China has been uncertain about the trade-offs between its trade surpluses with the US and Washington’s growing encirclement of China with naval and air bases. China has come to the conclusion that China has the same enemy as Russia has–Washington.
One of two things is likely: Either the US dollar will be abandoned and collapse in value, thus ending Washington’s superpower status and Washington’s threat to world peace, or Washington will lead its puppets into military conflict with Russia and China. The outcome of such a war would be far more devastating than the collapse of the US dollar.
Paul Craig Roberts. Is the US or the World Coming to an End? 9 april 2014
Kijk naar de belangrijkste internationale crises en er zijn twee vaste kampen te onderscheiden: de VS en Europa met nog een paar bondgenoten aan de ene kant, Rusland en China aan de andere kant. Dat geldt voor het Syrische drama, voor de Iraanse nucleaire kwestie en eigenlijk in het algemeen voor de opstelling tegenover wangedrag van tirannieke regimes. Dan oogt de wereld ouderwets bipolair.
Paul Brill. Soms oogt de wereld ouderwets bipolair. 1 februari 2014
Een indirect resultaat van de voortdurende crisis in het Midden-Oosten is dat in West-Europa een populistisch alarmisme wortel heeft geschoten. Het zaait angst, maar het heeft geen uitvoerbare oplossing. Die ligt in het Midden-Oosten, in de landen die voor het vredestichtende Westen onbereikbaar zijn geworden, zoals de praktijk heeft bewezen.
Henk Hofland. Het machteloze Westen. 17 juli 2013
Take me back to the black hills
The black hills of Dakota
To the beautiful Indian country
That I lo-ove
Doris Day. The Black Hills of Dakota. 1953
Cognitieve dissonantie is een psychologische term voor de onaangename spanning die ontstaat bij het kennis nemen van feiten of opvattingen die strijdig zijn met een eigen overtuiging of mening, of bij gedrag dat strijdig is met de eigen overtuiging, waarden en normen. Het gaat met andere woorden om de perceptie van onverenigbaarheid tussen twee cognities, waarbij het woord cognitie kan slaan op kennis, houding, emotie, geloof of gedrag.
Cognitive dissonance has also been demonstrated to occur when people seek to: Reaffirm already held beliefs: Congeniality bias refers to how people read or access information that affirms their already established opinions, rather than referencing material that contradicts them. For example, a person who is politically conservative might only read newspapers and watch news commentary that is from conservative news sources. This bias appears to be particularly apparent when faced with deeply held beliefs, i.e., when a person has 'high commitment' to their attitudes.
Dit laatste is een veelvoorkomend verschijnsel in de journalistiek. Sterker nog: uit langdurige ervaring weet ik dat mainstream journalisten gekozen worden op juist hun 'bias' voortkomend uit 'deeply held beliefs.' Vooringenomenheid is hun visitekaartje. Het is niet verwonderlijk dat de Amerikaanse geleerden Chomsky en Herman in hun uitgebreid gedocumenteerde studie Manufacturing Consent. The Political Economy of the Mass Media (1988) tot de volgende conclusie komen:
As we have stressed throughout this book, the U.S. media do not function in the manner of the propaganda system of a totalitarian state. Rather, they permit -- indeed, encourage -- spirited debate, criticism, and dissent, as long as these remain faithfully within the system of presuppositions and principles that constitute an elite consensus, a system so powerful as to be internalized largely without awareness… In the process, the media provided neither facts nor analyses that would have enabled the public to understand the issues or the bases of government policies… and they thereby assured that the public could not exert any meaningful influence on the decisions that were made. This is quite typical of the actual ‘societal purpose’ of the media on matters that are of significance for established power; not ‘enabling the public to assert meaningful control over the political process,’ but rather averting any such danger. In these cases, as in numerous others, the public was managed and mobilized from above, by means of the media's highly selective messages and evasions. As noted by media analyst W. Lance Bennett: ‘the public is exposed to powerful persuasive messages from above and is unable to communicate meaningfully through the media in response to the messages... Leaders have usurped enormous amounts of political power and reduced popular control over the political system by using the media to generate support, compliance, and just plain confusion among the public.'
Centraal in de 'deeply held beliefs' van de mainstream-journalistiek is, kort samengevat, de overtuiging dat wij deugen en zij niet. De Ander is per definitie de vijand, die gevreesd en gewantrouwd dient te worden. En dus staan 'Rusland en China aan de andere kant,' omdat ze 'wangedrag van tirannieke regimes' steunen. Daarentegen dulden wij geen tirannie en zijn wij 'het vredestichtende Westen.' Het manicheïsme van de commerciële massamedia verschilt niet wezenlijk van het manicheïsme van de geestelijkheid. Al millennia-lang is er een externe dreiging nodig om de interne cohesie te bewaren, het is nog de enige functie van de staat. Vandaar zijn geweldsmonopolie.
Net als bij de Europese clerus in vroegere tijden is de rol van de 'vrije pers' die van bewaker van de officiële 'waarheid.' De Amerikaanse historicus Eric Foner, van Columbia University, winnaar van de Pulitzer prijs in 2011, schrijft in The Story of American Freedom (1998) dat de Amerikaanse journalist Walter Lippmann, de meest vooraanstaande bewaker van de status quo,
published two of the most penetrating indictments of democracy ever written, Public Opinion and The Phantom Public, valedictories to Progressive hopes for the application of 'intelligence' to social problems via mass democracy. Instead of acting out of careful consideration of the issues or even individual or collective self-interest, the American voter, Lippmann claimed, was ill-informed, myopic, and prone to fits of enthusiasm.
The government, like advertising copywriters and journalists, had perfected the art of creating and manipulating public opinion—a process Lippmann called the 'manufacture of consent'—while at the same time consumerism was sapping Americans’ concern for public issues.
Centraal in Lippmann's denken was de overtuiging dat een ware democratie niet mogelijk is aangezien de bevolking wordt gedreven door irrationele impulsen en te ongeïnformeerd is. Een echte democratie zou in wanorde eindigen. In zijn tweede boek Drift and Mastery: An Attempt to Diagnose the Current Unrest stelde hij in 1914 ondermeer:
There is a consensus that business methods need to change. The leading thought of our world has ceased to regard commercialism either as permanent or desirable, and the only real question among intelligent people is how business methods are to be alerted, not whether they are to be altered.
The chaos of too much freedom and the weaknesses of democracy are our real problem. The battle for us, in short, does not lie against crusted prejudice, but against the chaos of a new freedom. This chaos is our real problem. So if the younger critics are to meet the issues of their generation they must give their attention, not so much to the evils of authority, as to the weaknesses of democracy.
Niet alleen de Amerikaan Lippmann dacht zo, maar zijn mening was en is nog steeds gangbaar onder de economische en politieke elite in het Westen. In Mein Kampf stelde Hitler het zo:
De intelligentie van de massa is beperkt, haar begripsvermogen is zwak.
Er bestaat wat betreft de opvattingen over de moderne massamens geen wezenlijk verschil tussen de Adolf Hitler en Walter Lippmann en andere Europese en Amerikaanse ideologen van het establishment. In zijn standaardwerk Public Opinion (1922) concludeerde Lippmann, decennialang adviseur van diverse Amerikaanse presidenten, dat
public opinions must be organized for the press if they are to be sound, not by the press... Without some form of censorship, propaganda in the strict sense of the word is impossible. In order to conduct propaganda there must be some barrier between the public and the event. Access to the real environment must be limited, before anyone can create a pseudo-environment that he thinks is wise or desirable... Though it is itself an irrational force the power of public opinion might be placed at the disposal of those who stood for workable law against brute assertion.
De Amerikaanse hoogleraar Stuart Ewen, gespecialiseerd in Media Studies schrijft in zijn boek PR! A Social History of Spin:
Throughout the pages of Public Opinion, Lippmann had asserted that human beings were, for the most part, inherently incapable of responding rationally to their world... For Lippmann, it was not so much people's incapacity to deliberate on issues rationally that was the problem; it was that the time necessary to pursue rational deliberations would only interfere with the smooth exercise of executive power...
For Lippmann, the appeal of symbols was that they provided a device for short-circuiting the inconvenience posed by critical reason and public discussion. To Lippmann, symbols were powerful instruments for forging mental agreement among people who -- if engaged in critical dialogue -- would probably disagree. 'When political parties or newspapers declare for Americanism, Progressivism, Law and Order, Justice, Humanity,' he explained, they expect to merge 'conflicting factions which would surely divide if, instead of these symbols, they were invited to discuss a specific program.'
Lippmann added that serious public discussion of issues would only yield a 'vague and confusing medley,' a discord that would make executive decision making difficult. 'Action cannot be taken until these opinions have been factored down, canalized, compressed and made uniform.' [...]
In its adamant argument that human beings are essentially irrational, social psychology had provided Lippmann -- and many others -- with a handy rationale for a small, intellectual elite to rule over society. Yet a close reading of Lippmann's argument suggests that he was concerned less with the irrational core of human behavior than he was with the problem of making rule by elites, in a democratic age, less difficult. Educated by the lessons of the image culture taking shape around him, Lippmann saw the strategic employment of media images as the secret to modern power; the means by which leaders and special interests might cloak themselves in the 'fiction' that they stand as delegates of the common good.
Het maakt dus niet uit of bijvoorbeeld Paul Brill en Henk Hofland leugens verspreiden, zolang ze de onwaarheid maar vaak genoeg herhalen wordt ze op den duur de waarheid, zoals de macht die ziet. 'Fiction' wordt non-fiction, een leugen de waarheid. Daarbij wordt de eigen macht altijd als welwillend afgeschilderd, de macht van De Ander altijd als kwaadaardig. En als de eigen macht de fout ingaat, dan is dit niet het resultaat van doortraptheid, maar van een foutieve inschatting, het doel was goed maar de uitvoering haperde. Inderdaad, op die manier 'oogt de wereld ouderwets bipolair.' Alles mag dan wel veranderen, maar niet het geloof in de ultieme waarheden/leugens. Vandaar dat bejaarde opiniemakers als Brill en Hofland moeiteloos van stal kunnen worden gehaald en weer aan het werk worden gezet. De waarheid/leugen van Hofland gaat nu al zes decennia onweersproken mee. Hoewel het statische mens- en wereldbeeld van de 'politiek-literaire elite' in de polder allang zijn uiterste houdbaarheidsdatum is gepasseerd, blijven de mainstream-opiniemakers hun oude 'waarheden' herhalen, omdat die 'reflexen zijn… je bent daar geconditioneerd in,' zoals Vrij Nederland hoofdredacteur Frits van Exter het ooit eens vakkundig formuleerde. De commerciële pers reageert 'reflexmatig,' mainstream-journalisten 'lijden aan kuddegedrag,' waardoor 'de aandacht van de media natuurlijk voor een belangrijk deel gestuurd' wordt, aldus liet Van Exter zich eens in een onbewaakt moment ontvallen. Het is één van de redenen waarom de oplage van Vrij Nederland sinds 1978 tot slechts eenderde is teruggelopen, en waarom een deel van de redactie elders aanklopt om een geheel nieuw soort Vrij Nederland financieel mogelijk te maken, met onderzoeksjournalistiek als belangrijkste component. Waarom zou men als ontwikkeld mens nog een weekblad als Vrij Nederland kopen wanneer het lijdt aan 'kuddegedrag' en zijn aandacht 'voor een belangrijk deel gestuurd' wordt door niet-journalistieke 'reflexen'? Als het ware vanzelf komen we uit bij Doris Day's The Black Hills of Dakota. Ook hier is sprake van een 'reflexmatige' leugen.
Take me back to the black hills
The black hills of Dakota
To the beautiful Indian country
That I lo-ove
Eerst wat achtergrond-informatie over The Black Hills of Dakota:
Native Americans have inhabited the area since at least 7000 BC. The Arikara arrived by 1500 AD, followed by the Cheyenne, Crow, Kiowa and Pawnee. The Lakota (also known as Sioux) arrived from Minnesota in the 18th century and drove out the other tribes, who moved west. They claimed the land, which they called HeSapa (Black Mountains). The mountains commonly became known as the Black Hills…
After the public discovery of gold in the 1870s, European Americans increasingly encroached on Lakota territory. The conflict over control of the region sparked the Black Hills War, the last major Indian War on the Great Plains. The 1868 Treaty of Fort Laramie had previously confirmed the Lakota's ownership of the Teton Sioux mountain range. Both the Sioux and Cheyenne claimed rights to the land, saying that in their cultures, it was considered the axis mundi, or sacred center of the world.
Although rumors of gold in the Black Hills had circulated for decades (see Thoen Stone and Pierre-Jean De Smet), it was not until 1874 that Brevet Major General George Armstrong Custer of the 7th US Cavalry led an expedition there and discovered gold in French Creek. An official announcement of gold was made by the newspaper reporters accompanying the expedition. The following year, the Newton-Jenney Party conducted the first detailed survey of the Black Hills. The surveyor for the party, Dr. Valentine McGillycuddy, was the first European American to ascend to the top of Harney Peak. This highest point in the Black Hills is 7242 feet above sea level.
During the 1875–1878 gold rush, thousands of miners went to the Black Hills; in 1880, the area was the most densely populated part of Dakota Territory. There were three large towns in the Northern Hills: Deadwood, Central City, and Lead. Around these were groups of smaller gold camps, towns, and villages. Hill City and Custer City sprang up in the Southern Hills. Railroads were quickly constructed to the previously remote area. From 1880 on, the gold mines yielded about $4,000,000 annually, and the silver mines about $3,000,000 annually.
Following the defeat of the Lakota and their Cheyenne and Arapaho allies in 1876, the United States took control of the region, in violation of the Treaty of Fort Laramie. The Lakota never accepted the validity of the US appropriation. They continue to try to reclaim the property.
On July 23, 1980, in United States v. Sioux Nation of Indians, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that the Black Hills were illegally taken and that remuneration of the initial offering price plus interest — nearly $106 million — be paid. The Lakota refused the settlement as they wanted the Black Hills returned to them. The money remains in an interest-bearing account, which now amounts to over $757 million, but the Lakota still refuse to take the money. They believe that accepting the settlement would allow the U.S. Government to justify taking ownership of the Black Hills.
In 2012, United Nations Special Rapporteur James Anaya conducted a 12-day tour of Native Americans' land, to determine how the United States is faring on the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, endorsed by the administration of President Barack Obama in 2010. Mr. Anaya met with tribes in seven states on reservations and in urban areas, as well as with members of the Obama administration and the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs. Mr. Anaya tentatively recommended the return of lands to some tribes, including the Black Hills to the Sioux. His full official report with recommendations is due in September 2012
Met betrekking tot de Black Hills had de Verenigde Staten in het Verdrag van Fort Laramie in 1868 bepaald dat:
No white person or persons shall be permitted to settle upon or occupy any portion of the territory, or without the consent of the Indians to pass through the same.
Na de 'ontdekking' van de 'Nieuwe Wereld' hadden blanke christelijke Europeanen eeuwenlang Indianen vermoord, of opgesloten in concentratiekampen, terwijl de overlevenden steeds verder westwaarts vluchtten. Op zoek naar goud en andere rijkdommen lieten de blanke Amerikanen zich toen net als nu door God noch gebod weerhouden. Alle meer dan 500 verdragen met de Indianen werden door de nieuwkomers geschonden. Onder andere in Dakota vochten de Indianen noodgedwongen terug toen de Amerikanen de Black Hills en ook het Verdrag van Fort Laramie schonden omdat
The land known as the Black Hills is considered by the Indians as the center of their land. The ten nations of Sioux are looking toward that as the center of their land,
aldus het opperhoofd Tatoke Inyanke. Op zijn beurt zei de legendarische Indiaanse leider Crazy Horse over de heilige Black Hills: 'One does not sell the earth upon which the people walk.' In zijn boek The Journey of Crazy Horse (2004) geeft de Lakota-historicus Joseph M. Marshall III een illustrerend voorbeeld van de wrede grofheid van de blanke, christelijke Amerikaanse macht. Hij schreef over de Amerikaanse generaal William S. Harney:
One wonders what Crazy Horse would think of the modern-day irony associated with General Harney, dubbed 'Women Killer' by the Sicangu Lakota: In the middle of the Black Hills is the highest of all the granite peaks. Like Bear Butte to the north, it was a favorite location for vision quests and other ceremonies. It was, and is, considered by the Lakota to be the spiritual center of our world. That highest and holiest of places was named Harney Peak by the whites. I have seen old Lakota men simply shake their heads at what they considered to be the most grievous of insults, because they could find no words to adequately describe their feelings.
Toen ruim 133 jaar later president Bush senior verklaarde 'I will never apologize for the United States — I don't care what the facts are... I'm not an apologize-for-America kind of guy,' nadat in 1988 de Amerikaanse marine een Iraans passagiersvliegtuig uit de lucht had geschoten, waarbij 290 burgers om het leven kwamen, weerspiegelden zijn woorden dezelfde mentaliteit als die van de Amerikaanse autoriteiten ten tijde van de Indiaanse oorlogen. Om de arrogantie van de macht nog eens te benadrukken, werden de bemanningsleden van het betreffende Amerikaanse oorlogsschip,
all awarded Combat Action Ribbons for completion of their tours in a combat zone. Lustig, the air-warfare coordinator, received the Navy Commendation Medal, often given for acts of heroism or meritorious service, a not-uncommon end-of-tour medal for a second tour division officer. According to the History Channel, the medal citation noted his ability to 'quickly and precisely complete the firing procedure' […] In 1990, Rogers (kapitein van het schip. svh) was awarded the Legion of Merit 'for exceptionally meritorious conduct in the performance of outstanding service as commanding officer... from April 1987 to May 1989.' […] The Legion of Merit is often awarded to high-ranking officers upon successful completion of especially difficult duty assignments and/or last tours of duty before retirement.
Het is één van de ontelbare voorbeelden die de continuïteit van het Amerikaanse geweld onderstreept. Dit geweld kent geen enkel respect voor normen en waarden, zoals ook blijkt uit het feit dat Harney Peak
was named in the late 1850s by Lieutenant Gouverneur K. Warren in honor of General William S. Harney, who was commander of the military in the Black Hills area in the late 1870s,
dezelfde gouverneur Warren 'who noted in his diary the horror of killing women and children.' De 'horror' die betaalde mainstream-opiniemakers als Brill en Hofland verzwijgen of juist prijzen, maar die in de praktijk niets anders is dan… 'horror,' als men de moeite neemt de verslagen te lezen:
When the Indians began to flee, Haney deceived Little Thunder with a white flag of truce, then surrounded the camp, killing men, women and children. Warren reported: 'The sight . . . was heart-rending--wounded women and children crying and moaning, horribly mangled by the bullets.' Two dead women were found clutching their dead children. Thus ended the Battle of Blue Water Creek.
Writer's note: Punitive expeditions against the Indians were nothing new with Col. Harney. He previously served in the Seminole Wars in Florida.
http://www.wyomingtalesandtrails.com/hayden2.html
Als we nog eens de door Hofland betreurde teloorgang van de westerse 'eerzucht' en 'strijdlust' in gedachten nemen, dan kan de conclusie niet anders zijn dan dat deze opiniemaker of niets van de geschiedenis heeft geleerd of misschien wel alles. In het laatste geval hebben we te maken met een cynische barbaar, in het eerste geval met een verstokte domoor. De Amerikaanse auteur James Wilson stelde in zijn boek The Earth Shall Weep. A History of Native America (1998) het volgende:
Books like Helen Hunt Jackson's A Century of Dishonor — a kind of Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee, published in 1881, which painted a devastating picture of American treachery and cruelty — made uncomfortable reading for a nation that believed it had a unique destiny as the standard-bearer of Christian civilization. Many — mostly East coast — philanthropists feared that the country's shameful record of brutality and duplicity toward its own first people would cast a permanent shadow over its claim to the moral leadership of mankind. As the Commissioners negotiating with the Sioux for the 'sale' of the Black Hills put it in 1876:
'We cannot afford to delay longer fulfilling our bounden duty to those from whom we have taken that country, the possession of which has placed us in the forefront of the nations of the earth. We make it our boast that our country is the home of the oppressed of all lands. Dare we forget that there are also those whom we have made homeless, and to whom we are bound to give protection and care? […]
Unless immediate and appropriate legislation is made for the protection and government of the Indians, they must perish. Our country must forever bear the disgrace and suffer the retribution of its wrongdoing. Our children's children will tell the sad story in hushed tones, and wonder how their fathers dare so trample on justice and trifle with God.
Maar voor opiniemakers die door hun ideologische bril de werkelijkheid niet kunnen zien geldt een dergelijk inzicht niet. Zij blijven volhouden dat 'het [Westen] vredestichtend,' is, en dat alleen 'de andere kant' niet deugt. Ze zijn pathologische gevallen, maar dat is slechts een kwalificatie. De vraag is: hoe komen we van ze af? Hoe lang kan de mens nog leven met leugens als:
Take me back to the black hills
The black hills of Dakota
To the beautiful Indian country
That I lo-ove
Uprising: When Black America Launched a Violent Rebellion Against One of the Most Oppressive Societies on Earth
April 9, 2014 |
“Racism is like a Cadillac, they bring out a new model every year”…….. Malcolm X
Last Friday marked the 46th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King’s assassination. He was killed on April 4, 1968. Events honoring Dr. King were held in Memphis and other cities around the country, media outlets ran many stories about the days leading up to King’s assassination, his work in Memphis supporting the striking sanitation workers and its relevance to the contemporary debate over a living wage. Notably missing from these recollections of that period in American history are the momentous events that occurred in the days after King’s assassination and the legacy of the national response.
Black America reacted to the murder of Dr. King with unmitigated rage. Within hours of the news, cities around the country were in flames. Blacks were in open rebellion in more than 110 cities with the worst and most prolonged rebellions taking place in Chicago, Kansas City, Louisville, Baltimore and the nation’s capital – Washington, D.C. The rebellion continued for almost a week and came to be known as the “Holy Week Uprising”. Crowds of 20,000 angry residents overwhelmed the District’s 3,100-member police force, leading President Johnson to dispatch some 13,600 federal troops to aid them. Marines mounted machine guns on the steps of the Capitol and Army troops guarded the White House. At one point, on April 5, the rebellion reached within two blocks of the White House. The occupation of Washington, D.C. was the largest of any American city since the Civil War. Mayor Washington imposed a curfew and banned the sale of alcohol and guns in the city. By the time the rebellion ended on Sunday, April 8, some 1,200 buildings were severely damaged or burned, including over 900 stores.
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The immediate cause of the Holy Week Uprising was the killing of MLK, but portents of disaster had been present for years. During the summer of 1964 seven cities – two in New York (NYC and Rochester), three in New Jersey (Patterson, Elizabeth and Jersey City), Philadelphia and the Dixmoor suburb of Chicago – exploded, setting a pattern for summer rebellions to come. The New York Rebellion of 1964 was the first in a series of devastating race-related uprisings that ripped through American cities between 1964 and 1968. The rebellion began in Harlem after the shooting of fifteen year-old James Powell by a white off-duty police officer. Considering the incident an act of police brutality, eight thousand Harlem residents took to the streets and launched a large-scale rebellion, breaking widows, setting fires and looting local businesses. The eruption of destruction soon spread to the nearby neighborhood of Bedford-Stuyvesant and continued for six days, resulting in the death of one resident, over one hundred injuries, and more than 450 arrests.
As the civil unrest in New York City began to cool, another uprising broke out upstate, in Rochester, New York, a city that prided itself on its affluence and stability. Like the Harlem rebellion the Rochester uprising stemmed from an alleged act of police brutality. For three days, protestors overturned automobiles, burned buildings, and looted stores causing over one million dollars worth of damages. Governor Nelson Rockefeller took the unprecedented step of mobilizing the state’s National Guard. The uprisings of 1964 highlighted the racial injustice and growing civil unrest in northern cities and served as a powerful indicator of the urgent need for social and economic reforms in African-American communities outside of the South.
In August 1965, Los Angeles’s South Central neighborhood of Watts became a scene of the greatest racial tension America had yet seen. Again the triggering event involved a police encounter and allegations of brutality. Over the course of the six-day rebellion, over 14,000 California National Guard troops mobilized and established a curfew zone encompassing over forty-five miles. All told, the rebellion claimed the lives of thirty-four people, resulted in more than one thousand reported injuries, and almost four thousand arrests. Throughout the crisis, public officials advanced the argument that the rebellion was the work of outside agitators; however, an official investigation, prompted by Governor Pat Brown, found that the uprising was a result of the Watts community’s longstanding grievances and growing discontent with high unemployment rates, substandard housing and inadequate schools. Despite the reported findings of the gubernatorial commission, city leaders and state officials failed to carry out measures to improve the social and economic conditions of African-Americans living in the Watts neighborhood.
The upheaval that detonated in Watts stunned the nation – the horrific violence and upheaval shattered one illusion. Rebellion was no longer an East coast phenomena, it was now a dilemma of national proportions. Watts would be the standard-bearer for hundreds of rebellions that followed. For every big city had a black ghetto and every black ghetto had for decades been experiencing the same grievances: hatred and mistrust of police, unending poverty, discrimination, despair, alienation and increasing frustration with white resistance to nonviolent appeals for justice. Martin Luther King, Jr. arrived in Los Angeles in the aftermath of the Watts rebellion. His experiences over the next several days reinforced his conviction that he should go north and lead a movement to address the growing problems facing black people in the nation’s urban areas.
In late 1965, King brought his crusade for civil rights to Chicago. He moved his family into a West Side tenement apartment in the 1500 block of South Hamlin. The move grabbed national headlines and illuminated deplorable housing conditions that King called “typical” for blacks in northern cities. King pushed for fair and open housing and used the non-violent strategies of the civil rights movement to try to bring about change. Rallies, boycotts, and grassroots lobbying drove the 17-month campaign, but it was the marches in hostile white territory that forced the city to respond. News cameras captured the depths of racial tension during an open housing march into the all-white neighborhood of Marquette Park. Mobs of angry whites screamed obscenities and hurled rocks, bricks, and bottles toward the protesters. As the marchers walked peacefully, King was struck in the back of the head with a rock, which knocked him to the ground. After recovering, King commented, “I have seen many demonstrations in the South, but I have never seen anything so hostile and so hateful as I’ve seen here today.” King began to fully appreciate the challenge of promoting nonviolent social action in the face of massive angry white resistance.
Forty-three disorders and rebellions occurred in 1966 – in a twenty-day period during that summer eight cities – Cleveland, New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Jacksonville (Fla), South Bend (Ind), Des Moines and Omaha – were rocked by civil unrest but the worst was yet to come. The 1967 rebellions were so widespread and destructive the nation into a state of shock. Beginning in June in Tampa, Boston, Chicago, Cincinnati, Atlanta and Dayton, the battlefield quickly shifted from one locality to the next, hopscotching from North to South and coast-to-coast. Up to this point most of the disorders had taken place in large cities. Small towns had been immune to the racial turmoil that had convulsed urban centers. In 1967, that all changed as rebellions occurred in scores of towns with populations less than 25,000.
The worst of the ’67 rebellions occurred in Newark and Detroit. The Newark rebellion lasted six long and bloody days in July. When it was over, twenty-six people had been killed, more than 1,500 injured and 1,400 arrested. At its height, the rebellion spread across half of the city’s 23 square miles. The greatest number of deaths occurred in the days after the National Guard was deployed and responding to false claims of snipers, began shooting indiscriminately into occupied public housing developments. Then came Detroit, serving as an unexpected and horrifying climax.
From Sunday, July 23rd to Saturday, July 30th the Motor City was engulfed in violence. Governor Romney called in the National Guard – when they were unable to subdue the rebellion he called President Johnson and requested federal troops. The final figures of destruction in Detroit were terrifying and sobering. Forty-three persons had been killed in the violence, over six hundred injured and more than 5,000 arrested. Fires had destroyed hundreds of homes, leaving more than 5,000 homeless. This report by Detroit station WXYZ-TV provides historical context for the ’67 uprising:
It seemed like the country was coming apart at the seams. In the wake of these devastating events President Johnson appointed a special investigative body to delve into the origins of the civil disorders. The panel was charged to make recommendations to the President, Congress, state governors and mayors for “ways to prevent or contain such disorders in the future.” The panel was headed by Otto Kerner, then Governor of Illinois and became known as the Kerner Commission. The Commission conducted hearings with testimony from hundreds of witnesses on all aspects of the problem. Members visited the eight cities that had experienced major rebellions. Extensive field surveys and investigations were conducted covering studies of 23 representative cities.
The Commission’s report was submitted to President Johnson on March 2, 1968, a full month before Dr. King’s assassination. The Kerner Commission painted a grim picture of the racial situation in the United States. It predicted not only more, but possibly worse, racial rebellions. Americans were warned that continued white racism could lead to a divided nation, with cities under semi-martial law. The prescribed remedy was a national commitment to summon the will necessary to effect systemic change that would fully integrate African-Americans into the mainstream of American life. The most controversial statements in the report were those that concluded white racism was a principal cause of the rebellions. The report maintained:
“White racism is essentially responsible for the explosive situation, which has been accumulating in our cities since the end of World War II. Pervasive discrimination and segregation in employment, education and housing have resulted in the continuing exclusion of great numbers of Negroes from the benefits of economic progress.” The resulting poverty has led to “bitterness against society in general and white society in particular. What white Americans have never fully understood but what the Negro can never forget–is that white society is deeply implicated in the ghetto. White institutions created it, white institutions maintain it, and white society condones it.”
The basic findings and recommendations responded in detail the three questions in the President’s charge:
- What Happened?
According to the Commission, the summer rebellions (they called them riots) were not caused by, nor were they the result of, any organized plan or conspiracy. Agitators merely aggravated the discontent by seeking to encourage violence.
Why did it Happen?
The rebellions resulted from widespread black discontent with the lack of progress made and improvement in their living conditions and the belief that nonviolent protest had failed to change white indifference.
What can be done to prevent it from happening again?
The Commission called on local governments to remedy the situation. The relationship between black communities and the police should be improved. To control future disorders, law enforcement agencies, including National Guard units, should be given special training in riot control. The use of destructive weapons was condemned. The Commission made recommendations for national action. The living conditions of blacks should be improved through massive programs sponsored and paid for largely by the federal government. New tax revenues would most likely be necessary. Remedial action should be immediate, and suggestions were laid out in detail in the major fields of employment, education, welfare and housing.
Response and Resistance
The black response to the Kerner Commission report was primarily positive; people felt it said what needed to be said in clear, unequivocal language. The Commission’s recommendations were consistent with the reforms Dr. King and civil rights leaders had advocated for years. Implementation would facilitate a giant leap forward towards tangible racial progress. Unfortunately, white America, wasn’t ready to hear it. President Johnson’s response was exceedingly cool. He’d expected the report to confirm his suspicions black radicals and political agitators had instigated the rebellions. He didn’t want to hear that his ‘war on poverty’ had failed to satisfy black demands for equal opportunity and political power. He was angry with King for opposing him on the Vietnam War, although he privately bemoaned the fact it was undermining his ability to fight the war on poverty. Johnson refused to formally receive the Kerner Commission report and completely ignored it’s impact. When he belatedly mentioned it, while acknowledging its thoroughness, he expressed his disappointment that it failed to mention the civil rights and poverty reduction efforts of his administration.
The black response to the Kerner Commission report was primarily positive; people felt it said what needed to be said in clear, unequivocal language. The Commission’s recommendations were consistent with the reforms Dr. King and civil rights leaders had advocated for years. Implementation would facilitate a giant leap forward towards tangible racial progress. Unfortunately, white America, wasn’t ready to hear it. President Johnson’s response was exceedingly cool. He’d expected the report to confirm his suspicions black radicals and political agitators had instigated the rebellions. He didn’t want to hear that his ‘war on poverty’ had failed to satisfy black demands for equal opportunity and political power. He was angry with King for opposing him on the Vietnam War, although he privately bemoaned the fact it was undermining his ability to fight the war on poverty. Johnson refused to formally receive the Kerner Commission report and completely ignored it’s impact. When he belatedly mentioned it, while acknowledging its thoroughness, he expressed his disappointment that it failed to mention the civil rights and poverty reduction efforts of his administration.
Placing the guilt for the situation on white racism was difficult for the most whites to accept. Many public officials criticized the ‘guilt’ charge as a tactical error. Vice-President Hubert Humphrey (a lifelong liberal) spoke for many whites when he expressed his feeling that the report “overstressed the racism angle”. Richard Nixon, then a presidential candidate, remarked that the report “in effect blames everybody for the riots except the perpetrators.” He took a firm tone saying, “he was sympathetic with Negro problems. We will go forward with their programs but there will be no toleration of violence. There can be no protests that justify the use of violence or lawlessness.” Nixon ran on the campaign theme of restoring law and order, voicing views that deftly combined repression with reform – white America embraced that message awarding him the White House. As President, Nixon gravitated towards the views of his conservative advisers like Pat Buchanan who endorsed increased use of police squadrons to control black communities; derided Great Society programs to improve conditions in urban slums and offered individual initiative as the solution to poverty.
Exactly one year after the Kerner Commission’s report, a follow-up study was released entitled, One Year Later, assessing the nation’s response to the Kerner report. The discouraging conclusion was that “the nation’s response has been perilously inadequate. The nation has merely come one year closer to being ‘two societies, one black and one white, separate and unequal.’” More ominously, the report found in many cities white attitudes had hardened. Cities that experienced major rebellions tended to show some efforts at change, particularly with respect to policing practices but also showed an increase in racial polarization. Medium-sized or small disturbances in cities with racially conservative policies tended to result in increased polarization and no change or even a worsening of conditions for blacks as existing repressive attitudes simply hardened. Most cities made few attempts to rebuild sections that had been destroyed by the rebellions. It would take decades for inner-city neighborhoods in Washington, D.C., Baltimore, Cleveland, Los Angeles and Chicago to recover. Some, like Detroit still haven’t. I close with the prescient prediction of the Kerner Report about the future of American cities:
By 1985, the Negro population in central cities is expected to increase by 72 percent to about 20.8 million. Coupled with the continued exodus of white families to the suburbs, this growth will produce majority Negro populations in many of the nation’s largest cities. The future of these cities, and of their burgeoning Negro populations, is grim. Most new employment opportunities are being created in suburbs and outlying areas. This trend will continue unless important changes in public policy are made. In prospect, therefore, is further deterioration of already inadequate municipal tax bases in the face of increasing demands for public services, and continuing unemployment and poverty among the urban Negro population:Three choices are open to the nation:
* We can maintain present policies, continuing both the proportion of the nation’s resources now allocated to programs for the unemployed and the disadvantaged, and the inadequate and failing effort to achieve an integrated society.
* We can adopt a policy of “enrichment” aimed at improving dramatically the quality of ghetto life while abandoning integration as a goal.
* We can pursue integration by combining ghetto “enrichment” with policies, which will encourage Negro movement out of central city areas.The first choice, continuance of present policies, has ominous consequences for our society. The share of the nation’s resources now allocated to programs for the disadvantaged is insufficient to arrest the deterioration of life in central city ghettos. Under such conditions, a rising proportion of Negroes may come to see in the deprivation and segregation they experience, a justification for violent protest, or for extending support to now isolated extremists who advocate civil disruption. Large-scale and continuing violence could result, followed by white retaliation, and, ultimately, the separation of the two communities in a garrison state.Even if violence does not occur, the consequences are unacceptable. Development of a racially integrated society, extraordinarily difficult today, will be virtually impossible when the present black ghetto population of 12.5 million has grown to almost 21 million. To continue present policies is to make permanent the division of our country into two societies; one, largely Negro and poor, located in the central cities; the other, predominantly white and affluent, located in the suburbs and in outlying areas.
The true impact of our nation’s failure to act on the Kerner Commission recommendations were on full display in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. The failure to consider the plight of those too poor to leave the city and to adequately prepare for their needs in an emergency resulted in scenes of misery and distress associated more with developing countries than the most affluent democracy in the world.
It’s 2014, what reflection of America, do you see – Dr. King’s or Richard Nixon’s?
http://www.alternet.org/uprising-when-black-america-launched-violent-rebellion-against-one-most-oppressive-societies-earth?akid=11701.56814.0xd7yM&rd=1&src=newsletter980011&t=16&paging=off¤t_page=1#bookmark
Evidence of Acceleration of Anthropogenic Climate Disruption on All Fronts
(Image: Jared Rodriguez / Truthout)"The frog does not drink up the pond
in which he lives."
~ Sioux Proverb
Evidence of Acceleration of Anthropogenic Climate Disruption on All Fronts
Thursday, 10 April 2014 00:00By Dahr Jamail, Truthout | News Analysis
(Image: Jared Rodriguez / Truthout)"The frog does not drink up the pondin which he lives."
~ Sioux Proverb
This month's dispatch comes on the heels of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) recent report, and the news is not good.
"No one on this planet will be untouched by climate change," IPCC Chair Rajendra Pachauri announced. The report warnedthat climate impacts are already "severe, pervasive, and irreversible."
The IPCC report was one of many released in recent weeks, and all of them bring dire predictions of what is coming. The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) issued a report warning that "the rate of climate change now may be as fast as any extended warming period over the past 65 million years, and it is projected to accelerate in the coming decades." The report went on to warn of the risk "of abrupt, unpredictable, and potentially irreversible changes in the Earth's climate system with massively disruptive impacts," including the possible "large scale collapse of the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets, collapse of part of the Gulf Stream, loss of the Amazon rain forest, die-off of coral reefs, and mass extinctions."
To read more about anthropomorphic climate disruption, click here.
Just prior to the release of the IPCC report, the UN's World Meteorological Organization (WMO) reported that 13 of the 14 warmest years on record had all occurred since 2000. The agency's secretary-general, Michel Jarraud, described the global trend: "Every decade has been warmer than the preceding one over the last 40 years. In other words, the decade 2001-2010 was warmer than the '90s, which in turn were warmer than the '80s, which were warmer than the '70s. All the best models were used for this study, and the conclusion is actually very interesting and of concern. The conclusion is that these heat waves, it is not possible to reproduce these heat waves in the models if you don't take into account human influence." Jarraud also noted greenhouse gases are now at a record high, which guarantees the Earth's atmosphere and oceans will continue to warm for centuries to come. Arctic sea ice in 2013 did not reach the record lows seen in 2012 for minimum extent in the summer, but nevertheless reached its sixth lowest extent on record. The WMO noted all seven of the lowest Arctic sea-ice extents took place in the past seven years, starting with 2007, which scientists were "stunned" by at the time.
NASA released the results of a study showing that long-term planetary warming is continuing along the higher end of many projections. "All the evidence now agrees that future warming is likely to be towards the high end of our estimates, so it's more clear than ever that we need large, rapid emissions reductions to avoid the worst damages from climate change," lead author and NASA climatologist Drew Shindell said. If he sounds alarmist, it's because he is, and with good reason. The NASA study shows a global increase in temperatures of nine degrees by the end of the century.
This is consistent with a January Nature study on climate sensitivity, which found we are headed toward a "most-likely warming of roughly 5C (9 F) above current temperatures, which is 6C (11 F) above preindustrial" temperatures by 2100. Bear in mind that humans have never lived on a planet at temperatures 3.5C above our preindustrial baseline.
Hence, as contemporary studies continue to provide ever-higher temperature projections, they are beginning to approach higher estimates from previous studies. A 2011 paper authored by Jeffrey Kiehl from the National Center for Atmospheric Research and published in the journal Science "found that carbon dioxide may have at least twice the effect on global temperatures than currently projected by computer models of global climate." Contrary to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) worst-case scenario of a 6C rise by 2100, which itself would result in a virtually uninhabitable planet, Kiehl's paper distressingly concludes that, at current emission rates, we may actually see an unimaginable 16C rise by the end of the century.
"The last time it was 6C there were snakes the size of yellow school buses in the Amazon," Guy McPherson, professor emeritus of evolutionary biology, natural resources, and ecology at the University of Arizona, told Truthout. McPherson, a climate change expert of 25 years, maintains the blog Nature Bats Last. "The largest mammal was the size of a shrew," he said. "And the rise in temperature occurred over thousands of years, not decades. I doubt mammals survive - and certainly not large-bodied mammals - at 6C."
Dr McPherson went on to explain further what the planet would look like as temperatures increase.
"Rapid rise to 4C eliminates all or nearly all plankton in the ocean, along with a majority of land plants," he said. "The latter cannot keep up with rapid change. The former will be acidified out of existence. At 16C, your guess is as good as mine. But humans will not be involved."
Bear in mind that the "current" emission rates in Kiehl's study were significantly lower than those of today, as they were from more than three years ago. Emission rates have grown in each succeeding year.
Evidence is mounting that we are in the midst of a great extinction of species. An "ecocide" is occurring, as the human race is in the process of destroying life on the planet. This sobering thought becomes clearer now as we take our monthly tour of significant global pollution and anthropogenic climate disruption (ACD) related events.
Earth
Ongoing drought and other ACD-related impacts have caused the Amargosa vole, one of the rarest mammals in North America, to become an endangered species. This saddening occurrence shouldn't come as a big surprise, given that chronic drought and shifting weather patterns are causing things like a wall of dust 1,000 feet tall and 200 miles wide to roar across parts of West Texas and New Mexico.
Evidencing warnings from the IPCC report about ACD's dramatic impact on wide-scale food production, the president of the World Bank warned that battles over water and food will erupt within the next five to ten years. As if on cue, hungry monkeys in northern India have begun raiding farms as their forest habitats shrink.
Meanwhile, on the coastal areas of Alaska, melting permafrost and stronger storms are combining to erode coastline and cause greater numbers of villages to begin contemplating evacuation.
Water
A new NASA study shows that the length of the melt season for Arctic sea ice is growing by several days each decade, allowing the Arctic Ocean to absorb enough additional solar radiation to melt as much as four feet of the Arctic ice cap's thickness in some places.
Going into wildfire season, California is coming off its warmest winter on record, aggravating its enduring drought, which has caused the Sacramento River to drop so low that the state may need to truck 30 million salmon from hatcheries to the sea. California's central valley farmland was in trouble prior to the historic drought, but now it appears to be on its last legs. The area, critical to the US supply of fruit and vegetables, was suffering from decades of irrigation that leached salts and toxic minerals from the soil, which then had nowhere to go, thus threatening both crops and wildlife. Now, to make matters worse, remaining aquifers are being drained at an alarming pace, with some farmers even drilling more than 1,200 feet down in their ongoing search for ever-more-rare water for their struggling farms.
Meanwhile, Texas and New Mexico have been waging an interstate legal battle over water from the ever-shrinking Rio Grande. Both states struggle with ongoing drought, while farmers in Texas are still reeling from the historic 2011 drought as moderate to exceptional drought continues to affect 64 percent of that state. Fierce legal and political battles over who controls the water are now becoming the norm in California, Texas, Colorado, New Mexico and other western states.
Drought-parched Wichita Falls, Texas, is so desperate for water that officials there are currently awaiting state regulatory approval for a project that will recycle effluentfrom their wastewater treatment plant, which means residents would begin drinking "potty water."
The severe drought across the west has forced the Mount Ashland Ski area in Oregon to remain closed for its entire season, something it has not had to do for 50 years.
"Higher food prices, water bills and utility rates," the Las Vegas Sun reported recently of the cascade of crises impacting the US West due to drought:
Greater wildfire risk. Shrinking communities, fewer jobs and weakening economies. Amid growing concern that the drought gripping the West isn't history repeating itself but instead is a new normal brought about by climate change, the effects of the dwindling water supply in the region are beginning to become all too clear. As a pattern of longer dry periods and shorter wet cycles continues, the effects will be felt across the region by millions of people from farms to cities, faucets to wallets. More than 70 percent of the West - a zone spreading across 15 states - is experiencing some form of abnormal dryness or drought, with 11 drought-affected western and central states designated as primary natural disaster areas by the Agriculture Department.
In Canada, the mining of the tar sands continues to destroy vast areas of sensitive wetlands in Alberta, with scientists warning that it is impossible to rebuild or rehabilitate the complex ecosystems there after the industrial assault of the mining process.
A recent report underscores the impact of the oil and gas industry heyday in Canada on the indigenous populations there, as "industrial development" and warming temperatures are leading to growing hunger and malnutrition in Canada's Arctic.
Rising seas and coastal erosion problems are persisting and spreading around the globe as ACD progresses. 18 months after Hurricane Sandy lashed the northeast coast of the US, homeowners living on the coast have to decide whether to rebuild or move inland...a decision everyone living on a coast will eventually have to make.
China now estimates it has lost $2.6 billion from ACD-linked storms and rising sea levels since 2008, while a new report has confirmed that people living in the coastal regions of Asia will face some of the worst impacts of ACD as it continues to progress.
Continuing rising temperatures have caused scientists to warn of "disturbing" rates of ice melt on Africa's highest peaks like Kilimanjaro and Mount Kenya, saying that within two decades even the highest peaks on the continent will no longer have any ice - only bare rock.
Meanwhile, the rate of ice melt on the Greenland ice sheet has researchers alarmed. It was long believed that the interior of Greenland's huge ice sheet was resilient to the impacts of ACD, but no more. Greenland recorded its highest temperatures ever in 2013, and the equivalent of three Chesapeake Bays' worth of water is melting off the island every single year, raising global sea levels.
Along with storing over 90 percent of the heat, the planet's oceans continue to bear the brunt of the impacts from ACD. More than 24 million metric tons of CO2 from the industrial-growth society are absorbed into the seas every single day, and are causing seawater to become more acidic, a phenomenon that is already producing dire consequences.
Fishermen in British Columbia are struggling to deal with catastrophic financial losses as millions of oysters and scallops are dying off in record numbers along the West Coast. Experts suggest, of course, that this is caused by increasing CO2 levels in the atmosphere, which leads to rising ocean acidity.
Recent research shows that as ACD continues to warm the oceans, fish growth is being stunted: a variety of North Sea fish species have shrunk in size by as much as 29 percent over the past four decades. Off the coast of Australia, warming oceans are causing jellyfish blooms to increase in size to vast levels, causing them to inhibit both the environment and fishing and tourism industries.
The final and likely the most important note on water this month: A new studypublished in Nature Climate Change has revealed a very troubling fact - that the deep ocean current near Antarctica is changing due to ACD. "Our observations are showing us that there is less formation of these deep waters near Antarctica," one of the scientists/authors said. "This is worrisome because, if this is the case, we're likely going to see less uptake of human produced, or anthropogenic, heat and carbon dioxide by the ocean, making this a positive feedback loop for climate change." Given that the Southern Ocean is critical in terms of regulating climate, the slowing current is an ominous sign for our future.
Air
Air pollution and its related problems seem to be increasing exponentially.
Toxic smog engulfing Britain caused more than 1.6 million people (30 percent of the population) to suffer asthma attacks.
After exceeding safe levels for five days, air pollution prompted a Paris car ban.
In North Dakota, gas flaring related to fracking has doubled, pumping even more CO2 into the atmosphere.
In India, where being a traffic cop is a life-threatening occupation due to air pollution, people are suffering from some of the worst air pollution in the world. It is so bad that diesel fumes there are even impacting glacier melt in the Himalayas.
Pollution haze in Sumatra has blanketed several provinces there over the last two months, causing thousands to suffer from various pollution-related illnesses as the air quality continues to decline.
Tons of toxic materials are being released in Virginia, including millions of pounds of aromatic chemicals.
The World Health Organization now estimates that air pollution killed seven million people in 2012, adding that one in eight deaths worldwide were tied to air pollution, making it the single largest environmental health risk on the planet.
Not surprisingly, scientists in Boulder are reporting record-early CO2 readings at their key reading site at the NOAA Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii. The readings hit the key benchmark of 400 parts per million (ppm) for CO2 at least five days in a row recently. 400 ppm was recorded for the first time only last year, and that level was not recorded until May 19th.
Atmospheric CO2 levels have seasonal swings which tend to peak in May. "Each year it creeps up," the director of the global monitoring division at NOAA, said. "Eventually, we'll see where it isn't below 400 parts per million anywhere in the world. We're on our way to doing that."
Fire
The New York Times reported: "'Out of work? Nowhere to live? Nowhere to go? Nothing to eat?' the online ad reads. 'Come to Fukushima.' That grim posting targeting the destitute, by a company seeking laborers for the ravaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, is one of the starkest indications yet of an increasingly troubled search for workers willing to carry out the hazardous decommissioning at the site."
However, those working directly at Fukushima are not the only ones exposed to its lingering effects. As radioactive water from the Fukushima disaster continues to leak into the Pacific Ocean, the FDA has added testing of Alaska salmon to its radiation monitoring program due to possible contamination. And US sailors who were aboard the Ronald Reagan aircraft carrier, which was involved in the Fukushima relief effort, are suing TEPCO over illnesses they say were caused by being exposed to radioactive plumes from the nuclear meltdown.
Scientists from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute have crowd-sourced a network of volunteers taking water samples at beaches along the US West Coast in an effort to capture a detailed look at the levels of radiation drifting across the ocean from Fukushima. "We know there's contaminated water coming out of there, even today," Ken Buesseler, a senior scientist at Woods Hole, said. "In fact, it is the biggest pulse of radioactive liquid ever dropped in the ocean."
This is of particular concern because it is an example of ramifications and chronic problems resulting from meltdowns occurring at one nuclear power plant.
Given the IPCC's report of how worsening ACD will cause disruptions to our infrastructure and generate greater social unrest, it is clear that power disruptions are very likely in our not-so-distant future.
Nuclear power plants are intensely dependent on the power grid to function, and to keep the fuel rods and power cells cooled. Without a steady stream of large amounts of electricity, the 450 active nuclear power plants around the globe will all go into meltdown.
Fukushima is but one example.
Denial and Reality
While the pollution insults to the planet and ever-increasing and obvious signs of advancing ACD continue to mount, the urge for many people to bury their heads in the sand, often at the request or manipulation of industry and its media arms, continues apace as well.
The state of Wyoming has become the first state to block new science standards, because the standards include an expectation that students will understand that humans have significantly altered the planet's biosphere.
Corporate media's ability to misinform and manipulate the masses should never be underestimated, as a recent Gallup poll found that only 36 percent of US citizens believe that ACD would seriously impact their lives.
Recently the Republican-led US House of Representatives advanced a bill that would require federal weather agencies to focus more on predicting storms and less on climate studies... hence promoting denial of ACD.
The aforementioned efforts are the modern equivalent of passengers on the Titanic who opted to stay in the bar.
Meanwhile, it is becoming increasingly challenging to even keep pace with all the signs.
While the eastern and central US experienced a colder-than-average winter this year, the National Climatic Center released data showing that most of the rest of the planet registered the eighth-warmest winter on record.
Penn State climatologist Michael Mann wrote in Scientific American recently that a climate crisis looms in the very near future, saying that if humanity continues burning fossil fuels as we are, we will cross the threshold into environmental ruin by 2036.
As noted earlier, one of the world's largest and most knowledgeable scientific bodies, the AAAS, wants to make the reality of ACD very clear: Just as smoking causes cancer, so too are humanity's CO2 emissions causing Earth to change, with potentially unknown and unalterable impacts. The AAAS's Alan Leshner said, "What we are trying to do is to move the debate from whether human-induced climate change is reality."
The group's full report, an important read, adds: "The overwhelming evidence of human-caused climate change documents both current impacts with significant costs and extraordinary future risks to society and natural systems. The scientific community has convened conferences, published reports, spoken out at forums and proclaimed, through statements by virtually every national scientific academy and relevant major scientific organization including the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) that climate change puts the well-being of people of all nations at risk."
Upon request, Dr McPherson provided Truthout his latest writings, which address the likelihood of abrupt climate disruption and even the possibility of near-term human extinction:
Gradual change is not guaranteed, as pointed out by the US National Academy of Sciences in December 2013: "The history of climate on the planet - as read in archives such as tree rings, ocean sediments, and ice cores - is punctuated with large changes that occurred rapidly, over the course of decades to as little as a few years." The December 2013 report echoes one from Wood Hole Oceanographic Institution more than a decade earlier. Writing for the 3 September 2012 issue ofGlobal Policy, Michael Jennings concludes that "a suite of amplifying feedback mechanisms, such as massive methane leaks from the sub-sea Arctic Ocean, have engaged and are probably unstoppable." During a follow-up interview with Alex Smith on Radio Ecoshock, Jennings admits that "Earth's climate is already beyond the worst scenarios." Skeptical Science finally catches up to reality on 2 April 2014 with an essay titled, "Alarming new study makes today's climate change more comparable to Earth's worst mass extinction." The conclusion from this conservative source: "Until recently the scale of the Permian Mass Extinction was seen as just too massive, its duration far too long, and dating too imprecise for a sensible comparison to be made with today's climate change. No longer.
Copyright, Truthout. May not be reprinted without permission.
DAHR JAMAIL
Dahr Jamail, a Truthout staff reporter, is the author of The Will to Resist: Soldiers Who Refuse to Fight in Iraq and Afghanistan, (Haymarket Books, 2009), and Beyond the Green Zone: Dispatches From an Unembedded Journalist in Occupied Iraq, (Haymarket Books, 2007). Jamail reported from Iraq for more than a year, as well as from Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Turkey over the last ten years, and has won the Martha Gellhorn Award for Investigative Journalism, among other awards.
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2 opmerkingen:
Gen tech maffia at it again...
http://www.ewg.org/agmag/2014/04/pompeo-s-dark-act-will-keep-consumers-dark
http://www.nrc.nl/breedbeeld/2014/04/10/recensieoverzicht-noah/
Who the f**k needs Noah when we have the floating 1%..
The big picture: Cruise Lines International Association, which represents 95 percent of cruise capacity worldwide with 63 member cruise lines, forecasts 21.7 million guests will cruise this year, up from 21.3 million in 2013.
http://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2014/01/25/cruise-trends-image-rehab-and-new-ships/ZHfUDJiczthVD6eeW7gCcI/story.html
At 644 feet, The World is the largest privately owned yacht on the planet. Each of us owns one or more of the 165 private onboard Residences, and collectively, we own the ship, ensuring that our experiences - both onboard and off - are far beyond current luxury travel standards. But what we share with one another goes far beyond ownership. Each of us has an endless thirst for knowledge, adventure and of course, travel...
http://aboardtheworld.com/our_story
Freedom Ship would not be a cruise ship, it is proposed to be a unique place to live, work, retire, vacation, or visit. The proposed voyage would continuously circle the globe, covering most of the world's coastal regions. Its large fleet of commuter aircraft and hydrofoils would ferry residents and visitors to and from shore. The airport on the ship's top deck would serve private and small commercial aircraft (up to about 40 passengers each). The proposed vessel's superstructure, rising twenty-five stories above its broad main deck, would house residential space, a library, schools, and a first-class hospital in addition to retail and wholesale shops, banks, hotels, restaurants, entertainment facilities, casinos, offices, warehouses, and light manufacturing and assembly enterprises. Finally, this concept would include a wide array of recreational and athletic facilities, worthy of a world-class resort, making Freedom Ship a veritable "Community on the Sea."
http://freedomship.com/
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