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Hermit
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End Times for the American Empire
« on: 2009-08-07 23:18:26 » |
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http://www.smarterearth.org/?q=node/797
The above article from Slate may be useful for those attempting to examine end time/apocalyptic scenarios. I haven't placed it here as it would be a huge amount of work to convert the vast number of embedded links to BBS format.
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With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. - Steven Weinberg, 1999
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MoEnzyme
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Re:End Times for the American Empire
« Reply #1 on: 2009-08-08 01:42:23 » |
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I'd consider civil war quite a possibility. The imminent loss of white majority status combined with the first black president has really set the GOP into political self-destruct mode. Their collective behavior lately causes one wonder if they EVER want to win on a national level again. In my lifetime, I've never seen them crazier. While I might consider that with some glee, these people aren't just going away and they are only getting whiter and angrier. If they are obviously not planning on winning any more elections, then what are they doing? Well, they still have a lot of money, a lot of guns, and an enthusiastic pro-militia movement within their coalition who respond well to Christer rhetoric . . . so perhaps they are considering other options.
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MoEnzyme
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Re:End Times for the American Empire
« Reply #2 on: 2009-08-08 05:12:50 » |
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Exactly what I'm talking about. I excerpted a bit of it below. Its a much longer article and worth the read. -Mo
Is the U.S. on the Brink of Fascism?
By Sara Robinson, Campaign for America's Future. Posted August 7, 2009.
http://www.alternet.org/rights/141819/is_the_u.s._on_the_brink_of_fascism/?page=entire
>big snip<
Paxton wrote that succeeding at the second stage "depends on certain relatively precise conditions: the weakness of a liberal state, whose inadequacies condemn the nation to disorder, decline, or humiliation; and political deadlock because the Right, the heir to power but unable to continue to wield it alone, refuses to accept a growing Left as a legitimate governing partner." He further noted that Hitler and Mussolini both took power under these same circumstances: "deadlock of constitutional government (produced in part by the polarization that the fascists abetted); conservative leaders who felt threatened by the loss of their capacity to keep the population under control at a moment of massive popular mobilization; an advancing Left; and conservative leaders who refused to work with that Left and who felt unable to continue to govern against the Left without further reinforcement."
And more ominously: "The most important variables...are the conservative elites' willingness to work with the fascists (along with a reciprocal flexibility on the part of the fascist leaders) and the depth of the crisis that induces them to cooperate."
That description sounds eerily like the dire straits our Congressional Republicans find themselves in right now. Though the GOP has been humiliated, rejected, and reduced to rump status by a series of epic national catastrophes mostly of its own making, its leadership can't even imagine governing cooperatively with the newly mobilized and ascendant Democrats. Lacking legitimate routes back to power, their last hope is to invest the hardcore remainder of their base with an undeserved legitimacy, recruit them as shock troops, and overthrow American democracy by force. If they can't win elections or policy fights, they're more than willing to take it to the streets, and seize power by bullying Americans into silence and complicity.
When that unholy alliance is made, the third stage -- the transition to full-fledged government fascism -- begins.
The third stage: being there
All through the Bush years, progressive right-wing watchers refused to call it "fascism" because, though we kept looking, we never saw clear signs of a deliberate, committed institutional partnership forming between America's conservative elites and its emerging homegrown brownshirt horde. We caught tantalizing signs of brief flirtations -- passing political alliances, money passing hands, far-right moonbat talking points flying out of the mouths of "mainstream" conservative leaders. But it was all circumstantial, and fairly transitory. The two sides kept a discreet distance from each other, at least in public. What went on behind closed doors, we could only guess. They certainly didn't act like a married couple.
Now, the guessing game is over. We know beyond doubt that the Teabag movement was created out of whole cloth by astroturf groups like Dick Armey's FreedomWorks and Tim Phillips' Americans for Prosperity, with massive media help from FOX News. We see the Birther fracas -- the kind of urban myth-making that should have never made it out of the pages of the National Enquirer -- being openly ratified by Congressional Republicans. We've seen Armey's own professionally-produced field manual that carefully instructs conservative goon squads in the fine art of disrupting the democratic governing process -- and the film of public officials being terrorized and threatened to the point where some of them required armed escorts to leave the building. We've seen Republican House Minority Leader John Boehner applauding and promoting a video of the disruptions and looking forward to "a long, hot August for Democrats in Congress."
This is the sign we were waiting for -- the one that tells us that yes, kids: we are there now. America's conservative elites have openly thrown in with the country's legions of discontented far right thugs. They have explicitly deputized them and empowered them to act as their enforcement arm on America's streets, sanctioning the physical harassment and intimidation of workers, liberals, and public officials who won't do their political or economic bidding.
This is the catalyzing moment at which honest-to-Hitler fascism begins. It's also our very last chance to stop it.
>big snip<
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Fritz
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Re:End Times for the American Empire
« Reply #3 on: 2009-08-08 15:41:36 » |
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I'm just reading Margaret Macmillan's "The Uses and Abuses of History". It is from a lecture she gave and it fits right in with the grave message this thread is pointing out.
I do wonder whether there is a cohesive enough of a nation state left in the good old USA, to mount a 'Germanic' style fascist revival ?
Cheers
Wally
Her "Paris 1919" is also a must read
Source: The Uses and Abuses of History
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Hermit
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Re:End Times for the American Empire
« Reply #4 on: 2009-08-09 05:07:29 » |
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Fascism ...comprises a radical and authoritarian nationalist political ideology and a corporatist economic ideology. [Wikipedia]
The US is already far more fascist than either Germany or Italy in the 1930s.
Hermit
At a signal from the Principal the pupils, in ordered ranks, hands to the side, face the Flag. Another signal is given; every pupil gives the flag the military salute -- right hand lifted, palm downward, to a line with the forehead and close to it. Standing thus, all repeat together, slowly, “I pledge allegiance to my Flag and the Republic for which it stands; one Nation indivisible, with Liberty and Justice for all.” At the words, “to my Flag,” the right hand is extended gracefully, palm upward, toward the Flag, and remains in this gesture till the end of the affirmation; whereupon all hands immediately drop to the side.
From The Youth’s Companion, Francis Bellamy, 65 (1892): 446–447.
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With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. - Steven Weinberg, 1999
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Hermit
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Re:End Times for the American Empire
« Reply #5 on: 2009-08-26 11:25:58 » |
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Risk and Resilience in a Globalized Age: Containing Chaos
Source: World Politics Review
Credits: John Robb (Author)
Dated: 2009-09-17
John Robb is an entrepreneur, a former USAF pilot in special operations, and the author of "Brave New War." He has been cited as an expert analyst in newspapers such as the New York Times, the Economist, and the Wall Street Journal, and was named one of the "Best and Brightest" by Esquire magazine. He has lived, worked, and traveled extensively in Central/South America, Africa, Asia, and Europe. His Web site is Global Guerrillas.
In 1946, George Kennan keyed the famous "Long Telegram," which identified the Soviet Union as an enemy of the United States. In 1947, the original telegram was reworked and published in Foreign Policy magazine as "The Sources of Soviet Conduct." Together, these documents formed the codex for the U.S. Cold War strategy of containment, and thereby the basis of the eventual U.S. victory in that conflict. Here's what a "Kennan" might have written for the 21st century.
The Nature of the Threat Posed by Globalization
We are now engaged in a conflict that will dictate whether we succeed or fail in the 21st century. Our adversary in this conflict is, in short, the threat posed by globalization.
This threat is completely alien to our mode of thought. It is unlike previous threats we have faced since there isn't a single source of ideological opposition: no collective mind or body of thought to contest with, no single enemy that can be named with clarity across all venues. It is, instead, a systemic threat, one posed by the very function of a system we have created for our mutual benefit: a morally neutral, global supernetwork that spans all salient features of modern life, from communications to economics.
The threat posed by the emergence of this global supernetwork comes in three forms. Let's examine them in detail.
Extreme and Chaotic Behavior
News in the age of the global supernetwork is often startling. It features an endless procession of crushing financial panics, unexpected food shortages, sharp commodity price spikes, brazen terrorist attacks that have shut down major cities from New York to Sao Paulo to Mumbai, and much more. These extreme events form a pattern of behavior that should serve as an alarm. They are an indication that the system we have come to rely upon, the global supernetwork that connects us to each other and all manner of goods and services is entering a period of extreme turbulence, where we careen from crisis to crisis at an increasing rate and incremental severity. At worst, it may even be an indication of a looming catastrophic failure of indeterminable duration.
From the standpoint of systemic analysis, our global supernetwork is what is called a dynamically unstable system, or one so responsive and interconnected (i.e., tightly coupled), that it is prone to operating in an uncontrolled manner. That, unfortunately, is the way we made it. Through an organic growth process that emphasized business needs and economic efficiency, we have built a complex web of instantaneous communications, just-in-time computer systems, daily multi-trillion-dollar financial flows, and much more. Even more, we have geared up the system with extreme levels of debt and energy-use to reach the limits of potential performance.
All of this amped-up connectivity provides our global system with an ability to rapidly shift from task to task as the conditions warrant. However, it also makes the system prone to over-reaction and self-reinforcing feedback loops, such that even small changes in the right conditions can cause the system to careen to extreme behavior. Typically, we build systems like this only when we are sure we can control them. For example, high-performance aircraft are dynamically unstable systems. They are designed to want to maneuver, rather than fly straight and level. However, if they aren't precisely managed -- down to the millisecond -- by computerized control systems, they will quickly careen into uncontrolled maneuvers that generate forces exceeding the structural capacity of their airframe. In short, one of these planes will wind up a smoking crater if the computer system fails to control its operation for even a couple of seconds.
Bigger than the Nation-State and the International System
Unlike a high-performance aircraft, our global supernetwork doesn't truly have a control system that can mitigate its excesses. As we are learning, this supernetwork is so large, fast, and complex that it has exceeded the ability of nation-states or collections of nation-states to control it. Rather than being masters of globalization, nation-states have become mere participants, and minor ones at that, in a global system. For example, the notional value of privately held, outstanding financial derivatives is estimated to be over $450 trillion dollars, nearly 30 times the size of the U.S. economy.
Worse, the ongoing growth of the global supernetwork will weaken the traditional forms of national and international power that nation-states still exercise. Through an insidious process of expansive infiltration, made inexorable by the increases in networks' value as new nodes are added, nation-states are losing their ability to control anything.
They have lost control of their finances -- as demonstrated by California's failure to secure financing, and the increasing difficulty the U.S. has in raising new money -- and are in the process of flirting with insolvency as they try to prop up massive global financial systems. (Like Iceland, some nations have banking systems with obligations many times their gross domestic product.)
They have lost control of their borders: Massive waves of immigration swarm to wherever jobs exist -- from the U.S. to Spain, walls are being put up in a vain attempt to staunch the human flow -- and companies outsource domestic jobs to the lowest global bidder in a blink of an eye.
They have lost any meaningful control over their media and communications systems, as new forms of social media swarm and overwhelm traditional outlets like newspapers and TV.
The list goes on and on. Collectively this means that nation-states, as organizational systems, will be less able to effect change due to a shortage of tangible wealth and means of control.
Even decision-making will be harder. The speed of the supernetwork puts nation-states into hyper-competition, since it can create change at a rate that looks and feels very much like a zero-sum game. One nation's gain will appear to come at another's expense. At the international level, this means that nation-states will find it increasingly difficult to agree on anything other than minimalist rule sets. But from global warming to global trade to immigration flows, meaningful solutions will require the kinds of maximal rule sets that nation-states will have the most trouble agreeing on. This is also troublesome, since it means that any hope of creating a control system that can mitigate the excesses of the global supernetwork will also require expansive and intrusive regulation mechanisms.
The impact of the emergent supernetwork will also fragment nation-states' internal decision-making processes. It will turn traditionally cohesive nations into a plethora of competing interests and non-cooperative centers of gravity. New organizational networks -- made possible by new forms of connectivity -- will rapidly emerge, merge, and divide in a global competition for control of all sources of value and power. Every issue will launch contentious debate, every decision will be questioned, every leader will be attacked, etc. As a result, collective action that amasses a broad swathe of public and political support will be increasingly rare and short-lived.
The Parasites of the Global Supernetwork
The third and final threat posed by globalization will be the emergence of super-empowered groups of individuals that compete with the nation-state for money and power. These groups, typically small, leverage easily accessed functions of the supernetwork for their personal benefit at great expense to the collective good. These small networks span the gamut from "trusted insiders" in financial industry to guerrilla/terrorist groups.
Since the global supernetwork is a morally neutral system devoid of intent, it has no natural defense against predation from parasitic groups. Over the past few decades, parasitic groups have found it increasingly easy to access the supernetwork by spanning the gaps between nation-states. Further, by a process of evolution, they are becoming increasingly adept at finding and manipulating the vulnerable core features of the system to their own benefit. By accessing these central features, small parasitic groups can use the network's own internal dynamics to amplify their actions and thereby generate outsized results. In the financial industry, a newfound ability to access the sleepy U.S. mortgage markets allowed financial insiders to turn that market into a giant cash machine, generating billions in profits for themselves and their firms. In Nigeria, small groups of guerrillas (the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta, or MEND) have been able to target key parts of the country's foreign-operated oil system, causing the loss of a million barrels of oil production each day. (The rate of return, measured in the costs of the disruption divided by the cost of the actual attack, is in excess of a million to one).
Again, the list of small actions that have generated outsized results, thereby conferring extreme wealth or power to the perpetrators and excessive disruption in their wake, has been growing. It will only continue to do so. In practice, as a result of this trend, we will see an increasing number of financial panics, supply shortages (food/energy), and social breakdowns (due to social-network manipulation/disruption) as these self-referencing groups grow and proliferate.
Practical Deductions on a Policy Response
It's unlikely that we will see any reversal in the spread of the global supernetwork. To the contrary, it will continue to expand, complexify, and intensify. As a result, the nation-state as an organizational system will continue to weaken, shocks and disruptions will occur more often, and super-empowered oppositional groups/networks will organically proliferate. In sum, the only policy solution that could possibly work is one that attempts to limit the spread of chaos at the lowest possible cost.
Resilient Communities
The first step to a solution is to mitigate the impact of disruptive events on the population as a whole, whether the disruptions are the result of naturally occurring system malfunctions or malicious intent. Importantly, this solution must be nearly cost-free, both politically and financially, to an increasingly beleaguered nation-state. The only solution that fits this requirement is the development of self-sufficient, decentralized systems at the local level -- from economics to politics to food to energy to communications -- that can operate successfully even when the larger system breaks down. In short, our social and economic systems must become scale invariant.
Scale invariance simply means that the functions and characteristics of the whole are preserved within smaller subsets and clusters. So, when disruption breaks the supernetwork into smaller and disconnected clusters, each self-sufficient, scale-invariant cluster will still be viable as an autonomous entity. Further, once the crisis has passed, these small, viable clusters will then be able to reconnect in order to reconstitute the larger system relatively quickly. For those still grappling with the concept, think in terms of the popular movie, Terminator 2. In that particular installment of the series, Arnold Schwarzenegger -- playing a robust, robotic Terminator -- faces off against a superior, new model of robot, the liquid-metal T-1000. In contrast to Arnold's character, this robot is resilient due to scale invariance. When it is blown to bits, the parts are smart enough and mobile enough to reassemble themselves back into a functional T-1000.
To make resilience a reality, we will need to foster the establishment of systems that enable the local production of food, energy, products, and much more. Fortunately, societal and technological trends appear to be moving in this direction already. Social efforts to build resilient communities and great self-reliance, via gardens and solar power, have already gained traction in response to increasing uncertainty over the future. Local resilience movements are leveraging the same networks and technologies as superempowered parasitic actors to accelerate their local efforts.
On the technology front, more powerful and inexpensive technologies continue to emerge, driven forward by Moore's Law. These technologies span the gamut from social software that simplifies cooperation, to low-maintenance gardening techniques that replace grocery purchases, to easy-to-install solar and wind technologies that improve local energy production. Even the world of manufacturing is going local, with the advent of a likely transformative set of technologies that enables small machines to print products in three dimensions, based on designs shared over networks. Given the trends in place, very little that is produced today will be economically unviable at the local level within several decades.
Confronting Parasites
The second step towards a lasting solution to the threats posed by globalization is to deal coherently with self-dealing groups/networks that operate as parasites on the global supernetwork. Based on previous and projected performance, it is likely that these groups aren't existential threats in and of themselves. Instead, they are persistent pests that will in aggregate severely damage our viability and progress over the long term. So, how do we deal with them effectively?
It's important to realize that the threat of overwhelming force, both military and legal, is unlikely to be effective against parasitic groups, while making us vulnerable to potential misuse of the resulting coercive apparatus. The organizational structures of these networks are too amorphous/fluid to parse, and it's extremely hard to distinguish friend from foe when seeking out network members. Worse, in many cases, the application of overwhelming force merely increases the level of opposition adopted by newly generated groups.
So, what do we do? The best strategies may be indirect approaches: methods tailored to diminishing the opposition by reducing opportunities for amplified exploitation, creating internal dissension and infighting, and extremely targeted removal of malicious actors. All of these approaches require only minimal commitments of treasure, effort, and political capital.
Therefore, one approach to dealing with parasites is to simplify the systems we use to create few opportunities for centralized exploitation. Simply put, "Reduce complexity and increase transparency" should be our mantra. For example, in the financial world, this means reducing most aspects of financial management to utility status. Banks would simply hold and move money (ATMs for example) and nothing else, creating little opportunity for predatory financial groups intent on exploitation.
Another approach requires that we de-escalate conflicts with non-state groups and radically reduce the expenses associated with fighting them. De-escalation reduces group growth and makes them vulnerable to exploitation. Further, long-term success in this conflict means not impoverishing ourselves with massive bills for military forces we don't need. De-escalation makes it possible to co-opt predatory groups and entice them to fight among themselves -- by turning them into allies of convenience. For example, the use of "loyalist" militias against gangs in the slums of Sao Paulo or the Anbar "Awakening" effort in Iraq are examples of this approach.
In some few cases, it will be impossible to leave the actors involved intact. In those cases, tightly targeted efforts (i.e., special operations) to eliminate these malicious groups will be required. In all cases, these efforts will be careful, long-term operations carried out in a way that severely limits collateral damage to civilians. It's important to ensure that these missions are only reserved for the most dangerous of groups and don't result in mission creep to achieve more ambitious goals.
Delivering Benefits and Improving Fairness
The final step towards a lasting solution is to increase societal cohesion and to mitigate the allure of fragmentation, mirroring George Kennan's most important recommendation from his articles. Disruptions that result in societal and economic chaos occur most readily in societies where the health and vigor of a society has decayed. In other words, the social and economic system that the nation-state administers must be seen as fair and just, and it must deliver tangible results to the greatest number of people possible. Anything less than this and societal breakdown becomes extremely likely should disruption occur, since the allure of participation in oppositional groups, from black-market crime to guerrilla/terrorist groups, will outweigh outcomes available through participation in the status quo. In short, the nation-state will lose its legitimacy with large subsets of its population.
Here's an example of not delivering results: The incomes of the bottom four-fifths of Americans have fallen 10 percent, adjusted for inflation, over the last three decades, despite massive improvements in worker productivity. For an example of not being just and fair, we need not go far: Self-dealing financial elites defrauded markets and the government of trillions of dollars realized during the 2008 financial panic, and not one of them went to jail.
In order to retain legitimacy at a level that allows some freedom of action, the government must endeavor to deliver real economic progress to its constituents. That means that every policy should be slaved to increasing incomes in line with increases in worker productivity, and improving the long-term financial wealth of the greatest number. (The best way to measure the success of government efforts in this regard are increases in the median incomes of individuals.) One method of achieving this, already mentioned above, is to remove barriers to community resilience. Community resilience has the potential to substantially improve the incomes and quality of life for the greatest number by reducing end-user costs, creating jobs, and spurring massive leaps in innovation.
The greatest threat to achieving this outcome lies in the potential for parasitic interests to gain control of government function, since one of the quickest routes to illegitimacy is through the appearance of corruption. This unfortunate outcome was evident in the 2008 financial meltdown, as special interests proved capable of snaring trillions in subsidies from the public treasure for no apparent improvement in the lives of most citizens.
Final Thoughts
The solution-set for global instability doesn't fit traditional models of conflict. It doesn't involve vast armies or massive programs. Both of these approaches would not only be ineffectual against the problems that confront us, they would also bankrupt us in the process. Instead, a low-cost and least-effort approach is needed, one that makes it easier for people to create the structures necessary for local resilience and makes the systems we rely upon less prone to exploitation. If we achieve anything close to the plan detailed above, we will win this conflict with a more cohesive, wealthier, and happier society than we have ever experienced to date.
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With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. - Steven Weinberg, 1999
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Walter Watts
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Re:End Times for the American Empire
« Reply #6 on: 2009-08-27 01:32:41 » |
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Quote from: Hermit on 2009-08-26 11:25:58
<snip>
The threat posed by the emergence of this global supernetwork comes in three forms. Let's examine them in detail.
Extreme and Chaotic Behavior
News in the age of the global supernetwork is often startling. It features an endless procession of crushing financial panics, unexpected food shortages, sharp commodity price spikes, brazen terrorist attacks that have shut down major cities from New York to Sao Paulo to Mumbai, and much more. These extreme events form a pattern of behavior that should serve as an alarm. They are an indication that the system we have come to rely upon, the global supernetwork that connects us to each other and all manner of goods and services is entering a period of extreme turbulence, where we careen from crisis to crisis at an increasing rate and incremental severity. At worst, it may even be an indication of a looming catastrophic failure of indeterminable duration.
From the standpoint of systemic analysis, our global supernetwork is what is called a dynamically unstable system, or one so responsive and interconnected (i.e., tightly coupled), that it is prone to operating in an uncontrolled manner. That, unfortunately, is the way we made it. Through an organic growth process that emphasized business needs and economic efficiency, we have built a complex web of instantaneous communications, just-in-time computer systems, daily multi-trillion-dollar financial flows, and much more. Even more, we have geared up the system with extreme levels of debt and energy-use to reach the limits of potential performance.
All of this amped-up connectivity provides our global system with an ability to rapidly shift from task to task as the conditions warrant. However, it also makes the system prone to over-reaction and self-reinforcing feedback loops, such that even small changes in the right conditions can cause the system to careen to extreme behavior. Typically, we build systems like this only when we are sure we can control them. For example, high-performance aircraft are dynamically unstable systems. They are designed to want to maneuver, rather than fly straight and level. However, if they aren't precisely managed -- down to the millisecond -- by computerized control systems, they will quickly careen into uncontrolled maneuvers that generate forces exceeding the structural capacity of their airframe. In short, one of these planes will wind up a smoking crater if the computer system fails to control its operation for even a couple of seconds.
Bigger than the Nation-State and the International System
Unlike a high-performance aircraft, our global supernetwork doesn't truly have a control system that can mitigate its excesses. As we are learning, this supernetwork is so large, fast, and complex that it has exceeded the ability of nation-states or collections of nation-states to control it. Rather than being masters of globalization, nation-states have become mere participants, and minor ones at that, in a global system. For example, the notional value of privately held, outstanding financial derivatives is estimated to be over $450 trillion dollars, nearly 30 times the size of the U.S. economy.
Worse, the ongoing growth of the global supernetwork will weaken the traditional forms of national and international power that nation-states still exercise. Through an insidious process of expansive infiltration, made inexorable by the increases in networks' value as new nodes are added, nation-states are losing their ability to control anything.
<snip>
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Great post Hermit.
This took my mind back to Stuart Kauffman's "At Home in the Universe" and its big brother "Origins of Order".
Remember the Boolean lightbulb networks that would blink randomly if K (number of connections each bulb had with the network) was optimal.
However, make K too large, and "tiny attractors" would overwhelm the network, gradually forcing the bulbs to twinkle more in the chaotic regimes and less in the ordered regimes, eventually locking the whole fucking light-show into a static and frozen state that became immune to control.
Or something like that. (it's been eight or nine years since I read it) 
Walter
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Walter Watts
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Hermit
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Re:End Times for the American Empire
« Reply #7 on: 2009-08-27 04:43:06 » |
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Noticed in Walter's quote, "outstanding financial derivatives is estimated to be over $450 trillion dollars" and remembered I had meant to add a note to the effect that this now exceeds 600 Trillion Dollars, being spun ever faster to justify the obscene payments the financial players are awarding themselves for successfully creating capital out of nothing in an unmonitored climate of excess on the back of a decaying culture. Terrifying.
Kindest Regards
Hermit&Co
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With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. - Steven Weinberg, 1999
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Walter Watts
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Re:End Times for the American Empire
« Reply #8 on: 2009-08-27 11:37:21 » |
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Quote from: Hermit on 2009-08-27 04:43:06
Noticed in Walter's quote, "outstanding financial derivatives is estimated to be over $450 trillion dollars" and remembered I had meant to add a note to the effect that this now exceeds 600 Trillion Dollars, being spun ever faster to justify the obscene payments the financial players are awarding themselves for successfully creating capital out of nothing in an unmonitored climate of excess on the back of a decaying culture. Terrifying.
Kindest Regards
Hermit&Co
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Terrifying indeed old friend.
Love to you and yours,
Walter&LLC
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Walter Watts
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Hermit
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Re:End Times for the American Empire
« Reply #9 on: 2009-09-04 04:01:11 » |
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2012: Will it be the end of the world as we know it?
Will the world end in 2012 as some believe the calendar of the ancient Maya predicts? Here we examine the fact and the fiction behind the most popular doomsday scenarios.
[ Hermit : I wrote a commentary on this which seems to have been lost. Suffice to say that most of the suggestions are silly and the "Likelihoods" fanciful although it should be noted that some are both worse and much more likely than predicted and nothing prevents more than one from hitting simultaneously and triggering an effect multiplier. ]
Source: The Telegraph
Authors: Not credited (As you will see below, it is quite understandable that nobody with a reputation to lose would have involved themselves in the likelihood calculations shown here.)
Dated: 2009-09-03
A forthcoming film by Roland Emmerich, the director behind the disaster movies Independence Day and The Day After Tomorrow, is renewing interest in predictions of a major calamity to strike the Earth on December 21, 2012. The film - 2012 - focuses on a series of disasters which force man to flee the planet in order to survive.
Evidence for the 2012 prediction is... er... patchy although it does centre upon the end of the what is known as the long run of the Mayan calendar. Here we assess the likely and unlikely risks that may face the Earth on or around the winter solstice three years from now.
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1. Alien invasion/government confirmation of extraterrestrial contact
Where do you start? Alien invasion has been the subject of great works of fiction since HG Wells published War of the Worlds in 1898. Fear of such an attack, be it from Mars, a species from outside our galaxy or beings from other dimensions, tends to wax and wane with the general state of anxiety on Earth - researchers have found that fear of attack by aliens tends to rise at times of heightened fear about more terrestrial threats. Believers cite increasing numbers of UFO sightings, the supposed crash of a disc at Roswell, New Mexico, in 1947 and several seemingly credible photographs and videos of strange craft in our skies as evidence that such a threat is increasing.
Evidence: Photographs, videos, official releases that prove how governments around the world have monitored UFO activity for more than 50 years, stories by abductees... the list goes on and on. But do any of these suggest that we're about to be taken over by a race of grey humanoids with large black eyes at any time in the future, let alone in 2012?
Likelihood: 0.1/10 [ Hermit : Zero evidence for this. As such it is impossible to make a meaningful prediction about it. ]
2. Nibiru/Planet X/Wormwood
Thousands of web forums and sites propose the belief that sometime in the early years of the 21st century, a previously undiscovered planet will collide with or pass very close to the Earth destroying civilisation or causing a massive planetary cataclysm. Nibiru was invented in the late 1960s by Zechariah Sitchin in a book. According to Sitchin, Nibiru is a planet in our solar system which follows an erratic orbit bringing it into the inner system every 3,700 years. But Sitchin never suggested that it would threaten the Earth.
Some even suggest that Nibiru is a brown dwarf sister to our own sun and will first be seen towards the end of this year.
Evidence: Very little. Some point to the 2005 announcement by Nasa that a 10th planet had been discovered on the outer fringes of our solar system and many think that it will pass close to the Earth in 2012. But this 10th planet is most certainly not moving into the inner solar system.
Likelihood: 0.2/10 [ Hermit : Zero evidence for this. If another planet exists, it has no excuse for a massively elliptical orbit, and would almost certainly have impacted on something else and knocked itself to bits in the last 6 billion years. ]
3. Solar catastrophe
This is one of the few doomsday scenarios connected with the end of the Mayan calendar that may actually be based on some science. In this scenario a vast solar flare or expulsion of gases from the sun in December 2012 will engulf the Earth wreaking havoc upon mankind and the planet's ecosystems. There is no evidence that such catastrophic events happened in the past.
Evidence: There may be some correlation between the observed 11-year solar cycle and the time cycles seen in the Mayan calendar although this evidence is rather weak. But whilst a solar flare from the sun could cause problems such as satellite damage and injury to unprotected astronauts and blackouts, the flare itself would not be powerful enough to destroy Earth, certainly not in 2012. In the far future, when the sun runs out of fuel, most scientists accept that it will swell into a red giant and engulf the Earth. But rather than happening in 2012, this event will happen no sooner than five billion years from now.
Likelihood: 0.3/10 [ Hermit : Zero evidence for the Mayans predicting this. Plenty of solid evidence that we are overdue for a massive geomagnetic anomoly - including multiple periods with the longest periods of no sunspot activity since sunspot recordings began in the 1600s. ]
4. Magnetic pole shift
A large body of doomsday believers think that a dramatic reversal of Earth's magnetic poles is imminent and that it will trigger a reversal of the planet's rotation and the subsequent catastrophic events. They point to evidence of pole shifts in Earth's past and claim that these reversals can be calculated by studying sunspots or magnetic field theory. Many believe that the Mayans and the ancient Egyptians discovered evidence of pole reversal events in the future and that the secrets have been covered up by today's governments.
Evidence: Some. Work by scientists at Princeton University and Paul Sabatier University in Toulouse, France, indicates that Earth did rebalance itself 800 million years ago. They studied magnetic minerals in sedimentary rocks in Norway and found that the north pole shifted by more than 50 degrees (a quarter the distance from pole to pole, in effect) in under 20 million years. Other scientists have also discovered that seasonal movements in both polar regions do effect the positioning of the poles. But where the scientists and the "doomers" differ greatly is over the timescale of any potential pole shift - while the apocalyptic visionaries believe such a switch could happen in a very short time scale, geologists think that it would happen over a period of one million years.
Likelihood: 1/10 [ Hermit : As it says, if this happens it will be very slow, certainly hundreds and likely thousands of years in duration, and probably have a very limited effect on the biosphere. So the estimation here is indubitably off. ]
5. Supervolcano
A supervolcanic eruption would be larger than any volcanic eruption in man's history and would happen when magma rose into the Earth's crust but would be unable to break through. The resulting build in pressure would mean that at some point a huge area of land would be devastated as the magma blasted skyward. Such an event would, it is postulated, blast millions of tons of debris and poisonous gases into the atmosphere, and could either plunge the world into a so-called nuclear winter triggering an ice age or, at worst, wipe out life in parts or all of the planet.
Evidence: Most of the concern about 2012 and supervolanoes centres on the so-called super-caldera underneath Yellowstone Park in the United States. Satellite images have, in the last few years, shown changes in the the movement of molten rock 10 miles under the surface. Wayne Thatcher of the US Geological Survey told Nature magazine: "We know now how mobile and restless the Yellowstone caldera actually is." Nobody actually knows whether the caldera will blow or, if it does, when such an event could take place.
Likelihood: 1/10 [ Hermit : This is certainly possible. However the most recent supervolcano (Lake Taupo VEI  was 26,500 years ago and the prior one (Lake Toba) was at around 75 kYBP. So the probability is a tiny fraction of that given here. ]
6. World War III
Almost as soon as the Second World War in 1945 ended and with a standoff between the Western Allies and the Eastern bloc in place through the middle of Europe, there was rising anxiety that the world would be consumed by another epic conflict. When Russia exploded its first atomic bomb just two years later, a nuclear arms race between East and West began. The invention of hydrogen (thermonuclear) devices only accelerated the race which peaked in 1962 during the Cuban Missile Crisis when the world came closest to an all-out nuclear exchange between the United States and the Soviet Union. The build-up of weapons continued throughout the 1970s and 1980s but a dedicated hotline between the Kremlin and the White House and some arms control treaties reduced the threat of an accidental nuclear war. The threat diminished in the 1990s with the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Evidence: Today, the fears of a nuclear exchange centre on the rising power of China and the American response and the possibility of wars between India and Pakistan or North and South Korea escalating into global conflicts.
Likelihood: 1.5/10 [ Hermit : A war to reduce populations by between 6 and 10 to 1 has been planned for nearly 35 years, and as this will be triggered by signs of major resource competition it is all but certain to occur in the next 10 years unless we come up with viable alternatives. Of all the scenarios this is the most likely. It should be noted that the USA has such a massive advantage over all and any opponents that it will indubitably establish the extent, scale and duration of any war in which it participates.]
7. Mass casualty terrorism
Since September 11, 2001 and the deaths of nearly 3,000 people in New York and Washington DC there have been fears about al Qaeda or another terrorist network acquiring weapons of mass destruction and devastating a major western city or releasing a chemical or biological attack. Statements by governments about the risk of such an attack have done little to lessen the anxiety with both the British and American administrations raising the spectre of a stray nuclear weapon being detonated in a major city. Dick Cheney, the former US vice president, is reported to have stated that he is haunted by thoughts of a mushroom cloud rising over an American downtown skyline. Many conspiracy theories, particularly those who believe that the 9/11 attacks were actually planned and executed by rogue elements in the US administration, believe that there will be a so-called "false flag" nuclear attack to divert attention from the west's woes and usher in an era of martial law and totalitarian government.
Evidence: Osama bin Laden famously declared a few years ago that his organisation has several nuclear devices but they were only a "deterrent". There has been some concern about several "loose" nukes from the former Soviet Union, particularly six so-called "suitcase" nukes. But there is no evidence that al Qaeda or anybody else holds nuclear weapons and several attempts by terrorists in the UK to make nerve or biological agents have proved inept failures. Nevertheless, concern now centres upon the instability of the Pakistan regime - a nuclear-equipped country - and fears that al Qaeda or a Taliban group could topple the government and get its hands on nuclear weapons.
Likelihood: 2/10 [ Hermit : No terrorist group has the technical competence to deliver a credible (explosive) nuclear threat to anyone. If the US really were worried about Pakistan, and the instability the USA has created there, they could simply ignore objections from regional players and convert Pakistan's weapons, along with the necessary areas in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, to glass. End of threat.]
8. Peak oil
The reduction of global oil stocks is, of course a reality, with the world's economies consuming - financial collapses excepted - ever-increasing amounts of the black gold. But peak oil theory centres around supply and demand and postulates that, at some point, demand will outstrip supply. When is this likely to happen? Some believe that it already has while others think that it is likely to happen some time between now and 2020. A number of doomer sites link peak oil with the end of the Mayan calendar in 2012. Demand for oil outstripping supply would have huge consequences around the world given that most economies are powered by oil, agriculture is completely dependent upon it for fertilisers and pesticides and the plastics industry is based on oil extraction. A collapse in social order following a peak in oil production is, therefore, something to be taken seriously.
Evidence: Peak oil is a near certainty but two questions remain: when will it happen and will the world have developed alternative sources of fuel in time? M. King Hubbert created the theory behind peak oil in 1956 to accurately predict that United States oil production would peak between 1965 and 1970. The theory has successfully predicted the decline from oil fields and regions subsequently. Optimistic observers do not believe that peak oil will occur before 2020 but admissions by some oil companies that they have overstated the reserves held underground have raised fears that we are at or may already have passed the peak. A decline in investment in new oil fields and plant during the global recession has only served to emphasise our total dependence upon a finite resource.
Likelihood: 4/10 [ Hermit : The US military (and many economic modellers) consider that peak oil is already passed. Competition is down because the global economy has collapsed. When it recovers, the cost of oil will soar, in part because exploration, development and critically required infrastructure upgrades have been put off while existing stocks have continued to be depleted. Models suggest that China's oil demand will exceed that of the USA by 2014, so competition for access to oil is definitely possible inside the period covered by these forecasts. I put the likelihood far higher than this estimate. ]
9. Bee colony collapse
Thirty-six per cent of the commercial beehives in the US were lost to colony colapse disorder [CCD] in the winter of 2008. The syndrome, in which all of the worker bees in a colony die off suddenly, leaving nothing but a solitary queen wandering alone on empty frames, has spread to several countries in Europe already including France, Belgium, Italy, Portugal and Spain. Several causes of the disease have been suggested, including the almost universally present varroa mite, certain pesticides, Israeli acute paralysis virus, climate change and mobile phone broadcasts, but none have yet been proved to be the culprit. No cure has been found either, and as cases are reported in new countries the likelihood of a global pandemic leading to the extinction of the honeybee becomes a real possibility.
Evidence: Apart from the loss of the honey crop, without the honeybee several crops key to human life would be wiped out, including the soya bean, cotton, brassicas, several kinds of nut including brazil nuts and almonds, grapes, apples and sunflowers, the source of a large proportion of the world's vegetable oil. Thirty per cent of the world's food is directly traceable to the action of bees. If they became extinct severe shortages, starvation, violence and riots would surely follow.
Likelihood: 7/10 [ Hermit : The cause is actually known and has been for 2 years. It is a combination of two viruses, one Israeli, one Australian. This is a viable threat. ]
10. Environmental collapse
Today's mantra is climate change or man-made global warming. In previous decades pollution, soil depletion, the destruction of the ozone layer and an imminent ice age were the ecological catastrophes that faced us. There is, of course, no doubt that man's impact upon his environment is getting worse although a large body of opinion believes that global warming is a liberal conspiracy and that the world has actually been cooling over the last decade. A total environmental collapse brought about by runaway warming, toxic poisoning of the seas of parts of the inhabited areas of the world or a tipping point with some of the most crucial species (see Bee colony collapse above) would have a huge impact upon civilisation and could render parts of the world near uninhabitable.
Evidence: Few scientists dispute that the global average temperature has been rising for at least a century. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 2001 report concluded that the average surface temperature of the Earth had risen by 0.6C during the 20th century. The IPCC found that, in terms of the global average temperature, the 1990s were very likely (a 90-99% chance) to have been the warmest decade since records began in 1861, and that 1998 was the warmest year.
Likelihood: 7/10 [ Hermit : Again, this is happening. Water to drink and for agriculture is becoming a critical resource in those areas where it is not already critical. I think that it is likely to be a very visible problem, even in the USA, by 2012. ]
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With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. - Steven Weinberg, 1999
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