Red Alert! Oh, and Happy New Year

red alert.jpg

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has issued a symbolic “red alert” warning for 2018 instead of the usual appeal (to the United States of Perpetual Warmongers) for world peace.

I'll paraphrase: He said the world is going to shit, there is no hope in sight and if we don't do something, we're all going to get blown up by nuclear bombs, or burnt crisp (or frozen, which is it now?) by climate change, or the rich will take everything until there's nothing left for like, 7 billion people.

"A year after becoming the ninth UN chief, Guterres decided not to yet again appeal for “world peace” in his New Year's message. Instead, noting that over the course of 2017 “the world has gone in reverse,” he explicitly warned of the dangers which could undermine world peace and stability in 2018."

https://www.rt.com/news/414719-un-guterres-red-alert/

Wow, it's like everything is out in the open now. The whole world knows we're up shit creek without a paddle. We're on red alert. The world is FUBAR (fucked up beyond recognition).

I decided I'd better be sure what he is really saying so I checked with Merriam-Webster. Who better? Here's what they have to say about Red Alert:

"the final stage of alert in which enemy attack appears imminent; broadly : a state of alert brought on by impending danger."

Ruh roh. "final stage" "attack appears imminent" "impending danger"?
Sounds serious. But the world knows, right? That's half the battle isn't it? Because we are humans and we are smart motherfuckers and our governments are the shit, man. There's no need to fear, Underdog is here baby. The United Nations of the Earth will save us. All we need is love, da da da da da.

Then there's the Doomsday clock, now set at two and a half minutes til DOOMSDAY, or midnight for those wearing glass slippers. That's 30 minutes closer to DOOMSDAY then it was in 2016. That's the closest to midnight it's been since 1953. I bet it goes to two minutes any Trump twitter tweet now.

https://thebulletin.org/timeline

Does anybody care? Does the United Nations care? The human race and planet earth are now on RED ALERT, year 2017 of someone's lord. Is anyone going to do anything about this existential emergency?

Not if we Americans have anything to do about it. We want more war, man. There's North Korea, Iran, Russia, China and Ethiopia, again. Plus, we're going to have another election soon and the progressives are going to make progress and Bernie will get older and even wiser and Joe Biden will beat Trump anyway. Just keep his hands tied behind his back. We don't care about no stinking Red Alert, we are the indispensable nation. We're going to elect different politicians this time. What more does the damn world expect from the greatest democracy ever created?

Dammit, I thought I had more time. I'm going to have to get to that shed this spring. The one with the secret fallout shelter stocked with Spagettios and beer and plenty of board games.

[video:https://youtu.be/FNfSEI-kFEk]

You don't believe?

[video:https://youtu.be/2J8DmOyh7cQ]

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Alligator Ed's picture

It will be a wild ride, while it lasts.

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Big Al's picture

@Alligator Ed Progress won't cut it. As the song says,

"Yeah, my blood's so mad, feels like coagulatin'"

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JekyllnHyde's picture

@Big Al

You've diagnosed the potential problem quite well, Al. So, what's the solution that you have in mind? Is there one?

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A riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma

Big Al's picture

@JekyllnHyde I've got some ideas, working on a paper to flesh them out. I think in the end it's pretty simple but very difficult.

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JekyllnHyde's picture

@Big Al

As you imply strongly in this essay, if anyone dares to even think about using nuclear weapons, then, we are really screwed. I don't know how much confidence I had in reading an article a few weeks ago, but I recall that some US officials talked openly about refusing Trump's orders should he initiate a nuclear strike.

Using them twice was bad enough in August 1945.

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A riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma

Alligator Ed's picture

@JekyllnHyde During a lightning storm over a dense and dry forest, where will the first fire begin? There is a Brownian movement ever shifting in today's unstable economic/military mess. So what's the plan. Doesn't matter. Too much chaos to make any rational plans as likely to succeed.

Humanity is on a drunkard's walk, which inevitably leads to the drunkard lying in a gutter, being the lowest state of entropy. Human "planning" is a higher level of entropy than the gutter--achievble but amongst the least likely solutions. For example, the drunkard safely navigating the streets and finding the door to his own home. The combination for all other solutions (equals unplanned) is greater than the ideal solution. For a fuller mathematical statement of the drunkard's walk see here.

A corollary of this is what Robert Burns is reported to have written: the best laid plans of mice and men often go astray.

My solution--or yours--is a statistical unlikelihood. After all, how many angels can dance on the head of a pin? And does that matter?

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JekyllnHyde's picture

@Alligator Ed

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A riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma

the Human Race for a Darwin Award.

Next time, if there is a next time, I'd like the Bonobo as the human progenitor.

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Big Al's picture

@JtC The evolution is awe inspiring.

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feels like it's copulating
coupling with defiance
starving for reliance
on truth with the 99
trust each other to transcend
the evil we're fed
2018 is the year of the rebellion

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Granma's picture

@QMS and 2018 is the year of much rebellion.

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@Granma think it's better to focus on a new year revolution. Time to take back what's been stolen.

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Pricknick's picture

whilst beginning the initial shaking that will rid it of the pestilence that currently resides.
I wholeheartedly welcome the demise.

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Regardless of the path in life I chose, I realize it's always forward, never straight.

Alligator Ed's picture

@Pricknick The oft-foretold market crash of 2017 didn't occur. In fact the bubble is not showing imminent signs of bursting to me as a non-economist. I have been predicting a revolution imminent (without a fixed date) and I think Big Al agrees.

A recent essay here discusses the end-product of extreme austerity: social disruption followed by revolution. I am not sanguine about a peaceful revolution. Our society, below the elite level, is just too disorganized for this.

Fire and Ice

Dating myself, I heard Mr. Frost read this poem, and others, while I was in college.

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Strife Delivery's picture

@Alligator Ed

In fact the bubble is not showing imminent signs of bursting to me as a non-economist.

This has always been a challenge for me to grasp simply because I can't quite find the information I need to answer the question:

What are the signs of a bubble popping? What causes a bubble to pop? Everything talks about the lead up off the bubble and then the fallout, but often ignores the XYZ factors of the immediate popping.

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snoopydawg's picture

@Alligator Ed

I watched a video of the Iranian protests and it's just like the ones that we have here. People are armed with rocks and bottles while the cops are armed to the teeth. The cops are going to win every time. Some people think that the protesters should have personal weapons, but if that happens I'm pretty sure that the PTB won't have a problem with a few deaths to get their point across.

I don't think that it's only a Chinese company making these anti protest equipment. I bet one of our defense companies is working on building them for use here. Throw in a few drones that spray chemical weapons on us and there is no way in hell that we'd get to get our point across. They have been planning for us to rise up since they started squeezing us how many decades ago?

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Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

@Alligator Ed @Alligator Ed You fucking lucky dog. For getting to hear Frost read Fire and Ice.

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@Pricknick give a holler so we can work it thru. Feels like it's beyond if, just wonder from which direction and when. Blow it up, burn it down, protect your loved ones. The time has come. 2018 we've allowed too much, time to take back what's been stolen. Will have to fight for it, people get ready.

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Azazello's picture

the key word is survival on the new frontier."
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y8zrKnkd6ss width:400 height:240]

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We wanted decent healthcare, a living wage and free college.
The Democrats gave us Biden and war instead.

@Azazello

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Strife Delivery's picture

Dammit, I thought I had more time. I'm going to have to get to that shed this spring. The one with the secret fallout shelter stocked with Spagettios and beer and plenty of board games.

Hope you have better food choices than Spaghettios in your shelter. As for board games, maybe stay away from Monopoly. You could get Life, to remember a life before the underground bunker you are in.

Does anybody care? Does the United Nations care? The human race and planet earth are now on RED ALERT, year 2017 of someone's lord. Is anyone going to do anything about this existential emergency?

Not if we Americans have anything to do about it. We want more war, man. There's North Korea, Iran, Russia, China and Ethiopia, again. Plus, we're going to have another election soon and the progressives are going to make progress and Bernie will get older and even wiser and Joe Biden will beat Trump anyway. Just keep his hands tied behind his back. We don't care about no stinking Red Alert, we are the indispensable nation. We're going to elect different politicians this time. What more does the damn world expect from the greatest democracy ever created?

UN isn't going to do anything because they are the USA's PR firm.

And Americans? Dear God no. When all the nukes are dropped, if there are a few remaining American survivors they will sit wondering how did this happen. Where were the warning signs? How come no one told us? How come our "leaders" and politicians didn't stop this?

Americans will start caring about trying to save the world only after it has been completely and utterly destroyed. I don't know if it is a formal theory, but well I call it my Stoplight Theory: Taking preventative measures after the action you are trying to prevent has already happened.

No stop sign exists on Road A. Some folks suggest putting up a stop sign but they are ignored. An accident occurs on Road A. Now folks begin to consider a stop sign on Road A.

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Big Al's picture

@Strife Delivery Remember the Bush quote, "nobody could have predicted" about the 9/11 false flag attack? Now we've got the head of the U.N., the preeminent global organization on the planet, issuing a red alert primarily because of the possibility of nuclear war. Our own country has fully documented and public plans to use nukes to continue it's quest for world hegemony. Most Americans are concerned, but they don't know what to do about it, any possible solutions are seen as too difficult, too far from reach. It's going to take a small subset to get it done if it can be done.

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@Big Al how many of us can they kill before the world takes note and does something about it? 10,000 or 100,000 or 1,000,000? I think we have friends somewhere in this crazy world.

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Big Al's picture

@QMS We're at the point where this has to be a global thing, a global revolution. There are enough people out there ready and willing, the question is how to organize it and what the goal or goals should be.

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@Big Al we will just be fighting back. Not the best strategy, but the more they push, the more will be the push back. I think they aren't stupid enough to slaughter everyone preemptively, more in limited skirmishes. But the resistance will be overwhelming as they try to quell mass revolt. There exists little trust in the domestic armed forces already.

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Lookout's picture

...the question is how many other life forms go extinct with us?

We fit these 7 signs of collapsing empires...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7Gc1bv-Mj4

However our demise might be more like the collision that caused the dinosaur extinction...driven by fossil fuels instead of an asteroid. We are already in the midst of the 6th great extinction.

Happy new year to us all.

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“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

Big Al's picture

@Lookout are doing us in. Sometimes people say it may be too late or we'd better do something before it's too late. Then I think of all the people, including millions and millions of kids, where it's already been and is too late.
I continue to believe there's a solution and I continue to believe most people are good. But the evil people are in charge, that's what we have to change.

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@Big Al Like you, I believe we can win this war. They may have more guns and money, but this populous won't go down without a fight. When the hippies and rednecks pull together, better watch out police state, cause you won't know which way it's coming. There are many more of us with a legitimate claim to a civil solution. The sooner the ruler's domestic army understands this, the less blood shed there will be. People are fighting mad.

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Alligator Ed's picture

@QMS have family too. When they return from a day's citizen repression, their families will set them straight about what's important when the times become desperate.

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edg's picture

During my Army days in the 1970s, FUBAR meant Fucked Up Beyond All Repair.

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@edg Al Ed gave you the post doctoral definition.

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hecate's picture

this man will let you share his shelter. He seems sorta friendly. The shelter is in Utah. But what does it matter where it is—it is underground.

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Kl65Fr2hHg]

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Wink's picture

to those that don't give a fuck. Doomsday clock? Whatever...
Seems we've been 2 Minutes to Doomsday my entire life. Literally.
And, seriously, I'm more worried about surviving the Nucular (Dubya spelling) Knockout Punch. But I'm still optimistic everyone keeps their trigger fingers off the red launch buttons. There's already too much to deal with this year without worrying about Nucular annihilation.

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the little things you can do are more valuable than the giant things you can't! - @thanatokephaloides. On Twitter @wink1radio. (-2.1) All about building progressive media.

Hawkfish's picture

She told him that there was to be a nuclear attack warning test on the 2nd instead of the usual tsunami warning. We are once again in more danger from ourselves than from nature’s fury.

I had hoped my generation had mostly reduced the risk of nuclear war so my kids wouldn’t have to deal with it, but I guess not.

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We can’t save the world by playing by the rules, because the rules have to be changed.
- Greta Thunberg

@Hawkfish

... She told him that there was to be a nuclear attack warning test on the 2nd instead of the usual tsunami warning. ...

I suppose they're also using the gear from the original Cold War that they loved so much at the time that they can't ever let it - and the kick-backs and investment returns from the profits - go? And the same advice to crawl under a desk and kiss your ass goodbye 'you'll be safe here'?

We'll have to remember that Obama said the plan was to shut down internet in the event of any major disaster, without mentioning that this cuts out independent reports to leave only The Official Story on the corporate media for the next False Flag they'll use to obliterate planetary life. If not stopped, of course. Unfortunately, I doubt that most people realize that, at this point.

But what a cruel thing to do, shutting down communications among the public in a major emergency, just when most needed, even if not in order to further confuse, hazard and disinform the victims...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-11736545

Should Obama's 'internet kill switch' power be curbed?
By Daniel Nasaw BBC News, Washington

24 November 2010

Under a World War II-era law, the US president appears to have authority to disconnect computer systems and servers from the internet in the event of a national emergency. But the next US Congress is poised to change that. ...

... But although the 1942 law makes no mention of the internet - merely of "any facility or station for wire communication" - the Obama administration in June told Congress it would cite it in an emergency. ...

... Civil liberties campaigners are concerned at the potential for the power to be abused. ...

... Among several shortcomings in the 1942 law's application to the online world, it does not specify what constitutes cyber war - as opposed to a commercial hacking job. Nor is it even clear the law would treat a cyber attack by a foreign power as an act of war - a precondition of the president's use of the emergency powers. ...

Nevertheless, the debate over the president's cyber war authority comes amid growing evidence that nations are deploying cyber weapons against adversaries.

The powerful internet worm Stuxnet, discovered this year to have infected computers across the globe, appears to have been designed specifically to target Iranian nuclear sites, causing alarm within the US and UK governments. Some analysts say it was so sophisticated it could only have been launched by a sovereign nation state. ...

There, now, isn't that reassuring? Especially knowing that there is that steadying influence actually running government in the direction desired by them, no matter who sits in the hot seat? And knowing that good old Stuxnet was made in the USA?

And is that the real reason that there's been so much desperation among warmongers hating Americans for having internet freedom to access and share information outside of their ever-more-frantic-and-idiotic propaganda campaigns to have cute puppy and BLM ads and Twitter accounts declared an Act of War by Russia? As an excuse to shut down the internet in the process of privatizing an essential public utility so that controlling corporations can take over 'security' on the internet for the elimination of any news they don't want the public hearing or discussing?

Not that this is news to anyone here but to add:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/stuxnet-was-work-...

National Security
Stuxnet was work of U.S. and Israeli experts, officials say
By Ellen Nakashima and Joby Warrick June 2, 2012

A damaging cyberattack against Iran’s nuclear program was the work of U.S. and Israeli experts and proceeded under the secret orders of President Obama, who was eager to slow that nation’s apparent progress toward building an atomic bomb without launching a traditional military attack, say current and former U.S. officials.

The origins of the cyberweapon, which outside analysts dubbed Stuxnet after it was inadvertently discovered in 2010, have long been debated, with most experts concluding that the United States and Israel probably collaborated on the effort. The current and former U.S. officials confirmed that long-standing suspicion Friday, after a New York Times report on the program.

The officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity to describe the classified effort code-named Olympic Games, said it was first developed during the George W. Bush administration and was geared toward damaging Iran’s nuclear capability gradually while sowing confusion among Iranian scientists about the cause of mishaps at a nuclear plant. ...

...The cyberweapon took months of testing and development. It began to show effects in 2008, when centrifuges began spinning at faster-than-normal speeds until sensitive components began to warp and break, participants said. ...

https://www.rt.com/news/mossad-iran-nuclear-programme-851/

Mossad and CIA concur: Iran isn’t seeking nukes
Published time: 18 Mar, 2012 14:04
Edited time: 18 Mar, 2012 18:04

Israel’s intelligence service Mossad has acknowledged, just like their American counterparts, there is no proof Tehran is carrying out a nuclear weapons program, a source in US intelligence told the New York Times.
Trends
Israel vs Iran

­An unnamed former senior US intelligence official told the paper “Mossad does not disagree with the US on the [Iranian] weapons program.” The consensus among US spy agencies remains that Iran stopped its nuclear weapons research several years ago.

“There is not a lot of dispute between the US and Israeli intelligence communities on the facts,” the official continued.

Such recognition comes in stark contrast with Israeli politicians, who have continually insisted on an immediate military strike on Iran’s nuclear installations to prevent it from evolving into an “existential threat” to the Jewish state. ...

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/has-iran-really-pursued-...

Has Iran Really Pursued Nukes?
Gareth Porter's new book challenges years of the West's claims about Tehran's nuclear program.
By Kelley Beaucar Vlahos • April 1, 2014

... Gareth Porter knows the narrative. He has worked tirelessly to pursue the truth of the matter. His conclusion: Iran never had a nuclear weapons program and, frankly, it doesn’t want one.

Can he prove it? Well he’s got 300 pages representing at least six years worth of work to try to get you over to his side. Manufactured Crisis: the Untold Story of the Iran Nuclear Scare, published this year by Just World Books, is not just some ham-fisted polemic. It’s a journalist’s read: dense with interviews, reports, citations, notes. He finds obscure sources that would otherwise be lost to history. He pokes holes in unquestioned news stories, and exposes what he believes is an orchestrated campaign by the U.S. and its ally, Israel, dating back to the 1979 Islamic revolution, to prevent Iran from developing a non-weaponized nuclear power program. ...

... Of course, he’s not the only one to reach this conclusion. Paul Pillar, a National Intelligence Officer for the Middle East between 2000 and 2005, tells TAC that Porter is on the right track. “All indications are that Iran is not developing a nuclear weapon,” he said in an e-mail. “Gareth Porter’s book provides a useful service in demonstrating that common worse-case assumptions about Iranian motivations and objectives are invalid.” ...

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2015/02/leaks-netanyahu-misled-iran-nuclea...

Mossad contradicted Netanyahu on Iran nuclear programme
by Will Jordan & Rahul Radhakrishnan
23 Feb 2015

... That view tracks with the 2012 US National Intelligence estimate, which found no evidence that Iran had thus far taken a decision to use its nuclear infrastructure to build a weapon, or that it had revived efforts to research warhead design that the US said had been shelved in 2003. ...

... However, the document leaked to Al Jazeera makes clear that the Mossad's formal assessment of Iran's nuclear capacity and intentions differs from the scenario outlined by the prime minister at the UN.

The cable was relayed to South Africa's State Security Agency (SSA) shortly after the September 2012 address in which Netanyahu had displayed a cartoonish diagram of a bomb with a fuse, marked with a 70 percent line and another "red line" at 90 percent.

The markers represented progress milestones in Iran's uranium enrichment work. He argued that medium-enriched uranium (which Iran had begun producing, saying it was needed to fuel a research reactor producing isotopes to fight cancer) took Iran 70 percent of the distance to enriching weapons-grade material. ...

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Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.

A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.