here. We all need to stay vigilant to ensure that an unforeseen tragedy doesn’t take place. Perhaps this should take the form in a public grass roots campaign.
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December 31, 2016 at 3:56 am |
Excellent point Susan! Nothing else will do (we can’t really depend upon Trump to do it for us!)
Happy New Year!
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December 31, 2016 at 4:00 am |
lbwoodgate
December 30, 2016
Supporters of Trump’s desire to expand our nuclear arsenal see it as an extension of Reagan’s whimsy that such build up promises “Peace through Strength” It’s a fallacy that fails to see it is likely to be a MAD result – Mutually Assured Destruction. Some people simply won’t back down as Reagan’s whimsy suggests
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December 31, 2016 at 4:02 am |
Larry: the one trillion dollar, ten years long, nuclear weapons program was launched by Obama several years ago. O B A M A. Frantic Obama adulators refused to hear or read about this fact. Didn’t fit their hysterical adulation.
Trump expressed himself poorly about Obama’s nuke program in one tweet that had the unfortunate word “expand”. That’s what Obama is doing, expanding the capability, but, now that Trump has described it, people who are angry at Trump accused Trump to have done it. People who let Obama expand nukes without protesting, for years, are accomplice of that policy, whether they are conscious of it or not. I mentioned it on my site for years…
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December 31, 2016 at 4:04 am |
MargfromTassie
December 30, 2016 at 07:01
Here is a list of some other ‘nuclear close calls’ :-https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_close_calls
I too believe that we are entering a dangerous era. Trump’s appointees are a very worrying lot.
There has been a lot of discussion in academic circles in recent years about societal collapse – mainly from economic and environmental perspectives. The writings of Joseph Tainter and Jared Diamond have been especially illuminating. I’ve also read and heard with interest what Dimitry Orlov has had to say about what happened during the collapse of the USSR in the 1980’s.
Of course nuclear war is the most worrying of all because if it’s full scale, it will mean the complete destruction of everything in a very short time and none of us will survive. There will be no academics or historians in the future to write about these things. Thousands of species of animals and plants will also disappear forever. It’s unimaginable to think that such a thing could happen and that hostilities could start and end within a single hour.
There’s a lot to be concerned about at this point in history and every day I read and think about these things as I am not the type to bury my head in the sand. Once you become aware of the great fragility of life, you cannot ignore it. Just like being diagnosed with a terminal illness, I guess, it also serves to focus the mind on the good things about life, especially friendships and the beauty of nature and to not take these for granted. My two dogs are also a great source of happiness and the constancy of their love a great comfort.
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December 31, 2016 at 4:10 am |
I gave a massive answer to this on LfD. It will be reproduced as an expanded essay on this site.
Basic point:
Collapse of a superpower happens because of lack of smarts when its leadership “leads from behind” (events, other powers, catastrophe, plutocracy). In other words, don’t do like Obama.
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December 31, 2016 at 5:09 am |
Patrice, you have been most generous to me. Thank you.
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December 31, 2016 at 9:32 pm |
Well, I feel exactly the same about you, so very happy new year!
P
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December 31, 2016 at 4:36 pm |
I have quit blogging because it is so difficult–and not fun–to express how bleak things appear. Yes, Trump beat the system and talks like he is going to take on the neocon foreign policy agenda. But, with the possible exception of Bannon, they are all far-right Republicans who have always toed the neocon line to some extent.
Putin appears sane, which is good. I doubt he has military territorial ambitions on Europe. He wants economic integration; even with North America, as he is building a superhighway to the Bering Strait. He seems to have learned from the Chinese to play the long game.
One analyst who studies historical cycles from the perspective of money (including actual coinage) is Martin Armstrong. Although he sees the world in black and white, Marxist vs. “freedom,” his analysis of the collapse of empires is acute. They become over-indebted and bleed their populations dry. Ultimately the people rebel and throw off the elites. Sometimes this leads to a Dark Age, sometimes to something better. His understanding of international financial and historical cycles is astounding. He predicted 30 years ago the 2016 would be the year when a third party candidate (which Trump was, really) could win. His models also predicted Brexit. He is careful to say to say his predictions are based on analysis of international capital flows, and on certain more or less regular cycles he has discovered in markets and economies, not on personal opinion.
My diagnosis continues to be that increasing wealth and income inequality have snuffed out any shred of empathy (moral sentiments) in the elites around the world. It’s part of the globalist credo (con). If people aren’t doing well in the new economy, it’s their own fault…. Wilkinson’s et al.’s work on inequality be damned….
Armstrong predicts the likelihood of war peaks in about 2018, with confidence worldwide falling into a bottom in 2020. The collapse of the West is complete by ~2032, including the breakup of the USA.
We’ll see what Manchurian Candidate Barry has in mind before the inauguration. He has requested an “intelligence” report on Russian hacking to be delivered the day before the inauguration. There is some chance he will declare the election invalid and attempt to remain in power. Or to create a false flag event to justify an attack on Russia. I believe these people are Satanists.This is level of evil most people can’t admit into consciousness, just as most people will tell you two jets hitting three steel reinforced skyscrapers brought them all down to the ground.
I hope Trump has secured support from the military by now, the rank and file of whom have largely been Ron Paul supporters and haters of the current administration. The next three weeks have to be one of the most dangerous periods in history.
Peace, Benign
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December 31, 2016 at 9:30 pm |
Hey, cheer up, and happy new year. Let bleak brighten our day!
My last essay should please you. It’s about one of your pet subjects, debt.
I am not familiar with (all of) the Trump team. Two of the generals are tops and Obama hated them because of Islam. Mattis is basically the generalissimo of the USA (he was the superior of the present boss of the entire US military). Flynt was head of DIA. Obama hated them both because they said democracy was on collision course with Literal Islam, exactly what I have written stridently for decades (and been called inappropriate names for it).
Kellyanne Conway, a 40 something mother of 4, and lawyer, and pollster, is extremely smart, in a human sort of way. She won the election for Trump. Like Trump she goes for the here is what I really think approach… Much superior to the canned type…
Bannon I hear plenty of these days and had no idea who, what, he was. So I went to his site, and was NOT shocked…
The would-be Sec of State from Exxon is for a carbon tax, that’s all I need to know about him. Nobody not for a carbon tax is ecologically serious.
It’s true Obama has gone off the deep end, suddenly. I understand why: he is trying to see what would have happened, if he had been his own master. Well, have fun, boy!
You have just 19 days.
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December 31, 2016 at 9:41 pm |
It’s doubly tragic… The accidental prospect, and the fully conscious one. We are like the herion addict who sees his own destruction but simply does not stop chasing the dragon. Sadly, until we get off this rock and into space in a permanent and meaningful way we’re going to be subject to these terrestial (tribal) blunders.
Perhaps, for now, the solution is to only allow astronauts and primary school teachers and hospice nurses to hold political office
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December 31, 2016 at 9:45 pm |
Thanks John.
There is most certainly a need in the motivations and aspirations of those in, or seeking, political office to be different.
As always, good to hear from you.
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December 31, 2016 at 9:46 pm |
Considering the nature and gigantism of the power that (some) “office holders” have nowadays, the only solution is to remove most of this power, either by making some weapons unalwful worldwide, and by limiting executive, not to say executioneer power, also by law, worldwide…
Direct democracy to the rescue!
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