After discussing the state (or rather lack) of democracy around the world last week, it’s time to talk about what our current governance structure could potentially evolve into.
It bugged me a lot when the question of atmosphere ignition was used to dramatic effect in the movie Oppenheimer because it seems to me that this is a classic risk/reward scenario, i.e. a matter of probability.
I assume it's a question of the risk of them all either making a mathematical error, fundamentally misunderstanding the nascent field of nuclear physics, or perhaps missing some crucial knowledge because it can happen. At the time, I can see that the combined risks of these errors might have been frightening and that it is only in hindsight we can safely conclude that it was 100% safe.
But maybe it “could happen” in the same way that it could happen that all the air molecules inside a room spontaneously, against all odds, gather in one corner. I remember reading somewhere that this “could happen” but is unlikely to happen anywhere before the end of time, as defined by the heat death of the universe.
If igniting the earth's atmosphere was a 1 in 10^500 risk, to me, it would seem to be a complete no-brainer to run it, even if the risk is, as they made a point of in both the movie and the podcast, “above zero” – a purposefully misleading term.
Remember that scientists tend to be extremely literal when it comes to using language (a typical INTJ trait).
So when they say something “could happen”, it just means the chance is above zero, and not necessarily more likely than everyone on earth randomly picking the same lottery numbers.
The movie Oppenheimer bugged me too (or the trailer did - that was enough), for celebrating amoral, nerd scientists, aka enablers of the techno-fascist dystopia we now live under.
The point is, even if the risk had been substantial the scientists would likely have voted to go ahead anyway, because they *just have to* know what will happen.
It's that type of thinking, focussing only on one small part while neglecting the wider picture, that's led to the current state of the world. Hubris, that humans can 'progress', i.e. improve on millions of years of evolution, through 'ingenuity'. Newsflash: you can't.
Fukushima was built downhill of tsunami warning stones that are several hundred years old. The decision to set off the first bomb is a beautiful example of how Fukushima happened: a very large organization had an imperative to do something, and it ignored all dangers.
This is why nuclear power is a terrible idea: large organizations are involved.
You may be right. I just wanna point out that nuclear bombs and nuclear energy are two very different things, and I was talking about the former.
It was exactly the conflating of the two that was the successful manipulation that turned us almost fully into a fossil fuel bonanza. Imho a massive blunder, but I could be wrong. Coal pollution kills millions a year, don’t forget.
Most probably there is no such thing as nuclear weapons. Even if they exist, the scenario described here is totally absurd. Putin and xij jinping are actually best buddies with those running Nato. The only war is the one by the psychos in charge against the normal people of the Earth. Until you get that, all your analysis is pure bollocks.
Presumably then, Iran is going to test explode a warhead full of sawdust soon, and it's going to register on the richter scale.
Think on this: While supermarkets have similar ends at the political scale - such as lower corporate taxes, less consumer protections and information as to the products - they may still plot and scheme to drive each other into bankruptcy, without mercy.
The world of the 'illuminati' is more complex than Manichaenism would suggest.
I advised them to change the fatwah and develop one around 5 years ago.
It wouldn't be used on Palestine - too many Palestinians still live there. But it would be very useful against an American force.
Only some of the country's deep state took notice.
But I suspect since then the message has been repeated from within, and matters have brought it to a boil.
They have all, or most of the components, worked on separately. To purify enough material is the work of less than a month. Perhaps an underground test chamber has already been prepared - or in one of Persia's many vast, and wonderful deserts.
I am no Netanyahoo - I WANT them to have the means of defence and deterrence. It is a wonderful country, and wonderful people.
I also liked Israel, and the people on both sides there. Working together, they could create something amazing. Jewish, Palestinian, Persian. A natural triumvirate.
But the Zionazis have ruined that.
I have no idea if they are "Two weeks away", or even trying. But their scientists are as good as anywhere in the World, and unlike the Israelis, they wouldn't have to steal the technology should they wish to take this step.
Nuttyahoo can wave around at the UN all the evidence of his racist craziness that makes him happy.
If the region requires a balance of terror, to balance his, then so be it.
To remind the readers of this blog. Current nuclear powers of the world are the U.S.A., Russia, China, Israel, Great Britain, France, India, Pakistan, maybe North Korea (their launching capacities are quite uncertain, though), and perhaps Australia in the future (the recent deal with the nuclear submarines mentions conventional missiles only, but the U.S. already gave nuclear power to the UK and to Israel while keeping the deal a secret; so it remains a question mark regarding Australia). Beyond the historical reference of the first use of nuclear power in 1945, what you are writing about the U.S.A. (always the Big Satan in your stories) is also true for the other nuclear powers and has nothing to do with democracy. Well, in your story, Russia and China are only "pressured" to put their missiles on hair trigger as well (LOL). Who is so naive as to believe that?
Apart from the heavy-handed propaganda piece that many people may not even notice (it's how it works and is effective, mixing propaganda with real matters of interest), I find your text valuable, and I agree in a large part with other arguments. We may have a nuclear war, or we may not, and in no country (ruled by a dictatorship or not) is there a guarantee that a nuclear war cannot be triggered—just by mistake or a failure of the system, for example. I also agree that the scenario of a limited nuclear war with no major consequences for the planet is highly improbable and a dangerous fantasy, actually.
Nuclear war would mean the annihilation of humankind by a nuclear winter, or very close to it. If we can avoid it, sooner or later, I can see that our immediate future is a general fascist rule in all countries of significance after the fall of the U.S.A. into this camp: the other major countries are fascist already: China, Russia, and India (also taking this route...). and once absolute autocratic power is consolidated by Trump in the U.S., the current largest military power in the world, there is little chance democracy can survive among their former allies. These big empires (at least the U.S.A., China, and Russia) will come to an agreement to cut up the world with their own zones of influence. There is already, clearly, an obvious alliance between the actual dictators of the world and the ones who are going to be: they view the example of democracies and freedom in the world as their major enemy and a threat to their power.
Once this is established (next year in the U.S.A.), with regard to this objective, China and Russia will already have won. But it won't be the end of history.
Countries with vast energy resources will have a strong edge over the others (others like the western European countries), but looking a little bit further, every place in the world will have to go through a double whammy: the exponential effects of global heating, coming much faster than we imagine and affecting with death and destruction the tropical and equatorial regions first, and also, but at a slower pace, the inescapable dwindling of our natural resources. This adds to the fascist practice of power, the transformation of our society and economy into a feudal system (with all the features typical of the European Middle Ages). So, taking a large scope, I agree with you.
Note: Feudalism also means eventually the weakening of central power and the emergence of more and more localized authorities, a localized economy, and even more extreme inequality with the reemergence of sevitude (serfs or slaves). At this point, fascism gives way to something else. And this is, in my view, the most logical thing to happen everywhere in a second phase.
Now the question remains of our survival as a species, with the prospect of runaway climate heating. I have no response to that.
US is the only country to have been aggressive in use or threat of use of nuclear weapons
US voters have failed since 1945 to control US War Machine and threat of nuclear weapons in Korea or elsewhere. No country has been as threatening
US has provided nuclear B-61 bombs to Germany and Belgium and Italy and Turkey. It has breached Non-Proliferation Treaties butch’s a Republic accountable to voters that is Will of US people to give Germany nuclear weapons
Are you kidding me? Germany, Belgium, Italy and Turkey are NOT nuclear nations and don't possess any nuclear weapons. As for nuclear threats, are you kidding? It is true that the U.S. was the only country in history using atomic bombs in Japan in 1945, but with regards to threats, what about Russia invading foreign democratic countries, killing many thousands of civilians, and threaterning anyone getting in their way of nuclear anihilation? What about China clearly using their nuclear capabilities as a threat againt Japan and its neighbors? What about Isreal threatening to use their nuclear weapons (while still denying they have them). Your one-sided view is astounding. The whole point with nuclear force, for any country, is deterrence and affirmation of power for their own benefit. Ukraine learned it the very hard way; they relinquished their nuclear arsenal in 1994 and are soon going to be crushed. "In 1994, Ukraine agreed to transfer these weapons (nuclear) to Russia and became a party to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, in exchange for assurances from Russia, the United States and United Kingdom to respect the Ukrainian independence and sovereignty in the existing borders. For the comprehensive article, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukraine_and_weapons_of_mass_destruction
But I always found weird how some people keep using the word "fascism" to label regimes or political parties that have nothing to do with the original and historical meaning of the word.
These various regimes might be plutocratic, authoritarian, nationalist (or merely sovereignist) or illiberal democracies of some sort. Each in their own way. But none of them are actually fascist.
So maybe it's actually no more than a slur word that merely means "i don't like it" ? Or maybe it is used to make a point as the word is still supposed to scare everyone ?
Until of course, it is so overused that it won't scare anybody anymore... And indeed, will quite probably "gives way to something else".
Yeah it reminds me of how B renders the word troll meaningless instead of implementing a mature, forthright content moderation policy by actively engaging with any commenters he has a problem with instead of taking an elitist tack like 99pc of blog owners do. John Day sets the standard for bloggers with respect to treating commenters gracefully regardless of however abrasive his commenters are, as I myself often am.
The worst thing to do is to ask loyalist commenters to rat on other commenters. That's pathetic.
Right, the old DNFTT, based on ancestral shunning. Self-organizing behavior. Even relentless iconoclasts like myself are gonna move on if no one wants to engage with what I have to say. That would just tell me that this ain't a place I can build together in. Cause and effect.
But we both know that 'moderation' almost always comes down to the blogger pulling institutional rank and canceling the person for one egotistical reason or another; maintaining the blogger's own status quo -- and the echo chamber that comes with that -- being the most common reason.
Idk Tris. I think the word “fascism” is often appropriate. The merging of corporate and state power really does constitute fascism. As Mussolini said, fascism could also be called corporatism. Sometimes the nationalism piece is lacking at first glance but capitalism can usually fill in the blanks
My impression is that Tris, unlike Adam, gets the true definition of fascism as Mussolini defined it (though who didn't originate it himself as I recall).
I agree that capitalism usually can fill in the blanks although capitalism comes in degrees of fascism. National Fascism like Mussolini's was far more benign than the imperial International Fascism of his day that he fought against, and latter of which two was more benign than the Global Fascism that the International Fascism turned into by way of finalizing its imperialism.
National Fascism at least operates a public banking system, and can't pursue the expansionary, imperial warfare that would operate at cross-purposes to its ideological platform.
Democracy, of course, is neither here nor there. All true anarchists agree that a benevolent dictator is a superior option to a dictatorship of a manipulable majority, which the majority always is.
Degrees of capitalism is a good phrase in the sense that there is always a relational aspect. It’s a spectrum. But i think the trend toward fascism is so expansive and widespread that there’s usually a decent argument for its use
Oh yeah for sure. My whole machinery of online thought is little more than a 21st century Woody Guthrie guitar sticker. It's why I called out Adam's misuse of it in the previous thread and I why I appreciate him getting called out on it again today. Adam's definition is the fascist redefinition that acts as cover for fascism. That Hitler - the most militant antifascist of all-time -- is the now 'history’s' most fascist person of all-time is one of the biggest orwellianisms of our time.
And beyond the general reason for the inversion, which is the ongoing facilitation of Sheldon Wolin's "inverted totalitarianism," I believe that the particular reason that they are currently inverting the definition of fascism is because global fascism, and hence fascism in general, has exceeded its limits to growth and the Elites need to transition to bilateral national socialisms under the Non-Public Degrowth Agenda, and so by labeling national socialism as fascist while they undertake the transition it throws people off the scent.
Interesting. Have anything I can read on the matter? I love aspects of degrowth and non-state socialism/communism so curious as to the potential threats to peoples freedom in the name of state socialism
Further to the relationality, and perhaps to just state the obvious, all economics are more or less capitalist given that all economics arise, in the first place, out of the running of structural energy surpluses, and money/capital is but a necessary proxy for those surpluses in order to facilitate their distribution. Even full-blown communism couldn't do away with scrip.
In the historical context, "corporatism" doesn't refer to "corporations" as big multinational capitalist entities the way we use the word nowadays. Corporatism is not the merging of business and state...
It refers to a political system where various interests, organised in corporations or syndicates, negotiate together on the basis of their common interests as a alternative between liberalism and communism. And yes, it was adopted by fascists as a way to further the interests of the state. But is much older.
Tris, I have to disagree with that assessment. In order to understand historical context we have to understand the arc of the various histories within history. We have to understand that all ideologies have their ideal forms and their practical forms.
Mussolini's corporatism found its ideal forms in the for-profit privatization of large industry, replete with a centralized stock market, which is a familiar economics to us that we might best describe as national finance capitalism. Mussolini understood the raw power of finance capitalism. Being a true populist, however, he did advocate for worker-owned for-profit syndicalism outside of the sphere of big business, which is the economics most closely associated with national socialism.
We can know that finance-capitalist corporatism was his ideal form because his privatizing cartelization of the Italian economy in service of this ideal form occurred at the beginning of Italy's only true economic growth period during his whole tenure. See this wiki link on cartelization:
Similarly, we can know NSDAP's true intentions from its ideal form which was Strasserism, which was an agrarian-hearted conservative left-libertarian revolutionary syndicalism that was doomed to be supplanted by existential war economics.
Yes, I understand what you mean by ideal form and practical form (if only communism could stay true to its ideal form…). And whatever the ideal form of Mussolini's fascism was, the practical form wasn't appealing at all.
And still, it's seems to me there are 2 ways business and state can merge.
One is when business is supposed to serve the interest of the state. And that is whatever the dictator (or dubiously elected state leader) define them to be and whatever he decide about who gets profits and how much.
The other is when state is supposed to serve the interest of business. And these interests are whatever profits to the oligarchs who decide who gets elected to make it happen.
The first option is more or less what we see in Russia. The second is what happening in the US and others so-called "liberal democracies".
Can both these political arrangements be called fascism ? I doubt so… They deserve a better definition.
Beside will you also call fascist people who think they know better how to share wealth or protect environnent (or please God for that matter) than anyone else ? To the point they consider that even if they are in the minority, they are entitled to use political violence to gain power over the majority because it's for the greater good ?
And what about those who claim that everyone has the (human or divine) right to do whatever they want. And that include not paying any taxes or be armed to the teeth. To the point that government spending and power must be slashed to the bone. With a chainsaw if need be. Are these libertarians fascist too ?
Thanks. FTR, no politics appeal to me. :) Fascism is finance capitalism. Old Testament capitalism, in other words. National fascism is finance capitalism in the public currency of a national treasury. International (now global) fascism is finance capitalism in the private currency of a private central bank. Both the US and Russia are finance capitalist satrapies operating under oligarchic private currencies of private central banks. If the russian government's top priority was the russian state then it wouldnt have been exporting its most valuable natural capital (oil and gas) as fast as possible for these last 30 years. It would have burned those resources for itself as it was able to. Straight Libertarians arent opposed to the financialization of capitalism so, yes, their politics is a form of fascism but theyre not relevant because straight Libertarianism is a theoretical industrial politics only. It cannot exist in industrial civilization on the way up or the way down because financialization will always select for a big government that can both enforce the extreme wealth inequality that comes with financialization and, also, buffer the boom-bust bubble dynamics. When i speak of the coming manufactured national socialisms as being left-libertarian, by libertarian i just mean small, less intrusive government relative to the present.
And fascism is not a degree of capitalism either...
Fascism takes its origins in socialism.
Under a fascist regime, as opposed to communism, industry owners are still allowed to make some profits. But they share with workers whatever they are told to share by the state and make whatever they are ordered to make for the (supposed) good of the state.
I agree as well. I meant degrees of fascism not capitalism. Many days up with the kids, not a lot of sleep. You obviously understand what fascism is. I just meant to say that there really is a huge movement towards fascism and that the knee jerk “thats not fascism” usually isnt accurate. I didn’t read Adams comment through enough.
Non-stare communism (i get that non-state should be implied with “communism”) is the only reasonable way forward hopefully starting with pockets of autonomous regions with extremely minimal top down governance
Non-state little c communism can only occur below the Dunbar's Number. Any governance turns the c into a big C and also requires running structural surpluses which, in turn, sets in motion the growth mandate. The civilizational dynamic is really an all or nothing prospect.
Idk i think it may be more or less discrete but i think they can coexist to the extent that the hierarchical structure respects the boundary in terms of land barrier
That's not accurate, Tris: fascism itself has its structural origins in finance capitalism. Populist fascism, however, finds inspiration in non-marxist socialism, with socialism merely meaning State regulation of finance capitalism (free market capitalism) so as to minimize wealth inequality to one degree or another depending on the exact politics.
It's no surprise that Mussolini went with populist fascism given that Italy was the birthplace of modern finance capitalism. And it's no surprise that Germany went with the syndicalist national socialism given Germany's long guild-based cultural history.
Like amost ideologies, one can find a founder (in the case of fascism: Mussolini). Then there are followers over time, and there are followers now. Of course, all forms of fascism have diffrences, but fascist regimes have very similar features that makes them such, and they need a large majorities of these specificities to be qualified as fascists. Here there are according to almost all scholars:
1. Powerful, often exclusionary, populist nationalism centered on cult of a redemptive, “infallible”
leader who never admits mistakes.
2. Political power derived from questioning reality, endorsing myth and rage, and promoting lies.
3. Fixation with perceived national decline, humiliation, or victimhood.
4. White Replacement “Theory” used to show that democratic ideals of freedom and equality are a threat.
Oppose any initiatives or institutions that are racially, ethnically, or religiously harmonious.
5. Disdain for human rights while seeking purity and cleansing for those they define as part of the nation.
6. Identification of “enemies”/scapegoats as a unifying cause. Imprison and/or murder opposition and minority
group leaders.
7. Supremacy of the military and embrace of paramilitarism in an uneasy, but effective
collaboration with traditional elites. Fascists arm people and justify and glorify violence as “redemptive”.
8. Rampant sexism.
9. Control of mass media and undermining “truth”.
10. Obsession with national security, crime and punishment, and fostering a sense of the nation under attack.
11. Religion and government are intertwined.
12. Corporate power is protected and labor power is suppressed.
13. Disdain for intellectuals and the arts not aligned with the fascist narrative.
14. Rampant cronyism and corruption. Loyalty to the leader is paramount and often more important than competence.
15. Fraudulent elections and creation of a one-party state.
16. Often seeking to expand territory through armed conflict.
Putin checks all the boxes
China too, except the the religious bent (but religious repression is very much real). they also don't even pretend to have elections.
Trump also checks all the boxes.
There is no more perfect definition than fascism (or neo-fascism if you will) to these regimes in their substance.
Following on from both Tris and Peter, in historical fact the sole superpower on the planet that is actually "Fascist" in the sense of open corporate-state is the USA.
The others may be more or less authoritarian, with various types of 'managed democracy' of their own, but the USA is openly Fascist, and with near zero democratic accountability to the Public.
This is the role propaganda plays, and of all the advantages the Western elites have, by far and away it is their superior propaganda that is most effective.
I appreciate the footnote you've added here. Community building really is one of the most important skills needed for any kind of 'self sufficiency' to exist. In a time before hyper individualism, things were accomplished by getting a group of people together, instead of everyone hiding in their own ivory tower (or mud hut). Even just having one good neighbour makes all the difference.
it is perhaps an interesting turn of events, that the nations of Europe spent centuries at war with one another----all with '''god'' on their side.
in fact their wars were of intent to grab someone else's resources.
then the USA created itself
the nations of Europe migrated there, to find an empty land, with enough for all---unlimited resources.
but then those resources began to run out.....like now.
those old european conflicts seem to be re-emerging---and all backed by holy writ....but all a
this is why the USA will distegrate into nation states---just as those old european states they came from used to be----warring with each other in endless battles, all with the certainty of their particular god---the evangelical insanity is proof of it.
If there's actually nothing left to fight over then there's also nothing left to fight with. And I don't think I'm taking you too literally.
As I mentioned years ago at Gail's place, and for but one example, stripper wells in southern California will still continue to produce for decades and decades provided that future warlords have the foresight today to fill a warehouse with replacement parts, which no doubt those people are out there.
So much is from a US Weltanschauung and that is precisely the problem Justusse with Adam Flint who thinks US „gave“ U.K. nuclear power without reading McMahon Act 1946. US ignorance is the major problem
McMahon Act 1946 created nuclear proliferation. Israel acquired through French Jewish scientists who shared technology and France built Dimona.
US cannot even make pits nowadays and Minuteman is outdated. Oreshnik makes nuclear weapons outdated unless U.S. wants to de deleted from the map
Able Archer 1983 scared Reagan
Trump may well test the limits and watch US mainland destroyed
There seems to be little appreciation here, and elsewhere, for all the bombing that our late-stage humans have unleashed across the globe. All that manufacture of mass death-dealing armaments of war, including ethno-state starvation and techno war extrajudicial killing done against Palestinians, was the start of the process that saw its outcomes in our 2024 reality.
Humans are an ultrasocial species driven by fear - nuclear arms were not ordered, produced, and instituted to be kept as unusable threats. Wrong species to have been gifted with fire.
Humans are only driven by fear in two cases: when running structural energy surpluses and when failing to run the structural surpluses that they've become used to running. Therefore, to your last sentence, any species is the wrong species to *choose* structural greed.
No, fear is built into human action - it's how human cooperation ends up with Pleistocene megafauna being hunted to extinction, it's how shunning and ostracism are beyond human capacity to surmount or even handle.
Fear is what drives accumulation, protects advantage, limits self-criticism, and animates useless keyboard pounding.
If that's what you believe Martin then my unsolicited advice to you is to get yourself into the better headspace where accurate reasoning lives. You are deep in despair right now.
That you would suggest i am AI just reaffirms your structural lack of critical thinking at the moment due to your psychological distress at the state of play. Don't be lazy. Here's an example of critical thinking that's relevant to your 'flat earthing' false claim that humans hold blanket responsibility for the megafauna extinction: if that was true then how is it that humans have lived in north america for 25,000 years and as of 175 years ago there were an estimated 150 million buffalo? If humans are innately rapacious then that buffalo population would be impossible yet it was fact. Like i said to Eddy last week, it's a cultural problem. Now buck up, mental health begins with physical health and constructive pursuits.
It’s always good to interact with random internet dummies, who show the hazards of spending any time trying to point out facts and realities in a forum that has no sorting mechanism. I make it a rule to step away from arguing with nutjobs.
I asked you many direct questions about human fear, and you answered none of them, so that stops any possibility of a discussion.
Then you come out with a ridiculous wingnut supposed example of the buffalo, which was the victim of human extermination, to prove human niceness, or whatever nonsense you're peddling.
Who needs to point out that 2+2=4?
Enjoy your alliance with anti-vaxxing Slow Edward. Both of you help folks get over the addiction of screen commenting, leaving so much more time for pursuits of actual enjoyment.,
Gentleness isn't necessary with me, just so you know.
You didn't ask me any earnest questions about fear. You asked a series of rhetorical questions in support of your dark worldview. That indirect approach to 'questioning' doesn't engender direct responses.
The buffalo example is not supposed. It is a fact that humans and buffalo coexisted successfully for 25,000 years and that fact clearly undermines your absurd worldview that humans are single mindedly destructive due to their fear-based existence; the fact that a judeo-christian civilization came along and promptly wiped out the buffalo over the course of three decades doesn't change that undermining; instead, it supports the fact that humans have a cultural problem right now and not an evolutionary problem.
Keep on vaxxing if you choose to, so that you can keep on decrying fear while perpetuating your own fear. I will choose otherwise.
The idea that the elites will come together to plot the new (fascist?) order is untenable. They will be too busy stabbing each other in the back when the opportunity arises.
Not if they all share the same existential concern - and they do. If cooperation is more adaptive than competition, then they will cooperate, just like they all did in order to create globalization.
And follow all of the suggestions in the posting. If they don't murder us all, we'll still suffer some sort of economic collapse. Get your community ready.
This was not about doomsday prepping - always struck me as futile and a waste of resources I might use better currently. This is about opting out of the current system to the extent you can and building more resilient local communities, which will make hard times a little easier.
And unfortunately this is why the current world situation is more like the 1910s than the 1930s. The entrenched wealthy do not want a war, in fact believe they have designed a system where it can't happen. Then World War 1 happened. Is Luigi Mangione (or the next Luigi Mangione, or the next) Gavilon Princip? We shall see.
When this happens... and it WILL happen... you won't be able to buy something as simple as a tooth brush... so forget about managing complex spent fuel ponds that need electricity and sophisticated electronics.
There are 4000 Spent Fuel Ponds Around the Globe…
If you don’t cool the spent fuel, the temperature will rise and there may be a swift chain reaction that leads to spontaneous combustion–an explosion and fire of the spent fuel assemblies. Such a scenario would emit radioactive particles into the atmosphere. Pick your poison. Fresh fuel is hotter and more radioactive, but is only one fuel assembly. A pool of spent fuel will have dozens of assemblies.
One report from Sankei News said that there are over 700 fuel assemblies stored in one pool at Fukushima. If they all caught fire, radioactive particles—including those lasting for as long as a decade—would be released into the air and eventually contaminate the land or, worse, be inhaled by people. “To me, the spent fuel is scarier. All those spent fuel assemblies are still extremely radioactive,” Dalnoki-Veress says.
It has been known for more than two decades that, in case of a loss of water in the pool, convective air cooling would be relatively ineffective in such a “dense-packed” pool. Spent fuel recently discharged from a reactor could heat up relatively rapidly to temperatures at which the zircaloy fuel cladding could catch fire and the fuel’s volatile fission product, including 30-year half-life Cs, would be released. The fire could well spread to older spent fuel. The long-term land-contamination consequences of such an event could be significantly worse than those from Chernobyl. Source
Japan’s chief cabinet secretary called it “the devil’s scenario.” Two weeks after the 11 March 2011 earthquake and tsunami devastated the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, causing three nuclear reactors to melt down and release radioactive plumes, officials were bracing for even worse. They feared that spent fuel stored in pools in the reactor halls would catch fire and send radioactive smoke across a much wider swath of eastern Japan, including Tokyo. Source
Estimates of the cancer burden in Europe from radioactive fallout from the Chernobyl accident Source (Note: The Chernobyl accident was relatively minor, involved no spent fuel ponds, and was controlled by pouring cement onto the reactor. This was breaking down so a few years back they re-entombed.)
“However, many of the radioactive elements in spent fuel have long half-lives. For example, plutonium-239 has a half-life of 24,000 years, and plutonium-240 has a half-life of 6,800 years. Because it contains these long half-lived radioactive elements, spent fuel must be isolated and controlled for thousands of years.” Source
It does not matter how remote you are, the jet stream and ocean currents will circulate these toxic cancer-causing substances around the globe. They will be picked up by convection and pour deadly rain on your crop and water supply.
Nobody survives the collapse of civilization. This will be an extinction event.
I think you underestimate your rhetorical jury of citizens. Ww2 affected everyone in the country. So many young men had died it was impossible not to have lost someone you knew. Racism and hatred of the Japanese was commonplace. The invasion of Japan was estimated to cause an additional million deaths. I think the average joe would have pulled the lever for the trinity test and subsequent nuclear strikes without hesitation. And no, conventional bombing wasn’t going to end the war. The Japanese were going to fight to the last man woman and child.
Hi Michelle, Japan didn't surrender because of the nukes, it surrendered because soviet union declared war and invaded, they still occupy some of Japan's northern islands. The soviets didn't declare war until 1945 and attacked with the typical Russian fashion "slow to saddle but quick to ride" the Japanese took the calculated decision of America occupation over Russian annihilation. The real history of the war is often buried by fairy tales to keep the plebs in place (not calling you personally one, but all of us western golden billion)
There is no reason to restrict the concept of centralised power to specific forms of "too large/complex" social organization. Power boils down to social relations driven by needs which have to be satisfied under certain objective physical limits/conditions. The imagined neo-feudalism of the future would inherit all of the social relations, needs, physical limits/conditions that are present today, or would be present in the collapsing BAU-world that would create them. Likewise for the self-sufficient "local community" suggested as an alternative to neo-feudal techwarlords in the footnote.
Those societies would need to be just as "central" as any extant "normal" society, and they would suffer from the same contradictions that riddle today's societies, and would be just as susceptible to collapse, dysfunction, revolution etc. For that very reason though, they would have just as little (or as much) reason to launch nukes (especially at neighbours). I guess that's all the holiday cheer I can conjure up. But regardless, I wish everyone a merry xmas and happy holidays.
I agree with that accurate analysis that you based on complexity theory. I think that wherever industrialism really collapses, Dunbar's Number will again come to the forefront in pretty short order.
Will also note that I don't expect that nuclear weapons systems can be maintained at the warlord level.
It bugged me a lot when the question of atmosphere ignition was used to dramatic effect in the movie Oppenheimer because it seems to me that this is a classic risk/reward scenario, i.e. a matter of probability.
I assume it's a question of the risk of them all either making a mathematical error, fundamentally misunderstanding the nascent field of nuclear physics, or perhaps missing some crucial knowledge because it can happen. At the time, I can see that the combined risks of these errors might have been frightening and that it is only in hindsight we can safely conclude that it was 100% safe.
But maybe it “could happen” in the same way that it could happen that all the air molecules inside a room spontaneously, against all odds, gather in one corner. I remember reading somewhere that this “could happen” but is unlikely to happen anywhere before the end of time, as defined by the heat death of the universe.
If igniting the earth's atmosphere was a 1 in 10^500 risk, to me, it would seem to be a complete no-brainer to run it, even if the risk is, as they made a point of in both the movie and the podcast, “above zero” – a purposefully misleading term.
Remember that scientists tend to be extremely literal when it comes to using language (a typical INTJ trait).
So when they say something “could happen”, it just means the chance is above zero, and not necessarily more likely than everyone on earth randomly picking the same lottery numbers.
The movie Oppenheimer bugged me too (or the trailer did - that was enough), for celebrating amoral, nerd scientists, aka enablers of the techno-fascist dystopia we now live under.
The point is, even if the risk had been substantial the scientists would likely have voted to go ahead anyway, because they *just have to* know what will happen.
It's that type of thinking, focussing only on one small part while neglecting the wider picture, that's led to the current state of the world. Hubris, that humans can 'progress', i.e. improve on millions of years of evolution, through 'ingenuity'. Newsflash: you can't.
"100% safe"...?
Interesting choice of phrase, considering the material.
Fukushima was built downhill of tsunami warning stones that are several hundred years old. The decision to set off the first bomb is a beautiful example of how Fukushima happened: a very large organization had an imperative to do something, and it ignored all dangers.
This is why nuclear power is a terrible idea: large organizations are involved.
You may be right. I just wanna point out that nuclear bombs and nuclear energy are two very different things, and I was talking about the former.
It was exactly the conflating of the two that was the successful manipulation that turned us almost fully into a fossil fuel bonanza. Imho a massive blunder, but I could be wrong. Coal pollution kills millions a year, don’t forget.
Most probably there is no such thing as nuclear weapons. Even if they exist, the scenario described here is totally absurd. Putin and xij jinping are actually best buddies with those running Nato. The only war is the one by the psychos in charge against the normal people of the Earth. Until you get that, all your analysis is pure bollocks.
Presumably then, Iran is going to test explode a warhead full of sawdust soon, and it's going to register on the richter scale.
Think on this: While supermarkets have similar ends at the political scale - such as lower corporate taxes, less consumer protections and information as to the products - they may still plot and scheme to drive each other into bankruptcy, without mercy.
The world of the 'illuminati' is more complex than Manichaenism would suggest.
Think about this... Iran is two weeks away from developing nuclear weapons, since at least 10 years ago.
I advised them to change the fatwah and develop one around 5 years ago.
It wouldn't be used on Palestine - too many Palestinians still live there. But it would be very useful against an American force.
Only some of the country's deep state took notice.
But I suspect since then the message has been repeated from within, and matters have brought it to a boil.
They have all, or most of the components, worked on separately. To purify enough material is the work of less than a month. Perhaps an underground test chamber has already been prepared - or in one of Persia's many vast, and wonderful deserts.
I am no Netanyahoo - I WANT them to have the means of defence and deterrence. It is a wonderful country, and wonderful people.
I also liked Israel, and the people on both sides there. Working together, they could create something amazing. Jewish, Palestinian, Persian. A natural triumvirate.
But the Zionazis have ruined that.
I have no idea if they are "Two weeks away", or even trying. But their scientists are as good as anywhere in the World, and unlike the Israelis, they wouldn't have to steal the technology should they wish to take this step.
Nuttyahoo can wave around at the UN all the evidence of his racist craziness that makes him happy.
If the region requires a balance of terror, to balance his, then so be it.
That is possible given so much we are presented with is fake
https://fasteddynz.substack.com/p/the-most-important-documentary-ever
https://fasteddynz.substack.com/p/you-are-being-1984ed/
https://fasteddynz.substack.com/p/to-sell-a-war
https://fasteddynz.substack.com/p/lets-take-a-look-at-donald-trumps
bbbb
To remind the readers of this blog. Current nuclear powers of the world are the U.S.A., Russia, China, Israel, Great Britain, France, India, Pakistan, maybe North Korea (their launching capacities are quite uncertain, though), and perhaps Australia in the future (the recent deal with the nuclear submarines mentions conventional missiles only, but the U.S. already gave nuclear power to the UK and to Israel while keeping the deal a secret; so it remains a question mark regarding Australia). Beyond the historical reference of the first use of nuclear power in 1945, what you are writing about the U.S.A. (always the Big Satan in your stories) is also true for the other nuclear powers and has nothing to do with democracy. Well, in your story, Russia and China are only "pressured" to put their missiles on hair trigger as well (LOL). Who is so naive as to believe that?
Apart from the heavy-handed propaganda piece that many people may not even notice (it's how it works and is effective, mixing propaganda with real matters of interest), I find your text valuable, and I agree in a large part with other arguments. We may have a nuclear war, or we may not, and in no country (ruled by a dictatorship or not) is there a guarantee that a nuclear war cannot be triggered—just by mistake or a failure of the system, for example. I also agree that the scenario of a limited nuclear war with no major consequences for the planet is highly improbable and a dangerous fantasy, actually.
Nuclear war would mean the annihilation of humankind by a nuclear winter, or very close to it. If we can avoid it, sooner or later, I can see that our immediate future is a general fascist rule in all countries of significance after the fall of the U.S.A. into this camp: the other major countries are fascist already: China, Russia, and India (also taking this route...). and once absolute autocratic power is consolidated by Trump in the U.S., the current largest military power in the world, there is little chance democracy can survive among their former allies. These big empires (at least the U.S.A., China, and Russia) will come to an agreement to cut up the world with their own zones of influence. There is already, clearly, an obvious alliance between the actual dictators of the world and the ones who are going to be: they view the example of democracies and freedom in the world as their major enemy and a threat to their power.
Once this is established (next year in the U.S.A.), with regard to this objective, China and Russia will already have won. But it won't be the end of history.
Countries with vast energy resources will have a strong edge over the others (others like the western European countries), but looking a little bit further, every place in the world will have to go through a double whammy: the exponential effects of global heating, coming much faster than we imagine and affecting with death and destruction the tropical and equatorial regions first, and also, but at a slower pace, the inescapable dwindling of our natural resources. This adds to the fascist practice of power, the transformation of our society and economy into a feudal system (with all the features typical of the European Middle Ages). So, taking a large scope, I agree with you.
Note: Feudalism also means eventually the weakening of central power and the emergence of more and more localized authorities, a localized economy, and even more extreme inequality with the reemergence of sevitude (serfs or slaves). At this point, fascism gives way to something else. And this is, in my view, the most logical thing to happen everywhere in a second phase.
Now the question remains of our survival as a species, with the prospect of runaway climate heating. I have no response to that.
You need to read more widely
US is the only country to have been aggressive in use or threat of use of nuclear weapons
US voters have failed since 1945 to control US War Machine and threat of nuclear weapons in Korea or elsewhere. No country has been as threatening
US has provided nuclear B-61 bombs to Germany and Belgium and Italy and Turkey. It has breached Non-Proliferation Treaties butch’s a Republic accountable to voters that is Will of US people to give Germany nuclear weapons
Maybe US voters can explain ?
Are you willing to reduce your standard of living by 50% - or even 10%?
Alleviating mass poverty in a zero sum world
https://fasteddynz.substack.com/p/are-you-willing-to-reduce-your-standard
Are you kidding me? Germany, Belgium, Italy and Turkey are NOT nuclear nations and don't possess any nuclear weapons. As for nuclear threats, are you kidding? It is true that the U.S. was the only country in history using atomic bombs in Japan in 1945, but with regards to threats, what about Russia invading foreign democratic countries, killing many thousands of civilians, and threaterning anyone getting in their way of nuclear anihilation? What about China clearly using their nuclear capabilities as a threat againt Japan and its neighbors? What about Isreal threatening to use their nuclear weapons (while still denying they have them). Your one-sided view is astounding. The whole point with nuclear force, for any country, is deterrence and affirmation of power for their own benefit. Ukraine learned it the very hard way; they relinquished their nuclear arsenal in 1994 and are soon going to be crushed. "In 1994, Ukraine agreed to transfer these weapons (nuclear) to Russia and became a party to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, in exchange for assurances from Russia, the United States and United Kingdom to respect the Ukrainian independence and sovereignty in the existing borders. For the comprehensive article, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukraine_and_weapons_of_mass_destruction
Hum…
You might be right on some points.
But I always found weird how some people keep using the word "fascism" to label regimes or political parties that have nothing to do with the original and historical meaning of the word.
These various regimes might be plutocratic, authoritarian, nationalist (or merely sovereignist) or illiberal democracies of some sort. Each in their own way. But none of them are actually fascist.
So maybe it's actually no more than a slur word that merely means "i don't like it" ? Or maybe it is used to make a point as the word is still supposed to scare everyone ?
Until of course, it is so overused that it won't scare anybody anymore... And indeed, will quite probably "gives way to something else".
Yeah it reminds me of how B renders the word troll meaningless instead of implementing a mature, forthright content moderation policy by actively engaging with any commenters he has a problem with instead of taking an elitist tack like 99pc of blog owners do. John Day sets the standard for bloggers with respect to treating commenters gracefully regardless of however abrasive his commenters are, as I myself often am.
The worst thing to do is to ask loyalist commenters to rat on other commenters. That's pathetic.
With regards to moderation, "don't feed the trolls" would surely be the best policy.
Right, the old DNFTT, based on ancestral shunning. Self-organizing behavior. Even relentless iconoclasts like myself are gonna move on if no one wants to engage with what I have to say. That would just tell me that this ain't a place I can build together in. Cause and effect.
But we both know that 'moderation' almost always comes down to the blogger pulling institutional rank and canceling the person for one egotistical reason or another; maintaining the blogger's own status quo -- and the echo chamber that comes with that -- being the most common reason.
If he doesn't read the comments ... how does he learn?
Non-publicly, and therefore begrudgingly. He reads the pissant little people comments he ain't fooling anybody.
Idk Tris. I think the word “fascism” is often appropriate. The merging of corporate and state power really does constitute fascism. As Mussolini said, fascism could also be called corporatism. Sometimes the nationalism piece is lacking at first glance but capitalism can usually fill in the blanks
My impression is that Tris, unlike Adam, gets the true definition of fascism as Mussolini defined it (though who didn't originate it himself as I recall).
I agree that capitalism usually can fill in the blanks although capitalism comes in degrees of fascism. National Fascism like Mussolini's was far more benign than the imperial International Fascism of his day that he fought against, and latter of which two was more benign than the Global Fascism that the International Fascism turned into by way of finalizing its imperialism.
National Fascism at least operates a public banking system, and can't pursue the expansionary, imperial warfare that would operate at cross-purposes to its ideological platform.
Democracy, of course, is neither here nor there. All true anarchists agree that a benevolent dictator is a superior option to a dictatorship of a manipulable majority, which the majority always is.
I agree with everything you said.
Degrees of capitalism is a good phrase in the sense that there is always a relational aspect. It’s a spectrum. But i think the trend toward fascism is so expansive and widespread that there’s usually a decent argument for its use
Oh yeah for sure. My whole machinery of online thought is little more than a 21st century Woody Guthrie guitar sticker. It's why I called out Adam's misuse of it in the previous thread and I why I appreciate him getting called out on it again today. Adam's definition is the fascist redefinition that acts as cover for fascism. That Hitler - the most militant antifascist of all-time -- is the now 'history’s' most fascist person of all-time is one of the biggest orwellianisms of our time.
And beyond the general reason for the inversion, which is the ongoing facilitation of Sheldon Wolin's "inverted totalitarianism," I believe that the particular reason that they are currently inverting the definition of fascism is because global fascism, and hence fascism in general, has exceeded its limits to growth and the Elites need to transition to bilateral national socialisms under the Non-Public Degrowth Agenda, and so by labeling national socialism as fascist while they undertake the transition it throws people off the scent.
Interesting. Have anything I can read on the matter? I love aspects of degrowth and non-state socialism/communism so curious as to the potential threats to peoples freedom in the name of state socialism
Further to the relationality, and perhaps to just state the obvious, all economics are more or less capitalist given that all economics arise, in the first place, out of the running of structural energy surpluses, and money/capital is but a necessary proxy for those surpluses in order to facilitate their distribution. Even full-blown communism couldn't do away with scrip.
In the historical context, "corporatism" doesn't refer to "corporations" as big multinational capitalist entities the way we use the word nowadays. Corporatism is not the merging of business and state...
It refers to a political system where various interests, organised in corporations or syndicates, negotiate together on the basis of their common interests as a alternative between liberalism and communism. And yes, it was adopted by fascists as a way to further the interests of the state. But is much older.
(check Wikipedia for more infos)
Yes i know
Hey Amy I replied to Tris's comments if you're interested.
Tris, I have to disagree with that assessment. In order to understand historical context we have to understand the arc of the various histories within history. We have to understand that all ideologies have their ideal forms and their practical forms.
Mussolini's corporatism found its ideal forms in the for-profit privatization of large industry, replete with a centralized stock market, which is a familiar economics to us that we might best describe as national finance capitalism. Mussolini understood the raw power of finance capitalism. Being a true populist, however, he did advocate for worker-owned for-profit syndicalism outside of the sphere of big business, which is the economics most closely associated with national socialism.
We can know that finance-capitalist corporatism was his ideal form because his privatizing cartelization of the Italian economy in service of this ideal form occurred at the beginning of Italy's only true economic growth period during his whole tenure. See this wiki link on cartelization:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_fascist_Italy
Similarly, we can know NSDAP's true intentions from its ideal form which was Strasserism, which was an agrarian-hearted conservative left-libertarian revolutionary syndicalism that was doomed to be supplanted by existential war economics.
Yes, I understand what you mean by ideal form and practical form (if only communism could stay true to its ideal form…). And whatever the ideal form of Mussolini's fascism was, the practical form wasn't appealing at all.
And still, it's seems to me there are 2 ways business and state can merge.
One is when business is supposed to serve the interest of the state. And that is whatever the dictator (or dubiously elected state leader) define them to be and whatever he decide about who gets profits and how much.
The other is when state is supposed to serve the interest of business. And these interests are whatever profits to the oligarchs who decide who gets elected to make it happen.
The first option is more or less what we see in Russia. The second is what happening in the US and others so-called "liberal democracies".
Can both these political arrangements be called fascism ? I doubt so… They deserve a better definition.
Beside will you also call fascist people who think they know better how to share wealth or protect environnent (or please God for that matter) than anyone else ? To the point they consider that even if they are in the minority, they are entitled to use political violence to gain power over the majority because it's for the greater good ?
And what about those who claim that everyone has the (human or divine) right to do whatever they want. And that include not paying any taxes or be armed to the teeth. To the point that government spending and power must be slashed to the bone. With a chainsaw if need be. Are these libertarians fascist too ?
Then who is not ?
Thanks. FTR, no politics appeal to me. :) Fascism is finance capitalism. Old Testament capitalism, in other words. National fascism is finance capitalism in the public currency of a national treasury. International (now global) fascism is finance capitalism in the private currency of a private central bank. Both the US and Russia are finance capitalist satrapies operating under oligarchic private currencies of private central banks. If the russian government's top priority was the russian state then it wouldnt have been exporting its most valuable natural capital (oil and gas) as fast as possible for these last 30 years. It would have burned those resources for itself as it was able to. Straight Libertarians arent opposed to the financialization of capitalism so, yes, their politics is a form of fascism but theyre not relevant because straight Libertarianism is a theoretical industrial politics only. It cannot exist in industrial civilization on the way up or the way down because financialization will always select for a big government that can both enforce the extreme wealth inequality that comes with financialization and, also, buffer the boom-bust bubble dynamics. When i speak of the coming manufactured national socialisms as being left-libertarian, by libertarian i just mean small, less intrusive government relative to the present.
And fascism is not a degree of capitalism either...
Fascism takes its origins in socialism.
Under a fascist regime, as opposed to communism, industry owners are still allowed to make some profits. But they share with workers whatever they are told to share by the state and make whatever they are ordered to make for the (supposed) good of the state.
I agree as well. I meant degrees of fascism not capitalism. Many days up with the kids, not a lot of sleep. You obviously understand what fascism is. I just meant to say that there really is a huge movement towards fascism and that the knee jerk “thats not fascism” usually isnt accurate. I didn’t read Adams comment through enough.
Non-stare communism (i get that non-state should be implied with “communism”) is the only reasonable way forward hopefully starting with pockets of autonomous regions with extremely minimal top down governance
Some kind of "Enlighted" feudalism then.
Yes, that would probably be the best we can hope for.
Feudalism is structurally hierarchical and little c communism is structurally egalitarian. Little c communism can only exist below the dunbar number.
Non-state little c communism can only occur below the Dunbar's Number. Any governance turns the c into a big C and also requires running structural surpluses which, in turn, sets in motion the growth mandate. The civilizational dynamic is really an all or nothing prospect.
Idk i think it may be more or less discrete but i think they can coexist to the extent that the hierarchical structure respects the boundary in terms of land barrier
That's not accurate, Tris: fascism itself has its structural origins in finance capitalism. Populist fascism, however, finds inspiration in non-marxist socialism, with socialism merely meaning State regulation of finance capitalism (free market capitalism) so as to minimize wealth inequality to one degree or another depending on the exact politics.
It's no surprise that Mussolini went with populist fascism given that Italy was the birthplace of modern finance capitalism. And it's no surprise that Germany went with the syndicalist national socialism given Germany's long guild-based cultural history.
Defining what "fascism" might be nowadays is not an easy task . But all I was saying is that if everybody is fascist, then nobody is.
The word lost his political meaning and just expresses the angry emotions of whoever using it.
Like amost ideologies, one can find a founder (in the case of fascism: Mussolini). Then there are followers over time, and there are followers now. Of course, all forms of fascism have diffrences, but fascist regimes have very similar features that makes them such, and they need a large majorities of these specificities to be qualified as fascists. Here there are according to almost all scholars:
1. Powerful, often exclusionary, populist nationalism centered on cult of a redemptive, “infallible”
leader who never admits mistakes.
2. Political power derived from questioning reality, endorsing myth and rage, and promoting lies.
3. Fixation with perceived national decline, humiliation, or victimhood.
4. White Replacement “Theory” used to show that democratic ideals of freedom and equality are a threat.
Oppose any initiatives or institutions that are racially, ethnically, or religiously harmonious.
5. Disdain for human rights while seeking purity and cleansing for those they define as part of the nation.
6. Identification of “enemies”/scapegoats as a unifying cause. Imprison and/or murder opposition and minority
group leaders.
7. Supremacy of the military and embrace of paramilitarism in an uneasy, but effective
collaboration with traditional elites. Fascists arm people and justify and glorify violence as “redemptive”.
8. Rampant sexism.
9. Control of mass media and undermining “truth”.
10. Obsession with national security, crime and punishment, and fostering a sense of the nation under attack.
11. Religion and government are intertwined.
12. Corporate power is protected and labor power is suppressed.
13. Disdain for intellectuals and the arts not aligned with the fascist narrative.
14. Rampant cronyism and corruption. Loyalty to the leader is paramount and often more important than competence.
15. Fraudulent elections and creation of a one-party state.
16. Often seeking to expand territory through armed conflict.
Putin checks all the boxes
China too, except the the religious bent (but religious repression is very much real). they also don't even pretend to have elections.
Trump also checks all the boxes.
There is no more perfect definition than fascism (or neo-fascism if you will) to these regimes in their substance.
Following on from both Tris and Peter, in historical fact the sole superpower on the planet that is actually "Fascist" in the sense of open corporate-state is the USA.
The others may be more or less authoritarian, with various types of 'managed democracy' of their own, but the USA is openly Fascist, and with near zero democratic accountability to the Public.
This is the role propaganda plays, and of all the advantages the Western elites have, by far and away it is their superior propaganda that is most effective.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DLbLAwVuTDM
I appreciate the footnote you've added here. Community building really is one of the most important skills needed for any kind of 'self sufficiency' to exist. In a time before hyper individualism, things were accomplished by getting a group of people together, instead of everyone hiding in their own ivory tower (or mud hut). Even just having one good neighbour makes all the difference.
it is perhaps an interesting turn of events, that the nations of Europe spent centuries at war with one another----all with '''god'' on their side.
in fact their wars were of intent to grab someone else's resources.
then the USA created itself
the nations of Europe migrated there, to find an empty land, with enough for all---unlimited resources.
but then those resources began to run out.....like now.
those old european conflicts seem to be re-emerging---and all backed by holy writ....but all a
this is why the USA will distegrate into nation states---just as those old european states they came from used to be----warring with each other in endless battles, all with the certainty of their particular god---the evangelical insanity is proof of it.
but there is nothing left to fight over
https://www.amazon.co.uk/End-More-resources-humankind-unsustainable-ebook/dp/B00D0ADPFY
If there's actually nothing left to fight over then there's also nothing left to fight with. And I don't think I'm taking you too literally.
As I mentioned years ago at Gail's place, and for but one example, stripper wells in southern California will still continue to produce for decades and decades provided that future warlords have the foresight today to fill a warehouse with replacement parts, which no doubt those people are out there.
So much is from a US Weltanschauung and that is precisely the problem Justusse with Adam Flint who thinks US „gave“ U.K. nuclear power without reading McMahon Act 1946. US ignorance is the major problem
McMahon Act 1946 created nuclear proliferation. Israel acquired through French Jewish scientists who shared technology and France built Dimona.
US cannot even make pits nowadays and Minuteman is outdated. Oreshnik makes nuclear weapons outdated unless U.S. wants to de deleted from the map
Able Archer 1983 scared Reagan
Trump may well test the limits and watch US mainland destroyed
If the US mainland is destroyed then obviously the opposing lands will also be destroyed. MAD is still intact.
There seems to be little appreciation here, and elsewhere, for all the bombing that our late-stage humans have unleashed across the globe. All that manufacture of mass death-dealing armaments of war, including ethno-state starvation and techno war extrajudicial killing done against Palestinians, was the start of the process that saw its outcomes in our 2024 reality.
Humans are an ultrasocial species driven by fear - nuclear arms were not ordered, produced, and instituted to be kept as unusable threats. Wrong species to have been gifted with fire.
Thumbs, ego, and 'Believing in our own made-up myths' - lethal combination.
The Dumbest Species Ever?
Why 'intelligence' is a huge burden
https://fasteddynz.substack.com/p/the-dumbest-species-ever
Not a burden just a responsibility. With power comes responsibility.
Humans are only driven by fear in two cases: when running structural energy surpluses and when failing to run the structural surpluses that they've become used to running. Therefore, to your last sentence, any species is the wrong species to *choose* structural greed.
No, fear is built into human action - it's how human cooperation ends up with Pleistocene megafauna being hunted to extinction, it's how shunning and ostracism are beyond human capacity to surmount or even handle.
Fear is what drives accumulation, protects advantage, limits self-criticism, and animates useless keyboard pounding.
If that's what you believe Martin then my unsolicited advice to you is to get yourself into the better headspace where accurate reasoning lives. You are deep in despair right now.
Are you some form of AI antagonist bot? Thanks for the diagnosis from your keyboard, Dr. Freud.
That you would suggest i am AI just reaffirms your structural lack of critical thinking at the moment due to your psychological distress at the state of play. Don't be lazy. Here's an example of critical thinking that's relevant to your 'flat earthing' false claim that humans hold blanket responsibility for the megafauna extinction: if that was true then how is it that humans have lived in north america for 25,000 years and as of 175 years ago there were an estimated 150 million buffalo? If humans are innately rapacious then that buffalo population would be impossible yet it was fact. Like i said to Eddy last week, it's a cultural problem. Now buck up, mental health begins with physical health and constructive pursuits.
It’s always good to interact with random internet dummies, who show the hazards of spending any time trying to point out facts and realities in a forum that has no sorting mechanism. I make it a rule to step away from arguing with nutjobs.
Right, nevermind those buffalo huh Martin? It's stagnation that breeds fear. Would you even dance at the barrel of a gun? "Dance, i said, Dance!"
Let me explain to you, as gently as I can.
I asked you many direct questions about human fear, and you answered none of them, so that stops any possibility of a discussion.
Then you come out with a ridiculous wingnut supposed example of the buffalo, which was the victim of human extermination, to prove human niceness, or whatever nonsense you're peddling.
Who needs to point out that 2+2=4?
Enjoy your alliance with anti-vaxxing Slow Edward. Both of you help folks get over the addiction of screen commenting, leaving so much more time for pursuits of actual enjoyment.,
Gentleness isn't necessary with me, just so you know.
You didn't ask me any earnest questions about fear. You asked a series of rhetorical questions in support of your dark worldview. That indirect approach to 'questioning' doesn't engender direct responses.
The buffalo example is not supposed. It is a fact that humans and buffalo coexisted successfully for 25,000 years and that fact clearly undermines your absurd worldview that humans are single mindedly destructive due to their fear-based existence; the fact that a judeo-christian civilization came along and promptly wiped out the buffalo over the course of three decades doesn't change that undermining; instead, it supports the fact that humans have a cultural problem right now and not an evolutionary problem.
Keep on vaxxing if you choose to, so that you can keep on decrying fear while perpetuating your own fear. I will choose otherwise.
'Probabilities' - arent they just Clever Guesses ?
I still cant figure out how the drug trialers determine 'statistically significant'...
I speak Plain English, so when quantifying something i use 'some', 'a few', 'lots'
'many', and so on - which is always confusing to The Science (TM) minded.. They
always ask "What percentage would 'most' etc be ?"...
It sounds all so Sciencey to use statistics and percentages - i suppose Sciencey
is the language of The Scientific Age ?
Thanks lots. But you didn't mention AI in the war machinery. And it will be used and decide on nuke war all by itself.
AI can't make decisions. It can only follow orders, which isn't decision-based. I'm not saying it's not a dangerous tool as it certainly is.
The idea that the elites will come together to plot the new (fascist?) order is untenable. They will be too busy stabbing each other in the back when the opportunity arises.
Not if they all share the same existential concern - and they do. If cooperation is more adaptive than competition, then they will cooperate, just like they all did in order to create globalization.
Financial protection is the very least thing we should all do.
If you're not familiar with The Great Taking by David Rogers Webb, you can read it here.
https://cm-us-standard.s3.amazonaws.com/audio/The+Great+Taking_Audio+Book+-+Combined+Book.mp3
Or you can hear him summarize his material
https://peakprosperity.com/the-great-taking-with-david-rogers-webb-part-1/?player=rumble
https://peakprosperity.com/revisiting-the-great-taking-with-david-rodgers-webb/?player=rumble
And follow all of the suggestions in the posting. If they don't murder us all, we'll still suffer some sort of economic collapse. Get your community ready.
Don't waste your time and money https://fasteddynz.substack.com/p/the-utter-futility-of-doomsday-prepping
This was not about doomsday prepping - always struck me as futile and a waste of resources I might use better currently. This is about opting out of the current system to the extent you can and building more resilient local communities, which will make hard times a little easier.
Like this ? https://fasteddynz.substack.com/p/fast-eddy-tours-delusistan/
And unfortunately this is why the current world situation is more like the 1910s than the 1930s. The entrenched wealthy do not want a war, in fact believe they have designed a system where it can't happen. Then World War 1 happened. Is Luigi Mangione (or the next Luigi Mangione, or the next) Gavilon Princip? We shall see.
Financial System Supply-Chain Cross-Contagion
A study in global systemic collapse
https://fasteddynz.substack.com/p/financial-system-supply-chain-cross
When this happens... and it WILL happen... you won't be able to buy something as simple as a tooth brush... so forget about managing complex spent fuel ponds that need electricity and sophisticated electronics.
There are 4000 Spent Fuel Ponds Around the Globe…
If you don’t cool the spent fuel, the temperature will rise and there may be a swift chain reaction that leads to spontaneous combustion–an explosion and fire of the spent fuel assemblies. Such a scenario would emit radioactive particles into the atmosphere. Pick your poison. Fresh fuel is hotter and more radioactive, but is only one fuel assembly. A pool of spent fuel will have dozens of assemblies.
One report from Sankei News said that there are over 700 fuel assemblies stored in one pool at Fukushima. If they all caught fire, radioactive particles—including those lasting for as long as a decade—would be released into the air and eventually contaminate the land or, worse, be inhaled by people. “To me, the spent fuel is scarier. All those spent fuel assemblies are still extremely radioactive,” Dalnoki-Veress says.
It has been known for more than two decades that, in case of a loss of water in the pool, convective air cooling would be relatively ineffective in such a “dense-packed” pool. Spent fuel recently discharged from a reactor could heat up relatively rapidly to temperatures at which the zircaloy fuel cladding could catch fire and the fuel’s volatile fission product, including 30-year half-life Cs, would be released. The fire could well spread to older spent fuel. The long-term land-contamination consequences of such an event could be significantly worse than those from Chernobyl. Source
Japan’s chief cabinet secretary called it “the devil’s scenario.” Two weeks after the 11 March 2011 earthquake and tsunami devastated the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, causing three nuclear reactors to melt down and release radioactive plumes, officials were bracing for even worse. They feared that spent fuel stored in pools in the reactor halls would catch fire and send radioactive smoke across a much wider swath of eastern Japan, including Tokyo. Source
Estimates of the cancer burden in Europe from radioactive fallout from the Chernobyl accident Source (Note: The Chernobyl accident was relatively minor, involved no spent fuel ponds, and was controlled by pouring cement onto the reactor. This was breaking down so a few years back they re-entombed.)
“However, many of the radioactive elements in spent fuel have long half-lives. For example, plutonium-239 has a half-life of 24,000 years, and plutonium-240 has a half-life of 6,800 years. Because it contains these long half-lived radioactive elements, spent fuel must be isolated and controlled for thousands of years.” Source
It does not matter how remote you are, the jet stream and ocean currents will circulate these toxic cancer-causing substances around the globe. They will be picked up by convection and pour deadly rain on your crop and water supply.
Nobody survives the collapse of civilization. This will be an extinction event.
https://fasteddynz.substack.com/p/the-utter-futility-of-doomsday-prepping
I think you underestimate your rhetorical jury of citizens. Ww2 affected everyone in the country. So many young men had died it was impossible not to have lost someone you knew. Racism and hatred of the Japanese was commonplace. The invasion of Japan was estimated to cause an additional million deaths. I think the average joe would have pulled the lever for the trinity test and subsequent nuclear strikes without hesitation. And no, conventional bombing wasn’t going to end the war. The Japanese were going to fight to the last man woman and child.
Hi Michelle, Japan didn't surrender because of the nukes, it surrendered because soviet union declared war and invaded, they still occupy some of Japan's northern islands. The soviets didn't declare war until 1945 and attacked with the typical Russian fashion "slow to saddle but quick to ride" the Japanese took the calculated decision of America occupation over Russian annihilation. The real history of the war is often buried by fairy tales to keep the plebs in place (not calling you personally one, but all of us western golden billion)
Interesting, thanks.
There is no reason to restrict the concept of centralised power to specific forms of "too large/complex" social organization. Power boils down to social relations driven by needs which have to be satisfied under certain objective physical limits/conditions. The imagined neo-feudalism of the future would inherit all of the social relations, needs, physical limits/conditions that are present today, or would be present in the collapsing BAU-world that would create them. Likewise for the self-sufficient "local community" suggested as an alternative to neo-feudal techwarlords in the footnote.
Those societies would need to be just as "central" as any extant "normal" society, and they would suffer from the same contradictions that riddle today's societies, and would be just as susceptible to collapse, dysfunction, revolution etc. For that very reason though, they would have just as little (or as much) reason to launch nukes (especially at neighbours). I guess that's all the holiday cheer I can conjure up. But regardless, I wish everyone a merry xmas and happy holidays.
I agree with that accurate analysis that you based on complexity theory. I think that wherever industrialism really collapses, Dunbar's Number will again come to the forefront in pretty short order.
Will also note that I don't expect that nuclear weapons systems can be maintained at the warlord level.