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“Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.”

-- George Carlin

News and Opinion

The Huge Gap Between How Serious Nuclear War Is And How Seriously It’s Being Taken

Sometimes I’m not sure what presents a greater threat to humanity, nuclear war or the colossal stupidity that has made it possible.

Due to the skyrocketing risk of a world-ending confrontation between the United States and Russia, World Socialist Website is re-releasing a series of interviews it conducted in 2017 with experts on the subject of nuclear war. One of them is with a senior scientist at Physicians for Social Responsibility named Steven Starr, which WSWS has titled “Nuclear winter—the long-suppressed reality of nuclear war”.

Starr discusses the research which has shown that in addition to the unthinkable horrors of flattened cities and nuclear fallout we’ve all been told about, “a war fought with existing US and Russian nuclear arsenals is predicted to make agriculture impossible for a decade or longer, dooming most people to die from a nuclear famine.”

Starr says a false narrative has been spun that the science behind nuclear winter theory is weak, a narrative I’ve had parroted at me from time to time in my commentary on this subject. He says the science is in fact peer-reviewed and robust, and actually makes very conservative estimates of the environmental havoc that would be unleashed by black carbon soot thrown into the stratosphere by a large nuclear exchange. But this science has been actively suppressed and marginalized by a junk science smear campaign and the slashing of research funding.

“After the success of the smear campaign against nuclear winter, most people eventually accepted this narrative and funding for new research dried up,” Starr said. “This had a big impact on the public, who got the impression that the nuclear winter theory had been disproven. As a result, this issue is hardly ever talked about now in the mainstream media.”

“One of the reasons for this is that over the years, trillions of dollars have been spent on nuclear weapons,” Starr adds. “If the conclusions of the nuclear winter research—that nuclear war is suicide for all peoples and nations—had gained widespread acceptance and understanding, it is likely that the whole nuclear weapons industry would have been shut down.”

Indeed, when you’re talking about the movement of trillions of dollars (Obama committed $1 trillion to modernizing America’s nuclear arsenal for the explicit purpose of better confronting Russia), you’re talking about the kind of money that any amount of underhanded gangster tactics would be employed to secure.

But I think another major part of it is the much more basic fact that if people truly understood how dangerous nuclear war is for everyone on this planet, nobody would consent to the kinds of cold war games that the drivers of empire have been intending to play with these weapons.

If people truly understood that their life and the lives of everyone they love are being gambled like poker chips in nuclear brinkmanship maneuvers geared toward securing unipolar planetary hegemony for an undeclared empire loosely centralized around the United States, those few empire architects would soon find themselves on the losing end of a tooth-and-claw fight against the entire human species. The ability to win cold war power struggles is dependent on the mainstream public not thinking too hard about what nuclear war is and why it is being risked.

When I was growing up Americans were proud of fighting Nazis and afraid of a Nuclear War.

Now Americans are proud of arming Nazis and want to risk a Nuclear War.

— Black in the Empire (@blackintheempir) March 14, 2022

So I think we’re seeing a broad lack of awareness among the general public of just how close to the precipice we are for the same reason nuclear winter theory has been suppressed: because if everyone deeply understood how dangerous these unipolarist grand chessboard power plays are, and how they deliver no real benefit to ordinary people, they wouldn’t permit them to happen.

A responsible news media would be educating the public about things like nuclear winter, and how easy it would be for a nuclear war to be triggered by a malfunction, miscommunication, misunderstanding, or miscalculation in the chaos and confusion of soaring cold war escalations as nearly happened many times during the last cold war. A “news” media whose job is not to report the news but to manufacture consent for imperial agendas will do everything it can to prevent people from paying attention to those things.

This is why, if you really understand nuclear war and what it means and how close we are to its emergence, it feels so surreal and dissonant looking around at the things people are talking about today. How ungrounded in reality it all is, how unseriously people are taking this thing, how willing they are to consent to things like no-fly zones and other direct military action against Russia. It’s because people are prevented from seeing and understanding this reality. You can’t have the riff raff interfering in the mechanics of the imperial machine. Unipolar hegemony is too important to be left to democratic processes. Keep the local fauna confused and distracted while you roll the dice on nuclear armageddon with the hope of ruling the world.

These people are like mobsters, knowing they’ll probably die a violent death but willing to risk it all for a chance at living the high life. There’s not the slightest iota of wisdom guiding their actions. Just the primitive impulse to dominate and control. They’re living their lives and making their decisions essentially on autopilot, guided by unconscious impulses they themselves don’t understand.

In the aforementioned interview Starr also touches on the ease with which a nuclear war could be set off by a technical malfunction, and what the earliest moments of a nuclear war will likely look like:

If the US early warning systems detect a missile launch, the President can order a launch of retaliatory nuclear strike before incoming nuclear warheads take out communication systems and weapons. Of course, if this is a false warning of attack, then the “retaliatory” strike becomes a first-strike and a nuclear war has started.

Moreover, if somebody has launched a nuclear strike against the silos in which your nuclear weapons are housed in, you don’t retaliate by targeting their empty silos. You target their cities. Russia only has about 230 cities with a population greater than 100,000 and the US has 312. So it’s not that hard to wipe out a couple hundred cities in an initial salvo.

Starr also discusses the insane belief that Russia will probably back down when threatened with the possibility of nuclear war, a line of thinking that’s becoming so common today that it’s almost its own genre of natsec punditry:

The strategists often say, “Oh, well, Russia will back down.” What if they don’t? And why would they back down on their own border? Any US/NATO-Russian direct military conflict will very likely lead to a full-scale nuclear war.

In another 2017 World Socialist Website interview, this one with Los Alamos Study Group secretary and executive director Greg Mello, we get some more insight into the reality of the nuclear threat:

To a first approximation, in a nuclear war between the US and Russia, everybody in the world would die. Some people in the southern hemisphere might survive, but probably not even them.
…
The imagination cannot encompass nuclear war. Nuclear war means nuclear winter. It means the collapse of very fragile electronic, financial, governmental, administrative systems that keep everyone alive. We’d be lucky to reboot in the early 19th century. And if enough weapons are detonated, the collapse of the Earth’s ozone layer would mean that every form of life that has eyes could be blinded. The combined effects of a US-Russian nuclear war would mean that pretty much every terrestrial mammal, and many plants, would become extinct. There would be a dramatic biological thinning.

The gulf between these expert analyses and what people are consuming in the news could not possibly be wider. People simply don’t understand what’s being done with their lives by powerful people who care only about imperial domination, and the powerful intend to keep it that way.

It doesn’t need to be like this. There’s no reason our planet needs to be dominated by any one single power structure, especially if doing so means risking complete annihilation. We should all be pushing for de-escalation, diplomacy and detente, and for the nations and peoples of this world to begin working together for the good of everyone.

US/NATO Refusing To Negotiate With Putin – Ukrainians Pay The Price

The latest from western propaganda rag, The Guardian:

Ukraine will not join Nato, says Zelenskiy

Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy has acknowledged that Ukraine will not become a Nato member, in a significant concession on a day when Kyiv was pounded by Russian shells and missiles and the invading force tightened its grip on the capital. ...

Zelenskiy made his remarks about Nato while addressing leaders from the new Joint Expeditionary Force, a UK-led initiative bringing together 10 north Atlantic countries to create a capability for responding rapidly to crises.

“It is clear that Ukraine is not a member of Nato; we understand this,” the Ukrainian president said. “For years we heard about the apparently open door, but have already also heard that we will not enter there, and these are truths and must be acknowledged.”

Former top Pentagon advisor Col. Doug Macgregor on Russia-Ukraine war

China has already decided to send economic aid to Russia in Ukraine conflict, US officials fear

China has already decided to provide Russia with economic and financial support during its war on Ukraine and is contemplating sending military supplies such as armed drones, US officials fear.

The US national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, laid out the US case against Russia’s invasion in an “intense” seven-hour meeting in Rome with his Chinese counterpart, Yang Jiechi, pointing out that Moscow had feigned interest in diplomacy while preparing for invasion, and also that the Russian military was clearly showing signs of frailty.

The US delegation in Rome had not expected the Chinese diplomats to negotiate, seeing them as message deliverers to Beijing. ...

However, the Americans walked away from the Rome meeting pessimistic that the Chinese government would change its minds about backing Moscow. “The key here is first to get China to recalculate and re-evaluate their position. We see no sign of that re-evaluation,” said another US official familiar with the discussions. “They’ve already decided that they’re going to provide economic and financial support, and they underscored that today. The question really is whether they will go further.” ...

If China does back Russia in its showdown with the west, the Biden administration will shift its focus to persuading allies, in Europe particularly, to rethink their relationships with Beijing. Sullivan is due in Paris on Tuesday for discussions with the French government. “The United States believes that the key here is a careful process of dialogue and discussion with Europe about what China is revealing about its global policies and priorities,” the US official said. “Our goal basically is to carefully engage China, letting the Europeans know [what we are doing] all along, but if it becomes clear that [China] is moving in another direction, so be it.”

War in Ukraine a Windfall for Weapons Industry

William Hartung, a senior research fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, told The Hill on Tuesday that "there's a lot of possibilities for ways that the contractors will benefit, and in the short term we could be talking about tens of billions of dollars, which is no small thing, even for these big companies."

In the weeks since Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered his troops to invade, lawmakers in the U.S. Congress approved a record-setting Pentagon budget, and their counterparts in several European countries also vowed to significantly boost military spending to counteract Moscow.

The $1.5 trillion government funding bill that U.S. President Joe Biden signed Friday greenlights an astronomical $782 billion in military spending—an increase of 6% over last year and nearly $30 billion above the White House's initial request. The package also provides $6.5 billion in military aid to Eastern European nations, including $3.5 billion worth of additional weapons for Ukraine.

As The Hill reported, the extra support for Ukraine "comes on top of more than $1 billion the U.S. has already spent in the past year to arm Ukrainian soldiers with modern weapons, including Javelin anti-tank missiles, manufactured by Lockheed Martin and Raytheon Technologies, and Raytheon's anti-aircraft Stinger missiles."

One arms industry lobbyist told the news outlet that an immediate effect of the U.S. ramping up weapons shipments to Ukraine is that "we're going to have to backfill some of that ourselves, so that will force the Pentagon to buy more from some of the defense companies."

As for longer-term implications, the lobbyist said that Democratic and Republican lawmakers alike expect to pass an even larger military budget next year, which "will pump more money into procurement and into [research and development]."

The U.S. is not the only country where military contractors are anticipating a bump in sales. Over the past few weeks, European countries including Germany, Italy, Poland, and Sweden have announced that they will boost military spending.

According to The Hill:

Citing Russian aggression, Germany said Monday that it would purchase up to 35 American Lockheed Martin F-35 fighter jets, a major reversal from its previous plan to revamp its aging fleet with a combination of older, less expensive American- and European-made jets.

That comes after German Chancellor Olaf Scholz announced late last month that the nation would invest $111 billion in a new military investment fund and increase defense spending above 2% of its gross domestic product.

"We are proud of the confidence the German Federal Ministry of Defense and Luftwaffe officials have shown in choosing the F-35," Lockheed Martin said in a statement.

Less than three full months into 2022, Lockheed Martin's stock has surged by more than 25%, while the share prices of Raytheon, General Dynamics, and Northrop Grumman have also risen by roughly 12%, 14%, and 16%, respectively.

Even before the Kremlin attacked Ukraine last month, arms manufacturers could hardly contain their excitement over the prospect of war, which they explained would be good for their bottom lines.

Russia Says It Will Attack Ukrainian Arms Factories

Russia said on Monday it planned to attack Ukrainian arms factories in retaliation for what it said was a Ukrainian strike on the separatist-controlled city of Donetsk, and urged workers and local residents to stay away.

The defence ministry noted in a statement that Russia believed Ukraine had used cluster charges on a densely populated area of Donetsk.

A Tale of Two Wars: Biden Decries Russian Atrocities in Ukraine While Backing Saudi/UAE War in Yemen

Oil price falls below $100 amid Russia-Ukraine ceasefire talks

Global oil prices have fallen back below $100 (£77) a barrel amid ceasefire talks between Russia and Ukraine and concerns over the rapid growth in Covid infections in China.

The price of a barrel of oil slid to $99 on energy markets on Tuesday, before rising back to just above $100 in early afternoon trading. It comes amid a decline from a 14-year high of close to $130 reached earlier this month after Vladimir Putin ordered troops into Ukraine.

Analysts said the drop was driven by hopes for a diplomatic solution in Ukraine. It came as western leaders urged big oil-producing nations including Saudi Arabia to increase supply.

Oil prices had surged close to record levels of about $146 a barrel set in 2008, fuelled by concerns over supply disruption and the impact of sanctions designed to wean western economies off Russian oil in response to the conflict.

The drop in prices also comes as coronavirus infections rise in China leading to tougher lockdown measures as part of Beijing’s “zero-Covid” strategy, which analysts said could hit demand for energy supplies from the world’s second biggest economy.

Idaho copies extreme Texas law and bans abortion after six weeks

Idaho has become the first US state to pass an abortion ban modeled after a controversial Texas law that prohibits abortions after about six weeks or when a heartbeat is detected.

The news comes with abortion rights under assault across the US – despite clear majority support for such rights. The conservative-dominated US supreme court is thought likely to overturn Roe v Wade, the 1973 ruling which established the right, later this year.

On Monday, Idaho house members passed the ban 51-14. No Democrats supported the legislation. The Senate has approved the bill and the Republican governor, Brad Little, is expected to sign it.

Proud Boys leader had plans to ‘storm’ government buildings on 6 January

The former leader of the Proud Boys, a violent far-right nationalist group whose members were prominent in the January 6 riot, was found in possession of comprehensive plans to “surveil and storm” government buildings, prosecutors said.

Enrique Tarrio, the group’s former chairman who was arrested last week and charged with conspiracy over the deadly attack, had a nine-page document entitled “1776 Returns”, named for the year of American independence, the New York Times reported.

The document, mentioned only in general terms in Tarrio’s indictment, contained details of a complex plan for supporters of Donald Trump to invade and occupy at least seven House and Senate office buildings on the afternoon Congress met to certify Joe Biden’s election victory, according to Times sources. ...

The document features five sections, the Times reported: infiltrate, execution, distract, occupy and sit-in. The plan called for the recruiting of at least 50 Proud Boys and other Trump supporters to enter and occupy each building, “causing trouble” for security personnel who tried to stop them. Once inside, the instructions stated, the activists would be encouraged to chant slogans such as “We the People” and “No Trump, no America”. Supporters unable to gain access to the buildings would be encouraged to distract law enforcement and other authorities by “pulling fire alarms at nearby stores, hotels and museums”. ...

Questions remain over the origin of the document and whether Tarrio, 38, shared it with any of the individuals charged alongside him.

Democrats planning on Biden’s handling of the Ukraine crisis proving popular with US voters

Joe Biden came into the White House vowing to restore American leadership on the world stage. But the tumultuous end to the war in Afghanistan last year shook Americans’ confidence in their new commander-in-chief, raising doubts about his competence and judgment and sending his approval ratings tumbling. Now Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has given Biden a second chance to demonstrate the steady leadership he promised, raising hopes among Democrats that the White House’s efforts to punish Moscow for its shocking aggression will resonate with voters in this year’s midterm elections.

But Democrats face stiff headwinds in their attempt to defy historical trends and maintain their narrow majorities in Congress. Among their biggest obstacles are Biden’s deep unpopularity and the rising cost of gas, food and rent, for which Republicans have faulted Democrats.

At the Democrats’ annual retreat in Philadelphia last week, party leaders spoke of a world – and an electorate – reshaped by Russia’s invasion of its democratic neighbor. They said the conflict provided a new clarity of purpose – and a new villain: Russian leader Vladimir Putin. As the war in Ukraine threatens to push already rising gas prices even higher, Democrats are blaming “Putin’s tax hike”. At the same time, they are touting the administration’s role coordinating a worldwide response to Russia, and the devastating impact of economic sanctions, highlighting a contrast with former president Donald Trump, who has continued to praise Putin. ...

Whether voters blame Putin or Democrats for the rising cost of their gas may yet be a central question of the midterm election.

“Democrats didn’t cause this problem,” Biden told Democrats in Philadelphia. “Vladimir Putin did.”

Biden's Climate Action Woefully Inadequate to Meet Escalating Crisis

The Biden administration's rhetoric about confronting the climate crisis obscures a frightening reality: Joe Biden's policies are keeping us on a path to climate catastrophe. The latest report from the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) found that the climate crisis is happening faster and more intensely than predicted. We need urgent action, instead, we have the Biden administration.

The week after the UN climate conference (COP26), Biden launched the largest oil and gas lease sale in US history, of 80 million acres in the Gulf of Mexico. A federal court blocked the sale, citing the administration's failure to consider climate impacts. Climate investments in the Build Back Better Act are in a state of limbo while Senator Manchin, a coal tycoon Democrat from West Virginia, holds the package hostage. As Greenpeace reports, this administration's policies entrench the interests of the fossil fuel industry and prioritize profits over the survival of our planet and communities at the frontline of climate catastrophe, with Black, brown, and Indigenous communities, and women and girls paying the highest price.

Biden's climate rhetoric is undermined by the US strong-arming developing nations who demand climate justice, while domestically, Biden pushes to expand fossil fuel extraction and fails to deliver on climate investments he promised throughout his campaign. ...

The US frames emissions goals around "net-zero" targets. Why "net" and not just "zero"? Under net-zero, business can continue as usual by "offsetting" emissions with activities elsewhere to remove emissions from the atmosphere–like planting trees in Brazil to offset emissions in California. This approach allows companies to pay to pollute. It also places human rights at risk by enabling ongoing pollution of communities and land grabs for forest areas globally, including Indigenous lands.

Biden's ailing Build Back Better package includes subsidies for carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology that advances net zero emissions. A Government Accountability Office report recently found that subsidized CCS projects mostly failed and were a black hole for government funds. If every existing carbon capture and storage project under development were active today, they would mitigate only 2% of all greenhouse gas emissions. . Relying on carbon capture to "scrub" carbon emissions to meet net zero targets is an expensive and insufficient false solution that harms vulnerable communities.

The US promotes carbon offsets domestically and globally. Carbon markets will expand net-zero to the global marketplace, shifting the burden of climate adaptation from wealthy nations onto the Global South. Article 6 of the Paris Climate Agreement sets up the creation of an international exchange where nations and corporations can trade emissions credits. In practice, this means corporations and wealthy nations with significant emissions can maintain business as usual if they buy emissions credits from low-emitting nations. This will exploit the low-emissions labor of Indigenous women and girls in the Global South as the backbone of supply in the global carbon market.

This isn't a transfer of resources to enable climate adaptation in poor nations: it's forced extraction of natural resources and wealth from the Global South to meet the political interests of wealthy nations and corporations. That is colonialism disguised as aid.

The US consistently scapegoats emerging economies to avoid confronting its historic responsibility for climate pollution. At COP26, wealthy nations committed to phasing out coal, a key resource for developing nations, but were unwilling to phase out oil, a resource for wealthy nations that has led to environmental degradation and exploitation particularly impacting Indigenous, Black, and brown communities.

Apologists for US global climate policies blame the weakened language on coal, from "phase out" to "phase down" in the Glasgow Climate Pact, on India and China, but ignore that the exclusion of similar limitations on oil and gas is the result of US interventions. ...

Ambitious action to prevent climate catastrophe is possible, but Biden isn't pursuing it. The Indigenous Environmental Network identified ten executive actions Biden could take to confront the climate crisis, from rejecting new fossil fuel projects to stopping pipelines. Public Citizen reports the Biden administration has approved more onshore oil and gas drilling permits in its first year than the Trump administration approved in its first three years. The Gulf of Mexico lease was blocked by a federal judge on the grounds that the Biden administration did not adequately consider the climate consequences, but the Biden administration could still challenge that ruling. ...

Finally, Biden's hallmark climate investments in the Build Back Better Act are indefinitely stalled because the President has failed to confront Senator Joe Manchin, who single-handedly is blocking the largest investment in climate solutions, like renewable energy, public transportation, and green housing, in decades.

Shell directors sued for ‘failing to prepare company for net zero’

The directors of Shell are being sued for failing to properly prepare the multinational oil and gas company for net zero. In what is thought to be a first-of-its-kind action, the lawsuit brought by activist shareholders claims that Shell’s 13 directors are personally liable for failing to devise a strategy in line with the Paris agreement, which aims to limit global heating to below 2C by slashing fossil fuel emissions. The lawsuit claims the failure puts the directors in breach of their duties under the UK’s Companies Act.

If successful, Shell’s board could be forced by the courts to change its strategy, taking specific concrete steps to align its plan with the Paris deal. But if the claimants lose, they could be liable for the full costs of the case, including directors’ legal fees.

ClientEarth, the environmental law organisation taking the action against Shell, said it was calling for other shareholders to join.

At Shell’s 2021 annual general meeting more than 30% of shareholders voted against the board in support of a resolution calling for Paris-aligned emissions targets. But other shareholders may be reluctant to join after Shell announced in February an increase in dividends and a plan to buy back shares – increasing the value of those remaining in investors’ hands – after reporting a staggering $19bn profit.

Also of Interest

Here are some articles of interest, some which defied fair-use abstraction.

The US, NATO & the Article IV Trap in Ukraine

Reports expose UK, US arming of Ukraine military including fascist forces

John Mearsheimer on why the West is principally responsible for the Ukrainian crisis

Gonzalo Lira - A False Flag Is Coming

Craig Murray: New Legal Hurdles for Julian Assange

Ukraine: How the Global Fertilizer Shortage Is Going to Affect Food

As the ocean industrial revolution gains pace the need for protection is urgent

100+ Groups Urge Biden to Pardon Human Rights Lawyer Steven Donziger

Tulsi Gabbard reacts to Romney accusing her of 'treasonous lies'

A NATO No-Fly Zone in Ukraine Would Be “Direct Involvement in the War Against Russia,” Experts Warn

Video: Trump Predicted $7.00 Gas!

Kim Iversen: Biden Uses TIK TOK Stars To Spread Propaganda About Gas Prices

Ryan Grim: Media PLEADS With White House For War With Russia, Peace Talks SHOVED Aside

A Little Night Music

Model T Slim - You're Growing Old Baby

Drifting Slim (Elmon Mickle) - My Sweet Woman

Elmon Mickle - Lonesome Highway

Elmon Mickle - Jackson Blues

Elmon Mickle - Flat Foot Sam

Elmon Mickle - Short and Fat

Junior Brooks (w/Elmon Mickle hca) - She's The Little Girl For Me

Drifting Slim (Elmon Mickle) - Good Morning Baby

Drifting Slim - My Little Machine

Harmonica Harry (Elmon Mickle) - Nothing But The Blues