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At Least 32% of U.S. Mass Shooters Trained to Shoot by U.S. Military - 10 May 2023 filed by the editor - General, Features, International, United States

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Escalating Crisis in Ukraine Poses an Imminent Threat to World Peace       printable version
03 Jan 2022: posted by the editor - World News

U.S. Peace Council Statement
For weeks, the U.S. corporate media have been shrill in declaring that Russia, having positioned tens of thousands of Russian troops on the border, may be about to invade Ukraine. U.S. State Department spokesmen have been threatening Russia with punishing economic sanctions if there were an invasion. Daily, if not hourly, TV viewers are shown satellite images supposedly showing Russian troop concentrations on the Ukraine border, accompanied by unflattering photos of a scowling Vladimir Putin, depicted as the evil source of the new U.S.-Russia tensions.

The cold war with Russia, festering since 2014 and the U.S.-backed coup in Ukraine, may be potentially even more menacing than the new cold war with China. If the armed standoff between the Ukrainian military and the Russian-supported separatist forces in eastern Ukraine, becomes - by miscalculation or design - a conventional war between Russia and NATO, it could escalate into nuclear war.

US/NATO Expansion and Cold War Provocations

This is the second Ukraine crisis in a year. In March, the U.S. announced $125 million in military aid to Ukraine, including armed coastal patrol boats and radar equipment, with another $150 million package in June. This included radar, communications, and electronic warfare equipment for the Ukrainian Air Force. This latest package appears to include deploying U.S. training personnel to Ukrainian air bases. According to published reports, Turkey, another NATO state, is supplying Ukraine with the same drones it provided to Azerbaijan for its war with Armenia over the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh in 2020.

In April 2021, the anti-Russian government of Ukraine threatened an offensive against breakaway Russian-speaking eastern regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, and Russia assembled thousands of troops along Ukraine's eastern border. Since April 2021, NATO has been building up military pressure on Russia in the region.

Summer 2021 saw 30,000 troops take part in Operation Defender Europe 2021, a mammoth set of U.S.-led military exercises from the Baltic to the Black Sea, while last month the U.S. staged simulation bombing raids within 12 miles of Russian airspace. According to NATO itself, its warplanes confronted Russian aircraft 290 times in 2021, most of the time along Russia's western borders. It means nearly 80 percent of NATO's 370 flight missions this year involved confrontations with the Russian air force.

On Dec 7, 2021, Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland testified to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that the U.S. government has given $2.4 billion to Ukraine since 2014 "in security assistance," which included $450 million that was given in 2021 alone. She reportedly tried to reassure Moscow that the U.S. and NATO were still committed to the 2014-2015 Minsk Accords, which included a ban on offensive military operations and a promise of greater autonomy for Donetsk and Luhansk within Ukraine. But her assurances were undone by Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin when he met with Ukraine's President Zelensky in Kiev in October, reiterating U.S. support for Ukraine's future membership in NATO, promising further military support and blaming Russia for "perpetuating the war in Eastern Ukraine."

The Russian Proposals

Russian diplomats are well justified in warning that current U.S./NATO policy in Ukraine risks crossing Russia's security "red lines" and facts on the ground support their concerns:

● Consider the fact that every U.S. and NATO promise to keep NATO away from Russian borders has been broken for thirty years.

● Consider the fact that since 1990, NATO - which ought not to exist since its antagonist, the Warsaw Pact, went out of existence in 1991 - has moved inexorably eastward. In 1990, with German reunification and the annexation of the GDR, all of Germany became part of NATO. In 1999 the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland joined NATO. In 2004 Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania (all former Soviet Republics), Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia joined NATO. In 2009 Albania and Croatia joined NATO. In 2017 Montenegro joined NATO. In 2020 North Macedonia joined NATO.

● The incorporation of Ukraine into NATO would move NATO weapons and troops even closer to the heartland of Russia. This is to say nothing of the fact that, within living memory, the Russian people suffered invasion from the West. In 1941-45 Hitler's armies, 4 million strong, devastated the country in a genocidal war that took some 27 million lives.

In his year-end press conference on December 23rd, Mr. Putin stressed that "Further movement of NATO eastward is unacceptable. They are on the threshold of our house. Is it an excessive demand - no more attack weapons systems near our home? Is there something unusual about this?" One need not be an unqualified admirer of the politics of Vladimir Putin to acknowledge that the Russian leader has legitimate security concerns.

In mid-December, Russia took a diplomatic initiative and presented a list of security proposals to the United States. According to the Wall Street Journal:

The proposals handed to the U.S. and published by Russia's Foreign Ministry include a promise for each side to refrain from carrying out activities affecting each other's security, preventing the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's expansion further eastward to include Ukraine, and abandoning any NATO military activities in all of Eastern Europe, Transcaucasia and Central Asia.

"It is fundamentally important for us that the guarantees of Russian security are put on paper and as legally binding as possible," Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov told reporters Friday. "There is no other option, since a characteristic feature of the current stage of relations between Russia and the collective West is a complete lack of trust."

The proposals also call for no deployment of additional NATO troops and weapons outside the countries in which they were stationed before any Eastern bloc nations joined the alliance in May 1997, unless both sides agree. Each side should refrain from deploying intermediate and shorter-range missiles where they can hit the territory of the other side, and not use the territory of another state to carry out an armed attack against the other. Among Russian proposals were also an agreement for both sides to regularly exchange information about military exercises and refrain from conducting military exercises and other actions with more than a brigade in the agreed border zone.

The new Russian proposals are a realistic basis for beginning negotiations. So are the Minsk II Accords (2015) agreed to by France, Germany, Russia and Ukraine and endorsed unanimously by the UN Security Council, including the United States. The Accords provided for demilitarization of eastern Ukraine, restoration of Ukrainian sovereignty over the eastern regions, and full autonomy for the Donbas region. Despite occasional lip service, they have been largely ignored by the U.S. and NATO.

It is welcome that the U.S. has agreed to talks in Geneva on January 10, 2022 on the new Russian proposals for legally binding security guarantees. It is also welcome that on December 30, 2021 President Biden had another phone conversation with President Putin. But the U.S. has already rejected several of the Russian security demands, including one that both countries commit to not stationing nuclear weapons outside of their own territory. And there are signs that the Russian side is already skeptical of U.S. good faith. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has stated, "It is important that our proposals aren't wound up in endless discussions, which the West is famous for."

Despite these diplomatic efforts, powerful institutional and economic forces in the U.S. - the military industrial complex, Lockheed-Martin, Boeing, Raytheon Technologies, General Dynamics, Northrop Grumman, and others - are eager for a new cold war with Russia, which would provide them with boundless opportunities for profitable arms contracts. "The U.S. military-industrial complex needs enemies like human lungs need oxygen. When there are no enemies, they must be invented," an astute writer observed recently.

The demonization of Vladimir Putin and Russia by the U.S. media is an integral part of this policy of inventing imaginary enemies, as it has been done to a long list of foreign leaders and nations whose attempts to pursue an independent foreign policy, defying the dictates of Washington, have brought down on their heads the wrath of the Empire. Sadly, given the silence of all but a few peace organizations, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that such demonization has had an effect not only on the U.S. public attitudes, but also on at least a section of the U.S. peace movement, leading to an unwillingness by some to risk appearing pro-Putin. But the real question here is not that of being pro- or anti-Putin; it is a question of addressing the real causes of the escalating conflict with Russia: U.S./NATO expansion and cold war provocations.

The U.S. Peace Movement Must Act Before it is Too Late

To counter those permanent powerful forces will take counterpressure. The U.S. peace movement should reject demonization of Russian leaders. We must act urgently to push for immediate de-escalation of this NATO-created dangerous crisis. We must vehemently demand that:

● The Minsk II agreement serves as a framework for a non-violent, diplomatic solution to the crisis that also fully involves the United Nations Security Council.

● The U.S. and its allies cease unnecessary provocations including increased arms sales to Ukraine and suggested NATO membership.

● Potential threats to international peace be taken up by the United Nations and subjected to the provisions of the UN Charter and other elements of international law instead of arbitrary and illegal actions by any state or regional formation.

The world is faced with an emergency situation. With the U.S. insisting on expanding NATO to the Russian borders, the danger of a military confrontation is escalating each passing day. Given the fact that the U.S. and Russia are by far the two states with the most nuclear weapons, a conventional war between NATO and Russia could easily escalate into nuclear war. As the outbreak of the First World War demonstrated, leaders may not intend to go to war but can stumble into a situation where they are unable to turn back.

The U.S. peace movement should act together to put maximum pressure on the Biden Administration to change its dangerous belligerent policy against Russia. We must act urgently to push for immediate de-escalation of this NATO-created crisis before it is too late.

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Towards global energy sustainability — special report from Science Magazine

GLOBAL 2000 —
the report that was but wasn’t

    first published February 13, 2004 - Newsmedianews

 

“Measurements of greenhouse gases at Mace Head in Ireland have shown that baseline concentrations of many of the gases reached the highest background concentrations ever recorded in 2000, the latest year for fully validated data.” - from DEFRA study

Check it out ...It is interesting that on an average visit to the family GP you will be asked with something approaching a frown if you are a smoker. Chances are too that if you say yes you will again be the focus of a frown. And yet interestingly enough that same GP will probably leave his surgery, get into a car and quite uncaringly spew contaminants over every person on every street down which he or she drives.

And should they go on holiday, once again the chances are that they will fly, becoming part of an airborne culture that is inexorably killing off our planet. And this is not a doomsday gripe from some pot smoking target of the ignorant—it is the reality that will unavoidably affect your own life and the lives of our children.

This is the selfish, blinkered vision world we are developing. Regardless of all of our conscientious streams of blather, they remain just blather, disinfected and wiped by the conglomerates who are poisoning our planet for their own profits.

In the mid-70s, initiated by the US administration of the time under President Carter, what was to become the most comprehensive international scientific examination into global environment change ever conducted began. Under the auspices of the UN, almost every country of the world participated in what was to become the largest scientific gathering and analysis of environmental data in history.

The results of the investigation were duly published and contained a bleak forewarning of doom. This was not the ramblings of some hash-brained hippies writhing in grief over visions of the end of civilisation. It was the dedicated work of eminent and highly skilled and knowledgeable scientists, backed by the latest and most reliable techniques and equipment available.

In short, they knew what they were talking about. Within an astonishingly short space of time, the report had been buried. Tackling the issues raised was contrary to all industrial and national economies and profit ideologies. The short term greed driven vision took precedence over any sensible long term view of reality. And we are now reaping the results of that short-sighted greed.

 

The below graphs illustrates the dramatic rise in annual temperatures for the UK between 1700 and 2000. Note how the mean average, shown by the red line, soars from the late 80s on. (reprinted from DEFRA)

     
The graph on the right shows the annual global picture.
  

RIO
By the time of the UN Conference on the Environment held in Rio in 1992 and which led to the drafting of the Convention on Climate Change, the Global 2000 Report had been all but forgotten. The actions advocated at Rio, and later at the second Convention on Climate Change held in Kyoto, Japan in 1997, were equivalent to pissing against the wind.

The true impact of the realities and globally catastrophic dangers posed by the acceleration of global warming through fossil fuel use, industry and motorisation failed to be grasped, despite their widespread knowledge. It is an astonishing view of a global civilisation willing to ignore its very survival in favour of personal wants.

A comprehensive search of the Internet fails to produce easy to find references to the Global 2000 report. Among the predictions it contained was the stark warning of instant catastrophe waiting in the wings as the southern and northern ice packs change in density. The current one degree ‘wobble’ of the earth about its axis is partly due to and is affected by the offset mass of the Antarctica ice pack. Should that fragile balance change, the wobble will not simply get worse or less—it will throw the whole kilter of the earth’s axial rotation off.

Chaos will result as the planet adopts and adjusts to the new axis of rotation. But before then, global flooding, instant ice ages and global weather mayhem will transform the surface of our world far beyond anything that even the most far fetched environmental horror movie has ever even tried to conceptualise. It will be the old age of global civilisation as we know it and the effects may well all but eradicate limbed life on this planet. Those are the harsh facts.

Some months ago scientists from the UK attempted to inform the US of the true realities of the dangers of global warming and climate change. It is a threat that far surpasses any threat posed by Al Qaeda or any terrorist group, they say—something that has held the US preoccupied since 9/11.

The efforts of the scientists, no matter how sincere, can be somewhat compared to teaching grandmother to suck eggs. Grandmother, in this case the United States, believed she already knew how to suck eggs so well that she simply put them all back in the cupboard and forgot all about them as unimportant.

It is quite likely that the new efforts to focus on the very real and very pressing dangers posed by global warming will be equally ignored and buried, just as was Global 2000.

And it may be that having prevaricated for so long, we have left it too late to tackle. We may well begin to be seeing the advent of the collapse of civilisation in as little as 15 years from now.

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Note added on August 9, 2005
In 1980, Dr. Gerald O. Barney directed the Global 2000 Report for President Carter. This was the first and only report by any national government on the economic, demographic, resource, and environmental future of the world. It sold over 1.5 million copies in 8 languages!

Now, in this new, updated Global 2000 Revisited: What Shall We Do?, Dr. Barney, Jane Blewett, and Kristen Barney have assembled new data on global trends -- and challenged the world to devote the 1990s and beyond to addressing the critical issues of the 21st century.
Read Global 2000 Revisited (pdf file)      web page

Related links:

www.meto.gov.uk/research/hadleycentre
www.defra.gov.uk/environment/climatechange/research/report02
www.earthscan.co.uk/asp/bookdetails.asp?key=1735
www.netlondon.com/news/1999-37/C0CFB2C0E7D41CC3802.html
www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99992315

Climate change - a result of increase in solar radiation?

Climate Change - The Extreme Conflict
At the age of seven I had a dream that I was consumed by a nuclear blast. I saw the distant explosion, the shockwave, felt the onrush of the searing heat and saw my bones through suddenly translucent skin, as if through X-ray eyes.
I knew exactly what happening in the dream, which was strange.
Strange, because when I was seven it was 1957. No movies had then been made showing nuclear explosions. We certainly didn't learn about them at school in those days, and it was not something I'd seen on television, in those days again only black and white, of course.
The dream had been in full vivid colour. And I was right there, and died in that searing blast.
In later years, a friend thought I may have somehow tuned in to the thoughts of someone who had been in the Hiroshima or Nagasaki blasts, but I doubt that somehow. Not its possibility, but that it was what had happened on this occasion.
There was an eerie perception that I was actually there, but had been transported to another and not too distant time. And it was, it seemed, time from the future and not the past. But then, what did happen in the past? Why are there such vacant holes in our known history? Why are there so many variations in global localised radiation levels? Why so many why's?
President Bush and Tony Blair have been spearheading a war against terrorism since 2001. They urge that that world must be protected from such destruction.
And yet, destruction through another major conflict looks increasingly likely as levels of hope sink.
And sinking they are, if we exercise honest appraisal. The turmoil in draught and poverty stricken countries wrenches at us, but does not wrench from hopelessness. We know we can change such poor circumstances for the better, if it does take a long, long time given existing trends.
Thus, hope survives.
Global warming and planetary chaos through nature gone wild is, however, beyond us. We cannot do anything to change it. We can do very, very little to protect ourselves against it other than try to prepare a path for our best chances of survival, and nothing at all to avoid it short of fleeing the planet. Climate change is natural, cosmos driven and not, as the alarmists mistakenly would have us believe, due to CO2 emissions. Such emissions have barely a perceptible effect. Being told to switch off appliances etc to ‘save energy’ and reduce CO2 emissions is like throwing ping pong balls at the moon in the stupid belief that they will shift the moon from its orbit. The eminent UK scientist Professor Stephen Hawking has advocated that if humanity is to survive it must begin looking to colonise other planets. The cycle of global pollution has simply progressed too far and the runaway train has left the tracks and is racing across the plain… But the reality is, we must look to ensure survival possibilities for future generations.
It is however the loss of true hope for the future that is perhaps one of the greater unseen dangers of our present time.
Hopelessness breeds several things in addition to resignation. It breeds despair and reduces the sense of identification. And the loss of identification leads to the loss of care.
It is that eroded sense of care that is most dangerous. In isolation, it can be countered. When it becomes a part of the herd mentality, chaos ensues.
Surely history has taught us that?
Modern communications have broadened public awareness many thousandfold over the course of the last 200 years. What might not have been known about outside of just one small locality of the world 200 years ago can now be known about almost across the entire planet in just a matter of hours.
The herd on the stampede.
Prayer might help. It sends out positive vibrations for hope. But it cannot defeat the inevitable. For that, we can only wait for a miracle.
 


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