While I’m focusing on the possible end of the world through the unleashing of nuclear first strike – for the second time in my life, the last being the Cuban Missile Crisis when I was still in grade school but remember only too well, I thought I ‘d post this article by
the burning blogger of bedlam
via In the Hands of Madmen: A Future Hiroshima and a Silent Mass Media…
Tags: Atomic Bomb, First Strike, First Use, Hiroshima, NPR, Nuclear Posture Review 2018, Nuclear War, Nuclear Weapons, Pentagon
Do you ever get the feeling that our collective destiny or well-being is in the hands of madmen?
Something very worrying has been suggesting itself for a while now – a notable change in language that I was beginning to notice over the last two years or so: but which has very much come more sharply into focus in recent weeks.
Specifically, I’m referring to the strange way that it suddenly has become acceptable for officials or strategists to talk about nuclear strikes in terms of ‘first use’ or preemptive strikes.
The accepted language or dynamics surrounding nuclear weapons or policy seem to have shifted at some point in the last two years – and it seems like something we should be very concerned about. Unfortunately, mainstream media outlets seem to be entirely uninterested.
Why it has particularly come into focus right now is because of the new ‘US Nuclear Posture Review’, which emerged about two weeks ago, and which one observer has described as ‘the world’s most dangerous document’.
This seems to have been a very, very serious document with big implications – but it also appears to have been broadly ignored by the media: despite concerns that the 2018 Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) essentially paves the way for a nuclear-weapons-based mass murder of civilians on a par with Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The NPR essentially seems to justify the idea of nuclear first use or preemptive strike by the United States. In a world in which no country but the United States has previously carried out a nuclear attack, it is rather unsettling that the notion of preemptive nuclear attack is now being openly discussed or envisioned.
Two weeks ago, Jan Oberg, writing at The Transnational, aptly noted the overwhelming media silence on the subject: ‘The mainstream media are totally irresponsible in their priorities. At the moment of writing, five hours after the world’s most dangerous document was presented, no major Western media has featured it prominently. This means it won’t be. No chance it would go viral. The increasing risk of nuclear war isn’t important. What threats to humanity end up at the bottom of page 38 after 10 pages of sports, entertainment and celebrity stories…?’
Indeed, the mainstream media coverage of this subject has been non-existent, as far as I can tell. Most people probably never heard about the NPR at all.
This seems to be a serious shift in the mindset regarding nuclear weapons, with the prevailing view having previously been that the WMDs were meant as a deterrant only: the threat of mutually-assured destruction ensuring that such weapons were never actually intended to be used.
But even more worrying than this shift in language or policy is the implication of the ‘first use’ or preemptive option being applied even in a scenario that doesn’t involve the mutual threat of nuclear weapons. So, for example, in January (a couple of weeks before the NPR was rolled out), the Pentagon had even proposed using nuclear weapons in response to a cyber attack.
What? A nuclear response to a cyber attack? What world are we living in?
Again, do you ever get the feeling our fate rests in the hands of madmen?
I published a long article here a few years ago on the 70th anniverary of the attack on Hiroshima, exploring the horrific effects of it, the events leading to that act, the moral conflict among key figures in the US, the psychology of it, the propagandising for it, and the ongoing question of whether it was in any way a justified act. Arguably, that question remains divisive, with permanent arguments and counter-arguments (even if most people are morally horrified by the dropping of the atomic bomb).
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But what’s extraordinary is that, in 2018, there isn’t even the debate – or the hint of moral conflict. Just a casual roll-out of an official nuclear posture that seems to indicate a first-strike policy being justified. And a media that doesn’t seem to care.
I have also been concerned lately with the increased talk by political figures in the UK (including Michael Fallon and Theresa May) about nuclear strikes, including ‘first strike’ options. It had struck me, a year or so ago, when I heard British politicians talking about first-strike possiblities, that this was new language being casually used where it wouldn’t have been in the past.
Be clear that the UK seems to be a part of this equation as well: or at least part of the new language or posturing.
Paul Rogers, of the Global Security Consultant to Oxford Research Group, warns that ‘Current revision of the United States’ declared nuclear posture is only the most visible manifestation of adjustments to all the main nuclear arsenals, with the UK at the vanguard of deploying technologies potentially calibrated for pre-emptive rather than retaliatory strike.’
I was also worried by the fact that President Trump’s military decided to drop the biggest non-nuclear bomb (MOAB) since World War II on a cave complex in Afghanistan instead of using a more conventional weapon – as if they were very much trying to send out a broader signal.
As I’ve said here before, at some other time or in some other circumstances, we might rely on cooler heads prevailing.
But we’re in the President Trump era now; in which provocations and a glorying in military firepower seems to be the order of the day. With a military-industrial complex that has its saviour in the form of Donald Trump (and a Donald Trump who says things like “if we have nukes, why can’t we use them?”), you might fear that the omens aren’t great.
And that’s before you even think about the spectacled megalomaniac in Pyonyang.
About a year ago, in an article about the nuclear-strike drill/exercise that was then being conducted in New York (‘Operation Gotham Shield’), I was speculating that the reason for the large-scale drill was to practise for a potential retalliatory strike by North Korea, Russia or China in response to what would be a future first strike by the US.
I wrote then that ‘it should probably be considered that the drill/exercise might have the hypothetical scenario be a *retaliatory* attack by one of those foreign powers…’
I was only speculating then: but this NPR announcement seems to strongly suggest the Pentagon is seriously considering future nuclear attacks. Or, perhaps more confusingly, that they simply want to terrify or intimidate rival powers with the idea that the US would strike first.
But even that latter scenario seems to be incredibly dangerous.
Paul Craig Roberts was hinting a year ago at ‘changes in US war doctrine that indicate that Washington is preparing a preemptive nuclear attack on Russia and China…’. And he warned, ‘It is extremely dangerous to all of mankind for Washington to convince two nuclear powers that Washington is preparing a preemptive nuclear strike against them. It is impossible to imagine a more reckless and irresponsible act.’
But, again, what’s also really curious is the mass media silence on the subject.
Read more: ‘Hiroshima & the Destroyer of Worlds: Was It Justified…?‘, ‘Is the US Preparing for Nuclear False-Flag…?‘, ‘North Korea & the Nuclear Threat – Real or Staged…?‘
~Burning Woman~ 
Further complicated (obfuscated) by the increasing fragmentation of attention and news and information. Twitterization. Nobody in the media will run with a story like this, except for maybe a 5-minute segment on some Sunday morning week-in-review expert interview. I hadn’t even heard about it. True about Trump & MOAB, etc though. Remember his befuddled question towards military advisors soon after election? If we have all these nuclear weapons in our arsenal, why don’t we use them? Price of willful stupidity. Price of holding the nose and looking askance while voting for “something different” because you think there’s a 20% chance he might bring your job back. AT least with convention candidates, there was a commitment to slow status quo which could buy us enough time, maybe, for an internal spiritual wake-up. Now it’s just: pile on more sleeping pills.
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Thanks for commenting Robert. Instead of repeating myself… and you!… see my reply here to Rosaliene, thanks.
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We have abdicated our control to semi literate functionaries who sit behind desks, tap their phones and say “I’m sorry your paperwork is out of order, you can’t park there, no you can’t change your order, not without a receipt, let me check the other shoe, would you like a fried pie, something to drink, a cookie? It has trickled up to our governance. Boom. Okay children, line up in the hall, cover you heads and kiss your assses goodbye…
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Well put, in a nutshell.
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“But what’s extraordinary is that, in 2018, there isn’t even the debate – or the hint of moral conflict. Just a casual roll-out of an official nuclear posture that seems to indicate a first-strike policy being justified. And a media that doesn’t seem to care.”
~ This is, indeed, a disturbing development. We are like kids playing with matches.
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Thanks for commenting, Rosaliene. Quote: “We are like kids playing with matches.” I would have added, in a fuel depot. I spend a lot of time just “thinking” about the human condition, from the time history (or ancient manuscripts) say there began such a condition, until today.
There’s no doubt in my mind that we’ve exceeded “the limits to growth” and that there is developing an unconscious sub-awareness that we’ve lost the game; that no matter what we do now, there is no stopping the machine that is devouring the planet. I’m reminded of Greg Bear’s sci-fi novel “The Forge of God” in which machine nanobots from outer space literally devour our solar system, the earth along with it.
We don’t need alien nanobots, we’re it! We’re “the forge of God” eating the planet from under our very senses. If such a mindset does exist, then people will continue to eat away, feeling that nothing can change what’s been set in motion. So what the tiny minority of “those who think” is up against isn’t evil this, or bad that, it’s the mindset that empowers the evil and the bad. The evil and the bad (E&B) has an agenda, we-the-people don’t have one. It has a clear and present purpose, we-the-people do not. It is focused, we-the-people are scattered, disconnected from one another, confused, ignorant, stupid, while believing the E&B propaganda that assures us that we are the exact opposite; that the more we support the E&B agenda, the better off we will all be. When we get angry at the E&B’s agenda, we lash out at scarecrows, at windmills; at the ones we’re given to vent our vituperations against. We want to bring down the loud-mouthed, ugly, brutish clowns.
If we who think can’t grasp the main mindset and change that, changing leadership, or even entire systems of government will accomplish nothing; maybe cause a slight delay at best. We’re not up against elites or leadership, we’re up against the plebes, the sheeple, the mobs, the fans, the followers, the unthinking masses. They’re the problem whether we like to admit it or not. So, with our little sand shovel and bucket, how do we affect the ocean level?
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And so First Strike Capability resurfaces into the public lexicon.
It never went away.
There is a fearful mirror image logic to all of this which is embedded to the use of warfare as a means.
I could sit here and type you out a long and seemingly callous argument for why the USA had no option but to use the A-Bomb in 1945. Though it does require immersion and acceptance of how warfare evolves and is conducted.
Why our UK govt is muttering about nuclear weapons has a simple straight-line for military arguments. The conventional weapons spending has been cut and we are stumbling out of Europe; thus Russia is as Russia does down the centuries and in defence of her own status takes advantage and lets us, the UK know we are now, in her eyes ‘tiny’. So we bang our nuclear drum..,and hope.
Y’know I don’t have to like this sort of stuff to explain it.
On the whole I would have rather been reading histories which started out as follows:
‘By the end of the 19th Century realising the prohibitive costs of military establishments nations began to invest in their national status through large sporting contests, which took place in varying forms over the entire year, into the next’…..
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Quote: “‘By the end of the 19th Century realising the prohibitive costs of military establishments nations began to invest in their national status through large sporting contests, which took place in varying forms over the entire year, into the next’…..” which, I believe, was the idea behind the very first Olympic Games between Athens and Sparta? Then Sparta went all militaristic and was crushed as a viable power. Perhaps there might be another lesson there if anybody read history with a mind to understand “Earthian” human nature.
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Yes it was, but they didn’t have sponsorship which is the great uniting power (satire) in all matters sporting from the start of the 20th Century onwards
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As it is for all political events… (more satire!)
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Quite.
Back in the Renaissance era and as usual war was part of the political process, and the Swiss were mercenaries of the highest quality the saying was ‘No gold. No Swiss’.
Then we hop forward to the early 18th century and the princes of the smaller german states made an income through the hiring out of their armies.
Just two examples.
The problem lies in the placing of nationalism into the mix.
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I’ve always had a healthy hatred of nationalism. Unbeknownst to the sheeple, “nationalism” is another manipulative ploy used by the elites to “motivate” unthinking, ignorant people to “join up” and be patriots. I used to struggle with the patriotism expressed by Europeans who fought the Nazis until I realized it is an endless chain. If we began the chain with German patriots who couldn’t tell that the Nazis were their worst enemies and went to war for them, then what choice did “we” (I was in that, past life too well remembered) have in going to war to fight them since their System was simply unbearable? So we too, reluctantly at first, went to war and this goes on ad infinitum.
If we are to insist on national borders, these must be maintained by support of the flag. The question for us today is, what do we replace that outdated concept with? I know you are against Brexit, but large unions containing many individual political units do not work either, Roger. Look at the Soviet Union. China is a bit different because there is a close racial affinity and those races are not as warlike as the Aryans, nor as rebellious. Then you have that weird, still nameless “nation” called the USA that maintains itself by force of arms (the Security State and all that entails), fear (of the law and ending up in jail) and propaganda (consumerism). That is not a nation-state at all, just another aggregation of frictional dissimilarities pushed together to serve the global elite. If not nationalism, then which “ism” do we go for? Surely not “globalism” which means global totalitarianism. My proposal is simple, as simple as the fact that it will never work because it would work: individualism through self-empowerment.
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From the other side Sha’ Tara the less ‘nations’ the better.
In area of the old ramshackled Austro-Hungarian empire’s various peoples once they had gained their ‘freedom’ set up states which persecuted their own minorities.
When viewed through the scope of the long history of the history of Humanity the European races are only equal with others in their capacity for warfare. It so happens history has been written from a Eurocentric viewpoint of which The USA is in long history merely an adjunct. Both Russia and China are old, because of the vastness their wars are often internal, they have grim and bloody histories of suppression and exploitation. They both march to their own circumstances, as does the USA.
The problem lies in the world-wide, in a patchwork of suppressions, terrorisms, intercommunal violence, chimeras of identities and nationalisms. Naturally capitalism is willing to exploit.
But at the end of the day the problem lies within each person who is willing to assume the worse of their neighbours which in turn leads to violence.
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Imagine earth as a large corral within which are many pens (nations) that hold animals (people) most of which are deadly predators. If we leave the outer wall of the corral up and start dismantling the pens, bloodshed will occur: the animals will attack, kill and devour each other. We can’t dismantle nations as long as people are stuck inside the main corral with no place to go. We have nations to minimize the bloodshed. The corral is the System, the Matrix, that “thing” nobody understands. It is that which drives the animals to kill one-another, there is no natural evolution of survival need involved in this. No survival of the fittest. There is psychopathy driven by various and cycling power systems, the three main being religion, politics and finance.
These things must be utterly destroyed before we can even begin to speak of peace and cooperation yet no one will directly touch them “as one” – i.e., the anti-religionist will propose a political system to replace it. The anti-capitalist will propose socialism to replace that. The closest we’ve ever come to facing reality were/are the anarchists but what are they offering in its stead?
The evil trinity of powers as I call it is a faith-based triumvirate. As such they are gods, or as best express by Catholic dogma, one God in three persons. The only person able to comprehend this and effectively turn from it is the self empowered individual who can freely think for herself/himself.
As I have often quoted, the apostle Paul (not my favourite character in history!) had this to say about the evil trinity in a rare moment of clairvoyance:
” Ep. 6:12 For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.
Ep. 6:13 Therefore put on the full armour of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand.”
Straightforward. Replace the label, “God” with “self empowerment.” We are fully embroiled in “the day of evil” but we have yet to realize that it’s not something we can bargain with. Either we destroy it, or it destroys us.
That’s my sermon for this Sunday (AM here)!
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