Don’t you wonder what kind of bolt-holes the wealthy and powerful are building, now, against the new crop of threats? Other than the ridiculous “let’s colonize Mars with rich white people!” meme, they have to know the global warming hammer is going to drop soon and the die-back and displacement is going to be violent. They’ll want a “mineshaft gap.”
As expected [stderr] the wars in Syria and Iraq have devolved into a horror show of human tragedy. And, to exacerbate it, you’ve got America’s fondness for saturation bombing civilians with high explosive.
Imagine if North Korea decided to boost its economy by renting out nuclear deterrent, “Dictators: keep the US away with Credible Deterrent(tm) warheads! (first strike capability not included)” – with Iran, Nicaragua, and Taiwan being their first customers.
Warning: War, Death, Sam Harris
Here’s the part that horrifies me: when I hear “wedding party hit by air-strike” I assume that it’s notable because it’s a wedding party, and that what we’re seeing is just probability in action.
I feel like treaties are now just the helpless squeaks of the mice trying to bell the cat. They probably always have been, I just wasn’t as cynical a few years ago as I am now.
“Just landed – a long trip, but everybody can now feel much safer than the day I took office. There is no longer a Nuclear Threat from North Korea.” [cnn]
In The Year of The Pig one of the striking moments, which I focused on, [stderr] is when several of the people promoting the US’ involvement in Vietnam used the same construction for their arguments; it was clear that they were tapped into a common source – presumably what are now called “talking points memos” produced by government agencies in order to get out a consistent “message” to the public.
The US is still at war: overt war such as Afghanistan, and covert wars all over the world. Let’s have a day of remembrance.
The US talks a lot about non-proliferation, and regularly joins with the world community to levy sanctions on nations that are not complying with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Iran and North Korea being prime examples of countries that have had a great deal of pressure (in the case of North Korea, the population has been starved) against their nuclear ambitions.
Information Security practitioners aren’t used to getting political; so there was apparently a small but vocal stream of nationalists complaining to the conference organizers by the time I was done.