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There is a significant body of evidence that human extinction is now imminent. There is also a significant body of evidence that human extinction is now inevitable; that is, it cannot be prevented no matter what we do.
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Iran plays chess, the US plays backgammon
by Dr James M Dorsey
Iranians play chess, Americans play backgammon when it comes to warfare, military strategy and conflict management. That is becoming
increasingly obvious in the US-Iranian tit-for-tat on an Iraqi gameboard.
Iranians play chess, Americans play backgammon when it comes to warfare, military strategy and conflict management.
That is becoming increasingly obvious in the US-Iranian tit-for-tat on an Iraqi gameboard.
Hobbled by harsh US economic sanctions and a weak military hand, Iran has perfected the art of asymmetric warfare and carefully calibrated operations as well as acts of political violence, an approach that the United States 40 years after the 1979 Iranian revolution has yet to come to grips with.
Iran’s firing of missiles at two US bases in Iraq in its initial military response to the killing of Iranian general Qassim Soleimani deftly served multiple purposes while leaving the door open to de-escalation.
The Iranian missiles targeting the bases, part of what Iran dubbed Operation Harsh Revenge, were launched as millions crowded the streets of the city of Kerman for the funeral of Mr. Soleimani, the third day of a mass outpouring of mourning, public anger and calls for revenge.
Using guided precision missiles, Iran was careful to demonstrate its capability while not causing further US and/or Iraqi casualties that almost certainly would have provoked a harsh US response.
Driving the point home, Iran’s spiritual leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei described the missile attacks as a “slap in the face” of the United States.
Mr. Khamenei went on to say that Iran’s real revenge would be the expulsion of US forces from the Middle East. “Military actions in this form are not sufficient for that issue. What is important is that America’s corrupt presence must come to an end in this region,” he said.
In a televised address, Mr. Trump, flanked by Secretary of Defense Mark Esper, Vice President Mike Pence, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and several members of the military top brass. appeared to respond positively to the Iranian overture, cloaking it as Iran “standing down.”
Amid the bluster justifying the killing of Mr. Soleimani, promises to impose additional sanctions against Iran, vows that Iran would not be allowed to develop a nuclear weapon, and extolling American military and economic might, Mr. Trump insisted that “the United States is ready to embrace peace with all who seek it.”
He noted that the US and Iran had a common interest in fighting the Islamic State, one reason why Mr. Soleimani was a popular figure in Iran, and went on to say that “we should work together on this and other shared priorities.”
Determined not to get embroiled in another Middle East war, Mr. Trump’s acknowledgement of the Iranian gesture hardly comes as a surprise.
Mr. Trump has in the past nine months exercised in military terms the kind of strategic patience that Iran adopted in the first 18 months after the United States withdrew in 2018 from the 2015 international agreement that curbed Iran’s nuclear program and imposed its economic sanctions.
Iran in May/June of last year switched its posture to one of calibrated escalation after Europe, Russia and China proved unwilling and/or incapable of salvaging the nuclear accord in a way that Iran would be at least partially compensated for the severe impact of the sanctions.
Mr. Trump refrained from responding militarily to numerous attacks, including last year’s Iranian downing of a US drone, attacks on tankers off the coast of the United Arab Emirates, and two key Saudi oil facilities.
Those attacks were the ones that caught the most international attention, but were, according to US officials, only the tip of the iceberg.
The officials said there had been some 90 attacks on US targets in Iraq since May 2019 carried out by Iranian-backed Iraqi militias, including Kataeb Hezbollah, whose leader, Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, was killed alongside Mr. Soleimani.
The attacks were intended not only to force the US to escalate tensions by provoking a military response in the hope that it would lead to a return to the negotiating table but also an environment conducive to a withdrawal of US forces from Iraq at the behest of the Iraqi government and/or public pressure.
“The nearly eight months in which the United States did not respond forcefully to a series of military provocations and attacks almost certainly contributed to the increasingly assertive and audacious actions by Iran and its proxies,” said Michael Eisenstadt, an expert on the military and strategy at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP).
Mr. Trump’s apparent, so far disproven, belief that bluster and intimidation will force his adversaries coupled with television images of the besieged US embassy in Baghdad is likely what persuaded him to respond disproportionately to the killing of a US contractor by assassinating Mr. Soleimani.
Iran hopes that the scare of an escalating tit-for-tat that gets out of control will energize efforts to bring the United States and the Islamic republic back to the negotiating table.
To do so, a third party with leverage on both sides of the divide like Oman would have to bridge a gap on the terms of reviving negotiations aimed at reinstituting the nuclear accord that has been widened by Mr. Soleimani’s killing.
Revival of the agreement would have to involve revised terms that include Iran’s controversial ballistic missiles program and support for proxies across the Middle East, the core of its defense strategy.
Timing is of the essence.
Dialling down tension at best buys the United States and Iran time. It does not solve anything.
Mr. Pompeo, the US Secretary of State, insisted this week that the Trump administration’s goal was to “contain and confront” Iran.
Iran retains a vested interest in strategic escalation. It may hope that the current crisis is the monkey wrench that breaks the logjam but will seek to again push things to the brink if it is disappointed.
Said The Washington Post in an editorial prior to Mr. Trump’s latest remarks: “The way to avoid these outcomes is to work with allies and other intermediaries to offer Iran a diplomatic solution, before the slide toward war becomes irreversible. In short, what’s needed is Mr. Pompeo’s ‘de-escalation,’ not Mr. Trump’s reckless threats.”
Mr. Trump has proven that he can go either way.
Dr. James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at Nanyang Technological University’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, an adjunct senior research fellow at the National University of Singapore’s Middle East Institute and co-director of the University of Wuerzburg’s Institute of Fan Culture
A podcast version of this story is available on Soundcloud, Itunes, Spotify, Stitcher, TuneIn, Spreaker, Pocket Casts, Tumblr, Podbean, Audecibel, Patreon and Castbox.
Human Extinction Now Imminent and Inevitable? A Report on the State of Planet Earth
by Robert J Burrowes
There is a significant body of evidence that human extinction is now imminent. There is also a significant body of evidence that human extinction is now inevitable; that is, it cannot be prevented no matter what we do.
There is a significant body of evidence that human extinction is now imminent; that is, it will occur within the next few years and possibly this year: 2020. There is also a significant body of evidence that human extinction is now inevitable; that is, it cannot be prevented no matter what we do.
There are at least four distinct paths to imminent (that is, within five years) human extinction: nuclear war (possibly started regionally), biodiversity collapse (already well advanced and teetering on the brink), the deployment of 5G (commenced recently) and the climate catastrophe. Needless to say, each of these four paths might unfold in a variety of ways.
In addition, it should be noted, there are other possible paths to extinction in the near term, particularly when considered in conjunction with the four threats just mentioned. These include the cascading impacts triggered by destruction of the Amazon rainforest (which is now imminent) particularly given its critical role in the global hydrological cycle, the rapidly spreading radioactive contamination of Earth, and geoengineering for military purposes (which has been going on for decades and continues).
Far worse, however, is the path to extinction that looms before us when we consider the impact of all seven of these paths in combination with the vast range of other threats noted below.
These interrelated threats have generated a shocking series of ‘points of no return’ (‘tipping points’) that we have already crossed, the mutually reinforcing set of negative feedback loops that we have already triggered (and which we will continue to trigger) which cannot be reversed in the short-term, as well as the ongoing synergistic impact of the various ‘extinction drivers’ (such as ongoing extinctions because dependent species have lost their resource species) we have set in motion and which cannot be halted irrespective of any remedial action we might take. Hence, taking into account all of the above factors, the prospects of averting human extinction are now remote, at best.
Why has this happened?
Because long-standing dysfunctional human behavior, which we have not even begun to recognize as the fundamental driver of this extinction crisis, let alone address, has now trapped us between a rock and a hard place.
On the one hand, we are trapped by our grotesquely dysfunctional parenting and education models that mass produce individuals who are terrified, self-hating and powerless (leaving them submissively obedient while unable to seek out and consider the evidence for themselves and take powerful action in response) and who, as a result of being terrorized during childhood, are now addicted to chronic over-consumption to suppress their awareness of their deep (and unconscious) emotional pain. See ‘Love Denied: The Psychology of Materialism, Violence and War’and ‘Do We Want School or Education?’ with more detailed evidence in ‘Why Violence?’ and ‘Fearless Psychology and Fearful Psychology: Principles and Practice’.
On the other hand, also as an outcome of our dysfunctional parenting and education models (as well as the political and economic systems these generate), we keep reproducing and remain trapped by the global elite, and its compliant international organizations (such as the United Nations), national governments and corporations, including its corporate media. This global elite is utterly insane (and, hence, devoid of such qualities as conscience, empathy, compassion and love) and intent on exploiting our desire to suppress awareness of our emotional pain by over-consuming in order to feed their insatiable desire for profit, power and privilege no matter the cost to humanity and Earth’s biosphere. See ‘The Global Elite is Insane Revisited’.
Hence, this article does two things.
First, in the hope of generating greater consideration of these two issues – imminence and inevitability of human extinction – I have presented in straightforward language and point form, a reasonable summary of the nature and extent of our predicament (which clearly indicates that we are on track for human extinction between now – January 2020 – and 2025), as well as citing the relevant scientific and/or other evidence that explains each problem in more detail.
And second, the article outlines a powerful series of actions and strategies that individuals as well as community groups, neighborhoods and action groups can take as part of a global effort to fight to avert human extinction even if, as mentioned above, it is now inevitable. See, for example, ‘Extinction Foretold, Extinction Ignored’ in which the ‘McPherson Paradox’, which explains one key reason why we are doomed to extinction, is explained.
The obvious question, which you might well ask me, is this: ‘If the overwhelming evidence that human extinction is now imminent and inevitable is incontrovertible, why are you suggesting that we “fight to avert human extinction”?’ And my answer is simply this: Because, as I have done for several decades, I am committed to trying to do this one key thing that feels worth doing. Moreover, I am also hopeful that a miracle or two might just occur if we humans commit ourselves fully to the effort. I am only too well aware that anything less than a full effort, as outlined below, will certainly fail. And we will virtually certainly fail anyway. But I would rather try, than give up. And you?
So, in noting the points below, each of which identifies one key way (or a set of related key ways) in which the Earth and its inhabitants were subjected to greater violence in 2019, it is painful to reflect that, as forecast this time last year and based on a clear understanding of the primary driver of human behavior – fear – that is generating this multifaceted crisis, 2019 was another year of vital opportunities lost when so much is at stake.
Because, in essence, whether psychologically, socially, politically, militarily, economically, financially, ecologically or in other ways, in 2019 humanity took more giant strides backwards while passing up endless opportunities to make a positive difference in our world.
Moreover, to highlight the dramatic nature of our failure, by the end of 2019, a substantial number of countries and regions of the world – notably including the Amazon basin, Australia, several countries in Central Africa, many European countries, Indonesia, Siberia and North America – had each experienced (and/or were still experiencing) a huge series of wildfires (or fires that were deliberately lit), many of them ‘out of wildfire season’ and breaking records for their ‘unprecedented’ destructive impact, demonstrating that the Earth is literally burning up. For just an overview, see NASA’s ‘Fire Information for Resource Management System’.
But this very visible symptom of our crisis masks a vast quantity of evidence, in many domains, that is virtually unknown but far more damaging.
One acknowledgment of this crisis in Earth’s biosphere was the fact that the Doomsday Clock of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists remains poised at just two minutes to midnight, the closest it has ever been to ‘doomsday’ (and equal to 1953 when the Soviet Union first exploded a thermonuclear weapon matching the US capacity and raising the spectre of nuclear war). See ‘It is now two minutes to midnight’.
This status reflects the perilous state of our world, particularly given the renewed threat of nuclear war and the ongoing climate catastrophe. It didn’t even mention the massive and unrelenting assault on the biosphere (apart from the climate) and the rapidly accelerating biodiversity crisis nor, of course, the ongoing monumental atrocities against fellow human beings.
So let me identify, very briefly, some of the more crucial backward steps humanity took during 2019 and, far too easily, unfortunately, forecast what will happen in 2020.
Some Key Lowlights of 2019
1) The global elite, using key elite fora such as the Group of 30, the Trilateral Commission, the Bilderberg Group and the World Economic Forum, and despite much rhetoric to the contrary, continued to plan, generate and exacerbate the many ongoing wars, deepening exploitation within the global economy, climate and environmental destruction, and the killing and exploitation of fellow human beings in a multitude of contexts, in pursuit of greater elite profit, power and privilege. See, for example, ‘Who Is Really in Control of US Foreign Policy?’, Giants: The Global Power Elite and ‘The Global Elite is Insane Revisited’.
2) International organizations (such as the United Nations, the World Bank and International Monetary Fund) and national governments and corporations used military forces, legal systems, police forces and prison systems – see ‘The Rule of Law: Unjust and Violent’ – around the world to serve the global elite by defending its interests against the bulk of the human population, including those individuals and organizations courageous enough to challenge elite profit, power and privilege who are being killed in record numbers. (See more in point 35 below.)
3) $US1.8 trillion was officially spent worldwide on military weapons to kill fellow human beings and other lifeforms, and to destroy the biosphere. This is the highest official (because the figures are taken from ‘open sources’) annual military expenditure ever recorded and the second consecutive year in which an increase occurred. Apart from military spending, weapons transfers worldwide remained high and both the USA and Russia were ‘on a path of strategic nuclear renewal’. See ‘SIPRI Yearbook 2019: Armaments, Disarmament and International Security; Summary’.
However, as noted last year, so out-of-control is this spending that the United States government has now spent $US21trillion on its military in the past 20 years for which it cannot even account! That’s right, $US1trillion each year above the official US national budget for killing is ‘lost’. See Army General Fund Adjustments Not Adequately Documented or Supported, ‘Has Our Government Spent $21 Trillion Of Our Money Without Telling Us?’ and ‘The Pentagon Can’t Account for $21 Trillion (That’s Not a Typo)’.
There has been no progress reported in accounting for this ‘lost’ expenditure during the past year.
4) Under the direction of the global elite (as explained above), the United States government and its NATO allies continued their perpetual war across the planet wreaking devastation on many countries and regions, particularly in the Middle East and Africa. See, for example, Towards a World War III Scenario: The Dangers of Nuclear War, Dirty Wars: The World is a Battlefield and ‘Understanding NATO, Ending War’.
As a result, whether in the US-sponsored and supplied Saudi Arabian war against Yemen which the UNHCR characterizes as the worst humanitarian disaster in the world – see ‘The Cost of Feeding Yemen as War Rages On’ – the result of the US use of depleted uranium on top of its other extraordinary military destruction of Iraq over the past 29 years – see ‘Depleted Uranium and Radioactive Contamination in Iraq: An Overview’ – or the complete dismemberment of Libya as a result of NATO’s bombing of that country and the subsequent assassination of its leader Muammar Gaddafi in 2011 – see ‘Endless War and Chaos in Libya’ – the United States and its NATO allies have continued their efforts to destroy entire countries (also including Afghanistan, among others), at staggering cost to their populations and environments, not because these countries posed a threat to security anywhere but in order to maintain geopolitical control and to facilitate the theft of their resources (mainly oil) at great profit to the global elite. See, for example, ‘Hillary Emails Reveal NATO Killed Gaddafi to Stop Libyan Creation of Gold-Backed Currency’.
Moreover, of course, the perpetually-profitable perpetual war, by definition, has no end. But it still isn’t quite acceptable to say, too publicly and loudly, that ‘The global elite has again used the United States military and its NATO allies to destroy Iraq/Afghanistan/Syria/… (or, as is now the case, to attack Iran) to make a profit’ so what can be passed off as an excuse must be manufactured and promulgated by the compliant corporate media. And, with a gullibly terrified human population disinclined to question authority, this isn’t a problem. The same unconvincing formula invariably works each time. For a fuller and insightful explanation of this point, see Edward Curtin’s article ‘The war hoax redux’.
Of course, Iran has long been in the crosshairs of the global elite because of its prodigious (and thus hugely profitable) oil reserves as well as the clear inclination of its leaders (both before and after the US-installed Shah) to make decisions in the interests of Iranians, including foreign policy decisions such as those related to defense and the role of nuclear weapons. Thus, the global elite ensured that the US Congress, via removal by the Senate of a provision ‘explicitly not authorizing the Pentagon to wage war against Iran or assassinate its officials’ – see ‘America Escalates its “Democratic” Oil War in the Near East’ – in the recently passed National Defense Authorization Act, effectively encouraged President Trump’s recent assassination of General Qassem Soleimani, Iran’s head of the foreign arm – the Quds Force – of the Islamic Revolution Guard Corps (IRGC), Iran’s elite military force and the key figure in the fight against terrorism in the Middle East, in clear contempt of international law. See ‘Trump’s assassination of Soleimani: Five things to know’, ‘With Suleimani Assassination, Trump Is Doing the Bidding of Washington’s Most Vile Cabal’, ‘Why US assassinated General Qassem Soleimani’ and ‘US killing of Iran’s Qassem Soleimani “an act of war”’.
This assassination, of course, raises a heightened possibility of war – essentially, from the elite perspective, to achieve ‘regime change’ and capture control of Iran’s oil – in one or more guises possibly involving, as explained by Professor Michel Chossudovsky, the use of ‘tactical’ nuclear weapons, acts of political destabilization, confiscation of financial assets, extensive economic sanctions, electromagnetic and climatic warfare, environmental modification techniques, cyberwarfare as well as chemical and biological warfare. See ‘A Major Conventional War Against Iran Is an Impossibility. Crisis within the US Command Structure’ and ‘America, An Empire on its Last Leg: To be Kicked Out from the Middle East?’
Hence, much will depend on the Iranian response to the insanity of those attacking it, which will unfold as this article is being published. For further thoughtful analyses of this crisis, see ‘War With Iran’, ‘Iran vs. US – The Murder of General Qassem Suleimani’ and ‘On the Brink of War?’
5) Not content with the devastating impact of the military violence it is inflicting already, during 2019 the global elite continued to plan how to cause more destruction in future. Key initiatives included ongoing work to employ advances in autonomous systems and artificial intelligence technologies that will undermine nuclear deterrence and increase the likelihood of nuclear escalation – see ‘A Stable Nuclear Future? The Impact of Autonomous Systems and Artificial Intelligence’ – and the decision in the United States to create a Space Force, a sixth branch of the US military forces, just two manifestations of this. See ‘The Very Bad Space Force Deal’ and ‘US Making Outer Space the Next Battle Zone – Karl Grossman’.
In its turn, the Russian government has developed and just deployed a hypersonic weapon that travels at Mach 27 and which makes the US missile defense installations in Europe ‘obsolete’. See ‘Avangard changes everything: What Russia’s hypersonic warhead deployment means for the global arms race’.
But other initiatives receiving renewed attention – ‘hypervelocity guns, particle beams and laser weapons onboard orbiting battle platforms with onboard nuclear reactors or “super” plutonium systems providing the power for the weapons’ – also enhance the threat that ‘Modern society would go dark’ in the words of Apollo astronaut Edgar Mitchell. Why? Because ‘any war in space would be the one and only. By destroying satellites in space massive amounts of space debris would be created that would cause a cascading effect and even the billion-dollar International Space Station would likely be broken into tiny bits. So much space junk would be created… that we’d never be able to get a rocket off the planet again because of the minefield of debris orbiting the Earth at 15,000 mph’. See ‘Trump Signs Measure Enabling Establishment of a U.S. Space Force’.
Of course, technological ‘advances’ in weaponry reflect retrograde steps in policy with the US Air Force Global Strike Command (AFGSC) – which includes 20 B-2 stealth bombers, 76 B-52 bombers and 450 Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missiles together capable of delivering thousands of nuclear warheads – along with the U.S. Navy’s submarine-launched Trident ballistic missiles, are now ‘capable of extinguishing essentially all life on Earth within a matter of hours.’ See ‘The Air Force’s Global Strike Command Is Preparing For A Delivery Of New Nuclear Weapons’.
6) Following the US withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) treaty in 2002 and after withdrawing from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (the ‘Iran nuclear deal’) and the Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty (which limited the deployment of intermediate range nuclear weapons) in 2018, the US government further and unilaterally signaled its intention to dismantle the little that remained of attempts during the Cold War and since that time to contain the threat of nuclear war by further acting in violation of the Outer Space Treaty of 1967 – see ‘Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies’ and ‘US Weaponizing Space in Bid to Launch Arms Race’ – as explained in the point above, and demonstrating its disinterest in extending New START: the sole remaining restraint on U.S.-Russian nuclear arsenals that caps deployed offensive strategic nuclear weapons to no more than 1,550 each. See ‘Russia says it’s already too late to replace new START treaty’ and ‘Global Zero Urges Trump to Accept Putin’s Offer on Nuclear Treaty’.
If you are in any doubt regarding the devastating consequences of nuclear war, you will find Professor Steven Starr’s thoughts – see ‘Nuclear Darkness, Global Climate Change and Nuclear Famine: The Deadly Consequences of Nuclear War’ – illuminating. In addition, the description by Lynn Eden in ‘City on Fire’ (based on her book Whole World on Fire: Organizations, Knowledge, and Nuclear Weapons Devastation) is compelling.
7) Another substantial proportion of global private financial wealth – conservatively estimated by the Tax Justice Network in 2010 to already total between $US21 and $US32 trillion – has been invested virtually tax-free through the world’s still-expanding black hole of more than 80 ‘offshore’ tax havens (such as the City of London Corporation, Jersey, Guernsey, the Isle of Man, Bermuda, the Cayman Islands, Hong Kong, Nauru, St. Kitts, Antigua, Tortola, Switzerland, the Channel Islands, Monaco, Cyprus, Gibraltar and Liechtenstein). This is just financial wealth. Additionally, a large share of the real estate, yachts, racehorses, gold bricks and many other assets that count as non-financial wealth are also owned via offshore structures that make it impossible to identify their owners. See Tax Justice Network.
Tax havens are locations around the world where wealthy individuals, criminals and terrorists, as well as governments and government agencies (such as the CIA), banks, corporations, hedge funds, international organizations (such as the Vatican) and crime syndicates (such as the Mafia), can stash their money so that they can avoid laws, regulation and oversight and, very often, evade tax. See ‘Elite Banking at Your Expense: How Secretive Tax Havens are Used to Steal Your Money’.
Controlled by the global elite, Wall Street and other major banks manage this monstrous diversion of wealth under Government protection. ‘Their business is fraud and grand theft.’ Tax haven locations offer more than tax avoidance. ‘Almost anything goes on.’ It includes ‘bribery, illegal gambling, money laundering, human and sex trafficking, arms dealing, toxic waste dumping, conflict diamonds and endangered species trafficking, bootlegged software, and endless other lawless practices.’ See ‘Trillions Stashed in Offshore Tax Havens’.
8) The world’s major corporations continued to inflict enormous ongoing violence (in a myriad of ways) in their pursuit of endless profit at the expense of living beings (human and otherwise) and Earth’s biosphere by producing and marketing a wide range of life-destroying products ranging from nuclear weapons and nuclear power to fossil fuels, junk food, pharmaceutical drugs (including health-destroying and sometimes life-destroying vaccinations: see, for example, ‘Vaxxed-Unvaxxed – The Science’), synthetic poisons and genetically mutilated organisms (GMOs).
These corporations include the following: weapons manufacturers, major banks and their ‘industry groups’ like the International Monetary Conference, asset management firms, investment companies, financial services companies, fossil fuel (coal, oil and gas) corporations, technology corporations, media corporations, major marketing and public relations corporations, agrochemical (pesticides, seeds, fertilizers) giants, pharmaceutical corporations (with their handmaidens in the medical and psychiatric industries: see ‘Defeating the Violence in Our Food and Medicine’ and ‘Defeating the Violence of Psychiatry’), biotechnology (genetic mutilation) corporations, mining corporations, nuclear power corporations, food multinationals and water corporations. You can see a list of the major corporations in this article: ‘The Global Elite is Insane Revisited’.
9) More than two billion people continued to live under occupation, dictatorship or threat of genocidal assault often with the global elite sponsoring an oppressive national government or simply a local elite that exercises power irrespective of the government in office. See, for example, ‘500 Years is Long Enough! Human Depravity in the Congo’.
10) 36,500,000 human beings (mainly in Africa, Asia and Central/South America) were starved to death in 2019.
Are we serious about ending these totally unnecessary deaths? Not even remotely, as thoughtfully explained by Professor George Kent in his article ‘Are We Serious About Ending Hunger?’
As Professor Kent notes: currently, around the world, ‘around 800 million people suffer from hunger’ and that ‘global efforts to end hunger have not been serious’: There has been ‘no substantial commitment of resources, no management group to control the process, no realistic timeline, and no means for mid-course corrections on the way to the goal. There [have been] no contracts with agencies that would work toward achievement of the goal…. hoping for the end of hunger won’t work. Hope is not a strategy.’ Moreover, ‘The UN system offers little more than vague aspirations.’
11) 18,250,000 children were killed by adults in wars, by starving them to death, by denying them clean drinking water, and in a large variety of other ways.
12) 8,000,000 children were trafficked into sexual slavery; executed in sacrificial killings after being kidnapped; bred to be sold as a ‘cash crop’ for sexual violation, to produce child pornography (‘kiddie porn’) and ‘snuff’ movies (in which children are killed during the filming); ritually tortured and murdered as well as raped by dogs trained for the purpose. See ‘Humanity’s “Dirty Little Secret”: Starving, Enslaving, Raping, Torturing and Killing our Children’.
13) Hundreds of thousands of individuals were kidnapped or tricked into slavery, which now denies 46,000,000 human beings (more than at any time in human history) the right to live the life of their choice, condemning many individuals – especially women and children – to lives of sexual slavery, forced labor or as child soldiers. Needless to say, the global elite continues to expand this highly profitable business while its compliant governments do no more than mouth an occasional objection to the practice while doing nothing effective to actually end it, as was patently evident following disclosures about high-profile public figures during the year. See ‘The Global Slavery Index’. For one recent account of the life of a modern slave, see ‘My Family’s Slave’. And for an account of the involvement of public figures in sex slavery, see ‘Prince Andrew and Jeffrey Epstein: what you need to know’ and the other articles listed at the end of this one.
14) Well over 100,000 people (particularly Falun Gong practitioners) in China, where an extensive state-controlled program is conducted, were subjected to forced organ removal for the trade in human organs. See Bloody Harvest and The Slaughter.
15) 15,768,000 people were displaced by war, persecution or famine. There are now 70,800,000 people, more that half of whom are children and approximately 10,000,000 of whom are stateless, who have been forcibly displaced worldwide and remain precariously unsettled, usually in adverse circumstances. One person in the world is forcibly displaced every two seconds. See ‘Figures at a Glance’.
16) Millions of people were made homeless in their own country as a result of war, persecution, ‘natural’ disasters (many of which, including hurricanes/cyclones and wildfires, were actually generated by dysfunctional human behavior rather than nature), internal conflict, poverty or as a result of elite-driven national economic policies. The last time a global survey was attempted – by the United Nations back in 2005 – an estimated 100 million people were homeless worldwide. In addition, as many as 1.6 billion people lack adequate housing (living in slums, for example). See ‘Global Homelessness Statistics’.
17) Highlighting the unheralded biodiversity crisis on Earth, as a result of habitat destruction and degradation as well as a multitude of other threats, 73,000 species of life (plants, birds, animals, fish, amphibians, insects, reptiles and microbes) on Earth were driven to extinction with the worldwide loss of many of these species – and certainly including insects, birds, animals and fish – now at catastrophic levels. Tragically, many additional species are now trapped in a feedback loop which will inevitably precipitate their extinction as well because of the way in which ‘co-extinctions’, ‘localized extinctions’ and ‘extinction cascades’ work once initiated and as has already occurred in almost all ecosystem contexts. See the (so far) five-part series ‘Our Vanishing World’. Have you seen a flock of birds of any size recently? A butterfly?
18) Separately from global species extinctions, Earth continued to experience ‘a huge episode of population declines and extirpations, which will have negative cascading consequences on ecosystem functioning and services vital to sustaining civilization. We describe this as a “biological annihilation” to highlight the current magnitude of Earth’s ongoing sixth major extinction event.’ Moreover, local population extinctions ‘are orders of magnitude more frequent than species extinctions. Population extinctions, however, are a prelude to species extinctions, so Earth’s sixth mass extinction episode has proceeded further than most assume.’ See ‘Biological annihilation via the ongoing sixth mass extinction signaled by vertebrate population losses and declines’ and ‘Our Vanishing World: Wildlife’.
19) Wildlife trafficking, worth up to $20 billion in 2019, is pushing many endangered species to the brink of extinction. Illegal wildlife products include jewelry, traditional medicine, clothing, furniture, and souvenirs, as well as some exotic pets, most of which are sold to unaware/unconcerned consumers in the West although China is heavily implicated too. See, for example, Stop Wildlife Trafficking.
20) 16,000,000 acres of pristine rainforest were cut or burnt down for purposes such as the following: acquiring timbers used in construction, clearing land to establish cattle farms so that many people can eat cheap hamburgers, clearing land to establish palm oil plantations so that many people can eat processed (including junk) foods based on this oil, clearing land to establish palm oil and soybean plantations so that some people can delude themselves that they are using a ‘green biofuel’ in their car (when, in fact, these fuels generate a far greater carbon footprint than fossil fuels), mining (much of it illegal) for a variety of minerals (such as gold, silver, copper, coltan, cassiterite and diamonds), and logging to produce woodchips so that some people can buy cheap paper, including cheap toilet paper. One outcome of this destruction is that 40,000 tropical tree species are now threatened with extinction. See ‘Our Vanishing World: Rainforests’, ‘Measuring the Daily Destruction of the World’s Rainforests’, ‘Estimating the global conservation status of more than 15,000 Amazonian tree species’ and ‘Half of Amazon Tree Species Face Extinction’.
Another outcome is that ‘the precious Amazon is teetering on the edge of functional destruction and, with it, so are we’. How long do we have? ‘The tipping point is here, it is now.’ Professor Thomas E. Lovejoy and his fellow researcher Carlos Nobre elaborate this point: ‘Bluntly put, the Amazon not only cannot withstand further deforestation but also now requires rebuilding as the underpinning base of the hydrological cycle if the Amazon is to continue to serve as a flywheel of continental climate for the planet and an essential part of the global carbon cycle.’ See ‘Amazon Tipping Point: Last Chance for Action’.
21) Vast quantities of soil were washed away as we destroyed the rainforests, and enormous quantities of both inorganic constituents (such as heavy metals like cadmium, chromium, lead, mercury, nickel and zinc) and organic pollutants (particularly synthetic chemicals in the form of fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides) were dumped into the soil as well, thus reducing its nutrients and killing the microbes and earthworms within it. We also contaminated enormous quantities of soil with radioactive waste. See Soil-net, ‘Glyphosate effects on soil rhizosphere-associated bacterial communities’ and ‘Disposing of Nuclear Waste is a Challenge for Humanity’.
To briefly elaborate the evidence in relation to earthworms: Given ‘recent reports of critical declines of microbes, plants, insects and other invertebrates, birds and other vertebrates, the situation pertaining to neglected earthworms’ was evaluated in an extensive investigation recently undertaken by Robert J. Blakemore. His research demonstrated an 83.3 percent decline in earthworms in agrichemical farms – that is, those that use pesticides, herbicides and synthetic fertilizers – compared with farms utilizing organic methods. Why? Because ‘it is impossible to replace or artificially engineer the myriad beneficial processes and services freely provided by earthworms’ which includes extensive burrows in pastures enriched with soil organic matter that allow ingress of air & water and provide living space for other soil organisms. Moreover, given that ecological services overall have been given a median value of US$135 trillion per year, which is almost double the global economic GDP of around $75 trillion – see ‘Changes in the global value of ecosystem services’ and ‘Valuing nature and the hidden costs of biodiversity loss’ – Blakemore reaches an obvious conclusion: ‘Persistence with failing chemical agriculture makes neither ecological nor economic sense.’ See ‘Critical Decline of Earthworms from Organic Origins under Intensive, Humic SOM-Depleting Agriculture’.
Given that this multifaceted destruction of the soil fundamentally threatens the global grain supply, when the ability to grow, store and distribute grains at scale is a defining element of civilization, as Professor Guy McPherson eloquently explains it: ‘A significant decline in grain harvest will surely drive this version of civilization to the abyss and beyond.’ See ‘Seven Distinct Paths to Loss of Habitat for Humans’.
22) Despite an extensive and ongoing coverup by the Japanese government and nuclear corporations, as well as the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), vast amounts of radioactive waste were dumped into the biosphere from the TEPCO nuclear power plant at Fukushima in Japan including by discharge into the Pacific Ocean killing an incalculable number of fish and other marine organisms and indefinitely contaminating expanding areas of that ocean. See ‘Fukushima: A Nuclear War without a War: The Unspoken Crisis of Worldwide Nuclear Radiation’, ‘2019 Annual Report – Fukushima 8th Anniversary’, ‘Eight years after triple nuclear meltdown, Fukushima No. 1’s water woes show no signs of ebbing’ and ‘Fukushima’s Three Nuclear Meltdowns Are “Under Control” – That’s a Lie’.
But the challenges to be overcome in safely handling and, ultimately, safely storing the radiation hazards (such as the three melted nuclear reactors and the spent fuel rods) and the radioactive waste from the Fukushima disaster are monumental, as touched on in this article outlining the 40-year plan that the Japanese government hopes will delude us into believing will deal with the many components of this perpetual radioactive nightmare. See ‘Japan revises Fukushima cleanup plan, delays key steps’.
In addition, one critical legacy of the US military’s 67 secretive and lethal nuclear weapons tests on the Marshall Islands between 1946 and 1958 is the ‘eternally’ radioactive garbage left behind and now leaking into the Pacific Ocean. See ‘The Pentagon’s Disastrous Radioactive Waste Dump in the Drowning Marshall Islands is Leaking into the Pacific Ocean’.
Is other nuclear waste safely stored? Of course not! See, for example, ‘NRC admits San Onofre Holtec nuclear waste canisters are all damaged’, ‘USA’s Hanford nuclear site could suffer the same fate as Russia’s Mayak – or worse’ and, for a more comprehensive report, ‘The World Nuclear Waste Report 2019: Focus Europe’.
Of course, the Chernobyl nuclear catastrophe in 1986 continues to inflict extensive damage on the biosphere which you can learn more about from the research by Professor Kate Brown, author of Manual for Survival: A Chernobyl Guide to the Future – ‘Chernobyl Radiation Cover-Ups & Deadly Truth’, ‘UN and Western countries covered up the facts on the huge health toll of Chernobyl radiation’ and ‘Unreported Deaths, Child Cancer & Radioactive Meat: The Untold Story of Chernobyl’ – as well as the investigatory work of Alison Katz of Independent WHO: ‘Chernobyl Health Cover-Up, Lies by UN/WHO Exposed’.
23) Human use of fossil fuels to power aircraft, shipping and vehicles as well as for industrial production and to generate electricity (among other purposes) released 10 billion metric tons (10 gigatons) of carbon dioxide into Earth’s biosphere, a 0.6% increase over 2018, with China’s monstrous CO2 emissions for 2019 totaling 2.6% greater than the previous year. See ‘Global Carbon Budget 2019’.
As one measure of their contempt for the utterly inadequate goals of the Paris climate agreement, and with government approval,‘over 400 of the 746 companies on the Global Coal Exit List are still planning to expand their coal operations’. If built, these projects in 60 countries would add over 579 GW to the global coal plant fleet, an increase of almost 29%. See ‘Companies Driving the World’s Coal Expansion Revealed: NGOs Release New Global Coal Exit List for Finance Industry’ and ‘Proposed Coal Plants by Country’.
24) 72 billion land animals (mainly chickens, ducks, pigs, rabbits, geese, turkeys, sheep, goats and beef cattle) were killed for food. In addition, between 37 and 120 billion fish were killed on commercial farms with another 2.7 trillion fish caught and killed in the wild. See ‘How Many Animals Are Killed for Food Every Day?’
Apart from that, more than 100 million animals were killed for laboratory purposes in the United States alone and there were other animal deaths in shelters, zoos and in blood sports. See ‘How Many Animals Are Killed Each Year?’
In addition, according to Humane Society International, about 100 million animals (particularly mink, foxes, raccoon dogs and rabbits) were bred and slaughtered in fur farms geared to supplying the fashion industry. In addition to farming, millions of wild animals were trapped and killed for fur, as were hundreds of thousands of seals. See ‘How Many Animals are Killed Each Year?’
25) Farming of animals for human consumption released 7.1 gigatons of CO2-equivalent into Earth’s atmosphere; this represented 14.5 percent of all anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. About 44% of livestock emissions were in the form of methane (which was 44% of anthropogenic CH4 emissions), 29% as Nitrous Oxide (which was 53% of anthropogenic N2O emissions) and 27% as Carbon Dioxide (which was 5% of anthropogenic CO2 emissions). See ‘GHG Emissions by Livestock’.
26) Human use of fossil fuels and farming of animals released more than 3.2 million metric tons of (CO2 equivalent) nitrous oxide (N2O) into Earth’s atmosphere. See ‘Nitrous oxide emissions’.
27) Despite largely successful efforts by the elite-controlled IPCC to delude people into believing that the global mean temperature has increased by only 1.0 degree celsius, in fact, since the pre-industrial era (prior to 1750) greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions have already caused the global temperature to rise by about 1.73 degrees celsius. See ‘How much warmer is it now?’
Among a lengthy list of adverse outcomes, this has caused the melting of Arctic permafrost and undersea methane ice clathrates resulting in an incalculable quantity of methane being uncontrollably released into the atmosphere, including during 2019, with the quantity being released getting ever closer to ‘exploding’. See ‘Anomalies of methane in the atmosphere over the East Siberian shelf: Is there any sign of methane leakage from shallow shelf hydrates?’, ‘7,000 underground gas bubbles poised to “explode” in Arctic’, ‘Release of Arctic Methane “May Be Apocalyptic,” Study Warns’ and ‘Understanding the Permafrost-Hydrate System and Associated Methane Releases in the East Siberian Arctic Shelf’.
In fact, the methane threat is already so extreme that the forecast El Niño event for 2020 could be the catalyst to trigger huge methane releases from the Arctic Ocean precipitating human extinction this year. See ‘Very early warning signal for El Niño in 2020 with a 4 in 5 likelihood’ and ‘Extinction in 2020?’
28) Glaciers and mountain ice fields – whether located in Greenland or other regions of the far north, the Himalaya, at the Equator, in southern latitudes or Antarctica – are all melting at unprecedented and accelerating rates, losing billions of tonnes of ice in 2019. For a discussion of the details and the implications of this, see ‘Our Vanishing World: Glaciers’.
29) The ongoing destruction of Earth’s oceans continued unabated and accelerated in key areas.
An incalculable amount of agricultural poisons, fossil fuels and other wastes was discharged into the ocean, adversely impacting life at all ocean depths – see ‘Staggering level of toxic chemicals found in creatures at the bottom of the sea, scientists say’ – and generating ocean ‘dead zones’: regions that have too little oxygen to support marine organisms. See ‘Our Planet Is Exploding With Marine “Dead Zones”’.
In addition, however, another problem that has been getting insufficient attention is the result of the expanding impacts of the rapidly increasing levels of ocean acidification, ocean warming, ocean carbon flows and ocean plastics. Taken in isolation each of these changes clearly has negative consequences for the ocean. All these shifts taken together, however, result in a rapid and serious decline in ocean health and this, in turn, adversely impacts all species dependent on the ocean including fish, mammals and seabirds. Moreover, on top of these problems is the issue of oxygen availability given that oxygen in the air or water is of paramount importance to most living organisms. As the recently released report ‘Ocean deoxygenation: Everyone’s problem. Causes, impacts, consequences and solutions’ describes in some detail, oxygen levels are currently declining across the ocean, not just in ‘dead zones’.
And to elaborate the plastics problem briefly: at least 8 million metric tons of plastic, of which 236,000 tons were microplastics, was discharged into the ocean. So severe is the problem that there are now five massive patches of plastic in the oceans around the world covering large swaths of the ocean; the plastic patch between California and Hawaii is the size of the state of Texas. See ‘Plastic waste inputs from land into the ocean’ and ‘Plastics in the Ocean’.
30) Earth’s fresh water and ground water was further depleted and contaminated.
The depletion is a primary outcome of the ongoing deforestation of the planet and is manifesting in several ways including as localized droughts, which are becoming increasingly common as a number of cities and regions around the world can attest. According to the World Resources Institute, half of the surface water in some countries – mainly in Central Asia and the Middle East – was depleted between 1984 and 2015, with agriculture using an average of 70% of the water. 36 countries are ‘extremely water-stressed’ and water is now a major factor in conflict in at least 45 countries. See ‘7 Graphics Explain the State of the World’s Water’.
Separately from depletion, fresh water was contaminated by bacteria, viruses and household chemicals from faulty septic systems; hazardous wastes from abandoned and uncontrolled hazardous waste sites (of which there are over 20,000 in the USA alone); leaks from landfill items such as car battery acid, paint and household cleaners; the pesticides, herbicides and other poisons used on farms and home gardens; radioactive waste from nuclear tests (some of it stored in glaciers that are now melting); and the chemical contamination caused by hydraulic fracturing (fracking) in search of shale gas, for which about 750 chemicals and components, some extremely toxic and carcinogenic like lead and benzene, have been used. See ‘Groundwater contamination’, ‘Groundwater drunk by BILLIONS of people may be contaminated by radioactive material spread across the world by nuclear testing in the 1950s’ and ‘Fracking chemicals’.
31) The longstanding covert military use of geoengineering – spraying tens of millions of tons of highly toxic metals (including aluminium, barium and strontium) and toxic coal fly ash nanoparticulates (containing arsenic, chromium, thallium, chlorine, bromine, fluorine, iodine, mercury and radioactive elements) into the atmosphere from jet aircraft to weaponize the atmosphere and weather – in order to enhance elite control of human populations, continued unchecked. Geoengineering is systematically destroying Earth’s ozone layer – which blocks the deadly portion of solar radiation, UV-C and most UV-B, from reaching Earth’s surface – as well as adversely altering Earth’s weather patterns and polluting its air, water and soil at incredible cost to the health and well-being of living organisms and the biosphere. See ‘Geoengineering Watch’, including ‘Engineered Climate Cataclysm: Hurricane Harvey’.
For a discussion of the military implications of geoengineering, see ‘The Ultimate Weapon of Mass Destruction: “Owning the Weather” for Military Use’.
And for discussions of the research, and implications of it, by Dr. Dietrich Klinghardt and Dr. Stephenie Seneff (Senior Research Scientist at MIT), which considers damage to the biosphere and human health caused by the geoengineering release of a synthesized compound of nanonized aluminium and the poison glyphosate that creates a ‘supertoxin’ that is generating ‘a crisis of neurological diseases’, see ‘World-Renowned Doctor Addresses Climate Engineering Dangers’, Dr Stephenie Seneff, ‘Autism Explained: Synergistic Poisoning from Aluminum and Glyphosate’ and ‘Extinction is Stalking Humanity: The Threats to Human Survival Accumulate’.
32) The incredibly destructive 5G technology, which a vast number of scientists (currently totaling more than 188,000 individuals and organizations from 203 nations and territories: see ‘International Appeal to Stop 5G on Earth and in Space’) are warning will have catastrophic consequences for life on Earth, is now being rapidly introduced without informed public consultation and despite ongoing protests around the world.
The following articles and videos will give you a solid understanding of key issues from the viewpoint of human and planetary well-being. See ‘5G Satellites: A Threat to all Life’, ‘5G Danger: 13 Reasons 5G Wireless Technology Will Be a Catastrophe for Humanity’, ‘5G Technology is Coming – Linked to Cancer, Heart Disease, Diabetes, Alzheimer’s, and Death’, ‘20,000 Satellites for 5G to be Launched Sending Focused Beams of Intense Microwave Radiation Over Entire Earth’, ‘Will 5G Cell Phone Technology Lead To Dramatic Population Reduction As Large Numbers Of Men Become Sterile?’, ‘The 5G Revolution: Millions of “Human Guinea Pigs” in Big Telecom’s Global Experiment’ and ‘5G Apocalypse – The Extinction Event’.
33) As one outcome of our dysfunctional parenting model and political systems, fascism continued to rise around the world. See ‘The Psychology of Fascism’.
34) Despite the belief that we have ‘the right to privacy’, privacy (in any sense of the word) was ongoingly eroded in 2019 and is now effectively non-existent, particularly thanks to Alphabet (owner of Google). Taken together, ‘Uber, Amazon, Facebook, eBay, Tinder, Apple, Lyft, Foursquare, Airbnb, Spotify, Instagram, Twitter, Angry Birds… have turned our computers and phones into bugs that are plugged in to a vast corporate-owned surveillance network. Where we go, what we do, what we talk about, who we talk to, and who we see – everything is recorded and, at some point, leveraged for value.’ Moreover, given Google’s integrated relationship with the US government, the US military, the CIA, and major US weapons manufacturers, there isn’t really anything you can do that isn’t known by those who want to know it. In essence, Google is ‘a powerful global corporation with its own political agenda and a mission to maximise profits for shareholders’ and it partly achieves this by expanding the surveillance programs of the national security state at the direction of the global elite. But Google isn’t alone and it isn’t just happening in the USA. See ‘Everybody’s Watching You: The Intercept’s 2019 Technology Coverage’, ‘Google’s Earth: How the Tech Giant Is Helping the State Spy on Us’, the articles by John W. Whitehead on ‘Surveillance’ and the documentary ‘The Modern Surveillance State’.
35) The right to free speech, accurate information and conscience-based nonviolent activism was ongoingly eroded in 2019 as efforts, by governments and corporations particularly, to control speech, information and political action accelerated. Whether this took the form of censorship, restrictions on access or violent acts directed against those whose views or actions were seen as dangerous or wrong, Global Witness, Human Rights Watch and other organizations documented an endless series of setbacks for free speech and political activity in a wide variety of countries around the world with individuals and journalists imprisoned for telling the truth, nonviolent activists assaulted and killed, critics silenced by defamation laws or ‘disappearance’, and the closure of newspapers, television stations and the internet to prevent rapid promulgation of information, among other infringements. See, for example, ‘Free Speech’, ‘The supply chain of violence’, ‘Environmental activist murders double in 15 years’ and ‘Enemies of the State? How governments and businesses silence land and environmental defenders’.
36) Believing that we know better than evolution, and following the birth in 2018 of the first gene-edited babies in China – see ‘Why we are not ready for genetically designed babies’ and ‘China’s Golem Babies: There is Another Agenda’ – in 2019, further human gene-editing was done as well as gene-editing experiments intended to explore possibilities for more complex gene-editing of humans. Why? According to the authors of one report: ‘To extend the frontier of genome editing and enable the radical redesign of mammalian genomes’ (emphasis added). This experiment allowed ‘for the simultaneous editing of >10,000 loci in human cells’. See ‘Enabling large-scale genome editing by reducing DNA nicking’.
Needless to say, at least some responsible scientists are well aware of the possibly horrific consequences of this technology in the hands of those without ethics and are calling for a moratorium of at least five years on heritable human gene editing to allow time ‘to engage in proactive, rather than reactive, discussions about the future of such technology’. Of course, despite the calls for caution, ‘some researchers are forging ahead’. See ‘NIH Director on Human Gene Editing: “We Must Never Allow Our Technology to Eclipse Our Humanity”’.
37) Incalculable amounts of waste of every conceivable kind – including antibiotic waste, military waste, nuclear waste, nanowaste and genetically engineered organisms, including ‘gene drives’ (or ‘mutagenic chain reactions’) – were released into Earth’s biosphere, with an endless series of adverse consequences for life. See ‘Junk Planet: Is Earth the Largest Garbage Dump in the Universe?’
Not content to dump our junk on Earth, an incalculable amount of junk was also dumped in Space which already contains 100 trillion items of orbiting junk. See ‘Junk Planet: Is Earth the Largest Garbage Dump in the Universe?’ and ‘Space Junk: Tracking & Removing Orbital Debris’.
38) Ongoing ‘visible’, ‘invisible’ and ‘utterly invisible’ violence against children – see ‘Why Violence?’ and ‘Fearless Psychology and Fearful Psychology: Principles and Practice’– ensured that more people will grow up accepting (and quite powerless to challenge) our dysfunctional and violent world, as described above.
39) The global elite’s corporate media, schooling and film/television industries continued to distract vast numbers of people from reality with an endless barrage of propaganda respectively labeled, depending on the context, ‘news’, ‘education’ and ‘entertainment’ ensuring that most people remain oblivious to our predicament, devoid of the capacities to investigate, comprehend and analyze this predicament as well as their own role in it, and to respond to this predicament powerfully. See, for example, ‘Media’s Deafening Silence on Latest from WikiLeaks about the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons Fake Douma Report Blaming Syria’, ‘Do We Want School or Education?’ and ‘The Most Important Free Press Stories of 2019’.
40) Finally, as a direct outcome of these last two points but most tragically of all, virtually all of the individuals who self-identify as ‘activists’ continued to waste their time begging the global elite (or their agents) to fix one or other of our crises – starkly illustrated by those thousands of climate ‘activists’ who traveled to Madrid, mostly using fossil fuels, and then complained when the outcome was, predictably, pitiful: see the powerless civil society ‘Statement on COP25’ – despite the overwhelming evidence that the global elite will not take action to ‘fix’ any of these crises. See ‘Why Activists Fail’. And, for more detail in two key contexts, see ‘The Global Climate Movement is Failing: Why?’ and ‘The War to End War 100 Years On: An Evaluation and Reorientation of our Resistance to War’.
Moreover, even if it was inclined, the elite is now powerless to avert extinction given that, if we are to have any chance given the advanced nature of the crisis and the incredibly short timeframe, we must plan intelligently to mobilize a substantial proportion of the human population in a strategically-focused effort. Nothing else can work.
Highlights of 2019
But so that the picture is clear and ‘balanced’: were there any gains made against the onslaught outlined above, particularly given we were driven inexorably closer to extinction?
Considering the elite and its agents: Zero gains were made of which I am aware. I have found no record of official efforts during the year to plan for the development and implementation of a comprehensive, just and sustainable peace although there was plenty of rhetoric in some quarters, often by those without any actual power to make a difference.
Separately from this, there have been some minor activist gains: for example, some western banks and insurance companies are no longer financially supporting the expansion of the western weapons industry and the western coal industry, some superannuation (pension) funds have divested from weapons and fossil fuels, some rainforest groups have managed to save portions of Earth’s rainforest heritage, and activist groups continue to work on a variety of issues sometimes making modest gains.
In essence however, as you probably realize, many of the issues above are not even being tackled and, even when they are, activist efforts have been hampered by inadequate analysis of the forces driving conflicts and problems, limited vision (particularly unambitious aims such as those in relation to ending war and the climate catastrophe), and unsophisticated strategy (necessary to have profound impact against a deeply entrenched, highly organized and well-resourced opponent), with the endless lobbying of elite institutions, such as governments and corporations, despite this effort simply allowing the absorption and dissipation of our dissent, as is intended. As Mark Twain once noted: ‘If voting made a difference, they wouldn’t let us do it.’ Another problem was the failure to make the difficult decisions to model and promote necessary solutions that are ‘unpopular’.
Fundamentally, these ‘difficult decisions’ include the vital need to campaign for the human population, particularly in industrialized countries, to substantially reduce their consumption – by 80% – involving both energy and resources of every kind, while increasing our individual and community self-reliance, as the central feature of any strategy to curtail destruction of the environment and climate, to undermine capitalism and to eliminate the primary driver of war: violent resource acquisition from Middle Eastern and developing nations for the production of consumer goods for consumers in industrialized countries.
So here we stand at the brink of human extinction (with 200 species of life on Earth being driven to extinction daily) and most humans utterly oblivious to (or in denial of: see ‘The Psychology of Denial’) the desperate nature and timeframe of our plight. And the fundamental reason why this is the case is simple to identify: unconscious fear is making people, including activists, incapable of behaving sensibly in the crisis. Instead, people are doing what they were terrorized into doing as a child: obeying their parents, teachers, religious figures and, ultimately, the elite. Why? Because when the choice is between obedience on the one hand and punishment on the other, obedience almost invariably wins. And so now we obediently ask the elite, perhaps by lobbying one of their governments, to ‘fix’ things for us – to save the climate, to end war… – and meekly accept it when they ignore us or refuse. After all, that is what most parents and teachers do – ignore us or refuse us – and we have fearfully learned to ‘accept it’. Which is why the idea of behaving powerfully ourselves never really occurs to most people.
‘But I am not afraid’ you (or someone else) might say. Aren’t you? Your unconscious mind has had years to learn the tricks it needed when you were a child to survive the onslaught of the violent parenting and schooling you suffered – see ‘Why Violence?’, ‘Fearless Psychology and Fearful Psychology: Principles and Practice’ and ‘Do We Want School or Education?’ – among the many other possibilities of violence, including those of a structural nature, that you will have also suffered.
But your mind only learned these ‘tricks’ – such as the trick of suppressing awareness of your fear and hiding it behind the permitted and encouraged overconsumption: see ‘Love Denied: The Psychology of Materialism, Violence and War’ – at great cost to your functionality and it now diverts the attention from reality of most people so effectively that they cannot even pay attention to the obvious and imminent threats to human survival.
In any case, there is a simple test of whether or not you are afraid.
Responding Powerfully
If you feel able to act powerfully in response to this complex and multifaceted crisis, in a way that will have strategic impact, you are invited to join (but now using a substantially accelerated timeframe) those participating in ‘The Flame Tree Project to Save Life on Earth’, which outlines a simple plan for you to systematically reduce your consumption, by at least 80%, involving both energy and resources of every kind – water, household energy, transport fuels, metals, meat, paper and plastic – while dramatically expanding your individual and community self-reliance in 16 areas, so that all threats to the biosphere are effectively addressed.
If you are also interested in conducting or participating in a campaign to systematically address one of the issues identified above, you are welcome to consider acting strategically in the way that Mohandas K. Gandhi did. Whether you are engaged in a peace, climate, environment or social justice campaign, the 12-point strategic framework and principles are the same. See Nonviolent Campaign Strategy. And, for example, you can see a basic list of the strategic goals necessary to end war and halt the climate catastrophe in ‘Strategic Aims’.
If you want to know how to nonviolently defend against a foreign invading power or a political/military coup, to liberate your country from a dictatorship or a foreign occupation, or to defeat a genocidal assault, you will learn how to do so in ‘Nonviolent Defense/Liberation Strategy’.
If you are interested in nurturing children to live by their conscience and to gain the courage necessary to resist elite violence fearlessly, while living sustainably despite the entreaties of capitalism to over-consume, then you are welcome to make ‘My Promise to Children’.
To reiterate: capitalism, war and destruction of the biosphere are, fundamentally, outcomes of our dysfunctional parenting and education of children which distorts their intellectual and emotional capacities, destroys their conscience and courage, and actively teaches them to over-consume as compensation for having vital emotional needs denied. See ‘Love Denied: The Psychology of Materialism, Violence and War’.
This explains why Gandhi’s example, set more than 100 years ago, to minimize his own possessions and consumption as symbolized by his wearing of khadi, together with his observation ‘Earth provides enough for every person’s need, but not for every person’s greed.’ have never had the widespread impact that was needed to achieve some level of sustainability about the human presence on Earth. The dysfunctional emotional attachment to possessions and consumption is overwhelming for most people.
If your own intellectual and/or emotional functionality is the issue and you have the self-awareness to perceive that, and wish to access the conscience and courage that would enable you to act powerfully, try ‘Putting Feelings First’.
And if you want to be part of the worldwide movement committed to ending all of the violence identified above, consider signing the online pledge of ‘The People’s Charter to Create a Nonviolent World’.
In summary: if we do not rapidly, systematically and substantially reduce our consumption in several key areas and radically alter our parenting model, while resisting elite violence strategically on several fronts, Homo sapiens will enter Earth’s fossil record in 2020 or soon after. Given the fear, self-hatred and powerlessness that paralyses most humans, your choices in these regards are even more vital than you realize.
Or, if the options above seem too complicated, consider committing to:
The Earth Pledge
Out of love for the Earth and all of its creatures, and my respect for their needs, from this day onwards I pledge that:
- I will listen deeply to children (see explanation above)
- I will not travel by plane
- I will not travel by car
- I will not eat meat and fish
- I will only eat organically/biodynamically grown food
- I will minimize the amount of fresh water I use, including by minimizing my ownership and use of electronic devices
- I will not buy rainforest timber
- I will not buy or use single-use plastic, such as bags, bottles, containers, cups and straws
- I will not use banks, superannuation (pension) funds or insurance companies that provide any service to corporations involved in fossil fuels, nuclear power and/or weapons
- I will not accept employment from, or invest in, any organization that supports or participates in the exploitation of fellow human beings or profits from killing and/or destruction of the biosphere
- I will not get news from the corporate media (mainstream newspapers, television, radio, Google, Facebook, Twitter…)
- I will make the effort to learn a skill, such as food gardening or sewing, that makes me more self-reliant
- I will gently encourage my family and friends to consider signing this pledge.
Conclusion
Very soon now, the overwhelming evidence is that Homo sapiens will join other species that only exist as part of the fossil record. For other summaries of our predicament, see ‘Human Extinction by 2026? A Last Ditch Strategy to Fight for Human Survival’,‘Doomsday by 2021?’and ‘Extinction in 2020?’
Our chance of escaping this fate is now remote.
Which is why I am compelled to forecast the following: As is overwhelmingly demonstrated by any consideration of the historical evidence in relation to human behavior, fear will prevent the vast bulk of human beings considering the evidence offered above as well as that cited. Moreover, even among those who do consider it, few will have the capacity to act sensibly and powerfully in response, particularly given the comprehensive range of strategies in so many different contexts that are now necessary.
Hence, absent the intellectual and emotional capacities necessary to respond strategically to this complex and multifaceted crisis, human extinction will occur imminently.
Obviously, I hope I am wrong (and I will be doing everything I can to make it so).
Robert J. Burrowes has a lifetime commitment to understanding and ending human violence. He has done extensive research since 1966 in an effort to understand why human beings are violent and has been a nonviolent activist since 1981. He is the author of ‘Why Violence?’ His email address is flametree@riseup.net and his website is here.
The Origins Of The United States Of America, The Joker And The End Of White Supremacy
by Franklin Frederick
The Joker portraits the ending of white supremacy because even the Arthur Flecks are already realizing that “whiteness”,this ‘solidarity alliance’ among“whites”, which for so long has fed them until it became the foundation of
their own being, is nothing but a lie woven by the 1% – mostly whites – to better exploit all the others.
At its root, capitalism not only meant slavery and white supremacy but also the ethos of the gangster – Gerald Horne
The film ‘Joker’ presents a contemporary phenomenon present in several countries, but which can only be understood in its complexity through the history of the origins of the USA.
African-American historian Gerald Horne argues in the book ‘The Counter-Revolution of 1776: Slave Resistance and the Origins of the United States of America’ that the U.S. independence movement was born, on the one hand, from the fear of the wealthy classes in the colony of a growing abolitionist movement in the metropolis, England, which could put an end to the basis of their wealth – the slaves. On the other hand, England also hindered the advance of the settlers to the west, which was to remain indigenous territory. For Horne, the war for U.S. independence was partly a ‘counter-revolution’ led by the ‘founding fathers’ with the aim of preserving their right to enslave other peoples, mainly Africans, and to continue to expand the young nation to the west, stealing more land from the indigenous peoples where more slave labor would be deployed.
In another book, ‘The Apocalypse of Settler Colonialism: The Roots of Slavery, White Supremacy and Capitalism in 17th Century North America and the Caribbean’, Horne summarized this process:
«Then finally, in 1776, they pulled off the ultimate coup and exhibited their novel display of patriotism by ousting London altogether from the mainland colonies south of Canada, while convincing the deluded and otherwise naive (to this very day) that this naked grab for land, slaves and profit was somehow a great leap forward for humanity.»
In this context occurred another process of fundamental relevance for today: the birth of U.S. military power. The U.S. army originated in the war for independence against the British, which was also a war against the vast majority of African slaves who allied themselves with the British – which promised their freedom – and against the many indigenous peoples who also allied with the British – aware of what would follow for them once the new republic became independent. And indeed, soon after the victory against the British and the established peace, the newly created U.S. army engaged in its new task: the genocidal war against indigenous peoples to secure the territorial expansion of the new republic.
In the book ‘The First Way of War: American War Making on the Frontier, 1607-1814’ author John Grenier argues that the U.S. armed forces were forged in the genocidal wars against American indigenous peoples, when virtually every means of destruction was allowed, all brutality was possible, and there was no distinction between civilian and combatant populations. One of the methods used by the U.S. armed forces against indigenous peoples was the destruction of their plantations and food reserves, leading to defeat by famine, a method widely used and perfected decades later by the U.S. in the Vietnam war, making the U.S. perhaps the only country in the world to specialize in the war against the Vegetable Kingdom. In fact, an unbroken historical line leads from wars against indigenous peoples to the war in Vietnam. The most recent economic embargoes against Cuba and Venezuela are just another form of this method, the objectives remain the same – to cause hunger, to punish civilian populations in order to subdue them – and have been used since the beginnings of US military power.
The extermination of indigenous peoples was so central to politics at the time that participating in military campaigns against indigenous peoples was practically a prerequisite for becoming a candidate for the presidency of the New Republic. Andrew Jackson, the seventh president of the United States, is perhaps the one who best represents what this new country really was. Jackson was a wealthy planter and slaveowner, leading troops during the War against the Creek people, which led to the conquest of many lands now belonging to the states of Alabama and Georgia. He also led the US troops in the war against the Seminole people. In the presidency, Jackson continued his crusade against the indigenous people. There is an interesting episode in the well-known TV series ‘House of Cards’ in which Indian representatives visit the White House. As part of the preparations for the visit, White House staff remove the portrait of Andrew Jackson from a wall, apparently in order not to offend the Indians – a rare moment of lucidity in such media. And it was Andrew Jackson’s followers who founded the U.S. Democratic Party…
In order to guarantee a ‘single front’ between the settlers against the indigenous peoples, on the one hand, and to ensure the practice of slavery on the other, the British forged an illusory ‘alliance’ beyond the social classes, between the ‘whites’ – white supremacy – that legitimated and allowed the exploitation, theft or extermination of all those who were not so endowed. According to Gerald Horne, this militarized identity politics that was ‘whiteness’’ was at the root of the colonial occupations as early as 1676, leading to the creation of a ‘white man ‘s’ country, a first ‘apartheid’ state, an example to be followed by South Africa. Violence against indigenous peoples and the violence inherent in the slave economy became common, ‘normal’ elements in the US white mentality to this day. Gerald Horne argues that one of the last expressions of ‘white supremacy’ in the mainstream U.S. politics was the election of Donald Trump, as a part of the electorate «(…) could not overcome the poisonous snare of white supremacy. That is, the seeds of the fiasco of an election in November 2016 in the United States, where the less affluent of European descent, including more than half of the women of this group, found their tribune in a vulgar billionaire, has roots in the cross-class coalition that spearheaded colonial settlement in the seventeen century at the expense of the indigenous and enslaved Africans.»
This history and its consequences are very much still present in the Joker. Arthur Fleck, the character in the film, is just one of the millions of poor white men abandoned by the system, and it is not by chance that, in the film, practically everyone who comes into real, emotional contact with Arthur Fleck, is African-American, including the only woman he cares about. In this way, the film places white Arthur Fleck in the middle of a poor Afro-American community, that is, according to the myth of white supremacy, completely out of his ‘natural’ place. The social worker who allows him to get the medicine he needs is Afro-American and, when she informs him about the closure of the socialcentre – another result of the austerity policies of neoliberalism – she comments: ‘They don’t give a shit about people like you. Or like me.’ – They’, in this case, being a clear reference to the powerful, to the 1%. There is a permanent possibility of a haven for Arthur Fleck within the African-American community, as the social worker recognizes by placing the two as victims of the same system. But Arthur Fleck is unable to see or understand his situation in the broader context that would open him up to the dimension of solidarity with the African American community and others and, as I see it, it is his ‘whiteness’ that blinds him to this possibility. Instead, following the illusions of his adoptive mother that became his as well, he tries hard to be accepted again by the successful white community.
The ‘alliance’ beyond the social classes that connects whites in the myth of white supremacy is still sufficiently strong in Arthur Fleck’s unconscious to take him to Thomas Wayne seeking the ‘recognition’ of his ‘natural right’ to belong to Wayne’s successful white community, a way of updating the ‘alliance’ of white supremacy, just as so many impoverished and marginalized whites voted for Donald Trump did.To reinforce the image of unity of this white community, the dialogue with Thomas Wayne takes place in a theatre full of white people celebrating the success of their social class. Thomas Wayne does not recognize his “fatherhood” – the symbolism here is clear – of Arthur Fleck and, even worse, violently refuses any contact with him, thus revealing the lie of the white ‘alliance’, the myth of racial supremacy as a bond between whites beyond social classes.
Thomas Wayne’s punch shows that such an alliance never existed.
But there is a gesture of solidarity shown in the film that really belongs to the ‘white alliance’: knowing that Arthur Fleck suffered an aggression in the street, one of his co-workers offers him a weapon to defend himself – the gesture of solidarity par excellence of the ‘white alliance’. The neo-fascist Bolsonaro is his campaign for the presidency in Brazil did exactly the same, just in a much bigger scale. he promised to put weapons more easily within reach of everyone, especially his supporters, who promptly rewarded this ‘solidarity’ by helping to elect him.
The moment when the myth of the ‘white alliance’ really explodes in the film is the sequence of the fight in the subway. Three well dressed and visibly successful white youths harass a woman sexually–feeling perfectly right in doing so, the “normal” behaviour of the white heterosexual male, in the U.S. as in Brazil. Arthur Fleck, with his nervous laughter, hinders the three young men who turn against him. Arthur Fleck is obviously poor, a clown, of a social class much inferior to that of the three young yuppies who start to assault him violently – betraying the ‘white alliance’ like Thomas Wayne – but Arthur Fleck has a weapon and, for the first time, gives way to his years of accumulated frustration and repressed anger – and kills his aggressors. For Arthur Fleck this moment is liberating and from then on, he feels stronger but also “goes crazy”, the symbolism used, I believe, to show the emotional price paid by Arthur Fleck for betraying his part in the white ‘alliance’. His oppressive violence was directed against white people, not against Latinos, black or indigenous immigrants – the ‘normal’ targets of white supremacist violence.
The “white” liberal public conscience, represented in the film by the character of Robert de Niro , Murray Franklin, an idol for whom Arthur Fleck also aims to be somehow recognized, condemns the murder of the three ‘promising young people’, because in this case the solidarity of the white ‘alliance’ really exists – as CLASS solidarity – the three were ‘successful’, obviously members of the dominant class. Three poor whites like Arthur Fleck murdered in the subway would certainly have no press attention, it was the social class of the three murdered that awakened, on the one hand, the sympathy of the Murray Franklins, and, on the other hand, the popular revolt that is the background of the film.
Arthur Fleck repeatedly declares himself without any political awareness or political objective. The Arthur Flecks of real life hardly vote, but if they do, they vote for Donald Trump or Jair Bolsonaro. The Arthur Flecks’ revolt is limited to spreading violence, ‘paying back’, creating chaos, it has no political content, it does not aim to change the system, the Arthur Flecks do not even have the slightest idea how the system really works, they only feel unjustly frustrated by something they can only react to with violence. Arthur Fleck is the potential fascist, what unites them, in the U.S. as in Brazil, is still the mystique of the white supremacy, the feeling of belonging to the dominant class, a kind of ‘natural right’ to be privileged, to have prestige and power. For the capitalist system, the Arthur Flecks have an enormous importance, because they not only elect the Donald Trumps and the Jair Bolsonaros, allowing the international oligarchy of the capital to continue through them to dominate the world; but even more, the Arthur Flecks have the fundamental role of depoliticize society, of preventingpublic consciousness to focus on real issues. And it is through violence, intimidation, the attack on institutions, culture and everything that threatens their ‘white’ identity that the Arthur Flecks fulfil this role. The Thomas Waynes smile, the 1% rejoice at such stupidity so easily manipulated in their favour. And Thomas Wayne is not only a Gotham City type, there are many Thomas Wayne all over the world, as many in Brazil and Argentina as in Europe. All of them breeding the “Batmen” eager to fight “corruption” in the name of the Capital.
But ‘Joker’ also shows, even if only obliquely, the possibility of redemption for Arthur Fleck. What if Arthur Fleck managed to get out of his emotional prison, out of his whiteness ‘poisoning’ – to use the expression of Gerald Horne – and sought help and refuge in the African-American community? African-Americans have a long history of political consciousness and struggle, they have faced the violence of white supremacy from the beginning, they know what it means, they know its extent and also its main weaknesses. Above all, African-Americans know very well that the struggle is political. The greatest nightmare, the greatest threat to the U.S. oligarchical political system is precisely the solidarity union between the Arthur Flecks and the Afro-American community, with the consequent politicization that this union implies. The system, the international financial oligarchy, may well coexist with chaotic violence, with brief outbreaks of destruction and social conflict – in fact, this violence is even useful for the system and for the oligarchy, among other reasons because it can be used as a pretext for more repression and violence on the part of reactionary forces. But what the system cannot support is rebellion WITH POLITICAL CONTENT – as we see now in Chile, Argentina or Ecuador.
The Joker portraits the ending of white supremacy because even the Arthur Flecks are already realizing that “whiteness”,this ‘solidarity alliance’ among“whites”, which for so long has fed them until it became the foundation of their own being, is nothing but a lie woven by the 1% – mostly whites – to better exploit all the others.
And meanwhile in Latin America, Argentina, Ecuador, Chile, Bolivia, and Venezuela, the political consciousness of the people has long since overcome the myth of white supremacy and “whiteness” loyalty to the oppressors and subservience to the international capital. There is a plural humanity, rich and proud of its many colours, genders and ways of being that increasingly assumes political control over its own destiny. It is this humanity that, with much clarity, determination and joy, is defeating fascism and the myths that support it.
Franklin Frederick is a Brazilian writer and political activist
Pakistan and Indian Muslims
by Ram Puniyani
The interactive-syncretism prevalent in India well presented by Gandhi-Nehru was pushed to the margins as those believing in pluralism did not actively engage with the issue. The economic marginalization of this community, coupled with the increasing insecurity in turn led to some of them to identify with Pakistan, and this small section was again presented as the representative of the whole Muslim community.
Kartarpur: A Corridor of Opportunities
by Dost Muhammad Barrech
There is a great deal of likelihood to change Stephen Cohen’s pessimism into optimism under Kartarpur Corridor. If the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) and Kartarpur Corridor are attainable, why can’t
both Pakistan and India initiate Economic Corridor to nip the hostility in bud? The more both states are economically intertwined, the better they will resolve their outstanding issues. Admittedly, India is a huge economic giant thriving economic tie with it will usher the path of prosperity and regional connectivity for Pakistan.
Hindus Must Show Solidarity To Muslims By Coverting To Islam
by Maitreyee
Making lofty statements like ‘not in my name’ don’t do much to assuage or remedy those that suffer due to the religious and political philosophies that are Hinduism and Hindutva (Dalits and Muslims, in particular). Moreover, the steamrolling of secularism and the attack on India’s pluralism is not being done by non-state forces, but by an elected government. It is us who elected them. So indeed, the onus is on us to emphatically prove that their excesses and injustices are
not in our name, by taking actual action and not just by holding placards making such claims.
A Raised Fisted Red Salute, To My Alma Mater, St. Stephen’s College, Delhi University For Protesting Against Fascism In India
by Shobha Aggarwal
Kudos to students of St. Stephen’s College, Delhi University, Delhi for protesting in the campus against fascism on 8 January, 2020. Almost the entire college walked out in protest and marched towards other colleges where more students joined. It was the collective decision of students of this college. This was an unprecedented political outrage by the students.
I am your voice
by Bhuwan Thapaliya
We won’t let them
control the thoughts
we think and manipulate
the visions we see.
Their politics is just a thing,
we are
everything.
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