Friday, January 4, 2019

Unraveling of Fragile Alliances, Including Liberal Democracy



Not too long ago Michael Klare published an essay describing the new cold war as much more frightening than the old, in significant part because of the multiplicity of forces of power: here.

Symptoms of the evolving and energized disorder can be found in fraying international alliances, as illustrated by escalating tensions between Japan and South Korea:
Makino, Y. (2019, January 4). Seoul releases video to counter MSDF assertion about radar lock. The Asahi Shimbun, http://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/AJ201901040050.html

SEOUL--The South Korean government on Jan. 4 returned fire in releasing a video that it says sets the record straight on an escalating disagreement over an encounter between its ship and a Japanese patrol aircraft in December.

At a news conference held the same day as the video release, a spokesperson for the South Korean Defense Ministry said, "Japan transmitted distorted facts to the world by unilaterally releasing video images in Japanese and English. This release was done with the objective of providing more accurate facts."
The idea that the US Imperium is characterized by a reign of disorder as a result of indirect and outsourced administration is not new, but President Trump has really demonstrated how disorder can circulate internally as well as externally.

Disorder external and internal to the imperium are not good for its longevity and fuel authoritarianism as liberalism cedes to fascism.

However, the regimes of government imposed by the international powers waiting in the wings and encouraging the disorder could be far worse since the dominant ones are highly authoritarian culturally and politically.

Can liberalism reform itself before it implodes?

At stake is the dream of liberal democracy.

But the challenges of political reform in a context of environmental chaos are daunting.









7 comments:

  1. There is far more displacement and dispossession than most want to face, in both rural and urban areas.

    There are a couple million and, probably more with no paychecks this last month. More, if you if you count contractors and multiplier effects.
    Families who just did Christmas and have no paycheck on the horizon. There will be no food assistance in a month for the multitude of impoverished.

    There are all the kids in Johnson County Indiana with cancer from the Chemical plume. No results yet on the content of the ash exposure from the Woolsey-Santa Susana fires, though many died and were displaced there. Multiple environmental and climate catastrophes 2017-2018. Ongoing radioactive fire in the dump by st Louis.

    Less than zero leadership

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    1. So Majia. How does Jay Cullen, know for sure, that accumulated and accumulating radionuclides in the arctic, and radioactive Krypton gas in the
      Atmosphere, are not affecting climate?

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    2. Or at least having an effect in the arctic? There is accumulated cesium137 in lichens in Scandinavia that reindeer consume. There is currently a decline in the number of reindeer in Scandinavia and the arctic. Cullen Cherry Picks for his sampling from fukushima

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    3. I think that by disproportionately controlling the media conversation, certain "scientists" and journalists effectively silence certain findings and scientific concerns.

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    4. The Russians have dumped a hundred thousand tons of nuclear waste, into the arctic since 1946.

      That includes nuclear submarines at Kira. That includes 30 thousand or, more tons of hilevel nuclear waste.

      There is also the hilevel , sellafield-like nuclear waste dump, in the Baltic, created by the Russians.

      Is it any wonder there is a reindeer and polar killoff going on in the arctic?

      The Bristish have dumped nuclear waste into the arctic. America abandoned a nuclear power plant in Greenland with a large amount of nuclear waste, in the same place.

      That American military installation-nuclear plant and waste, was exposed a couple of years ago, when all the snow and ice melted off it in Greenland.

      A great deal of that waste went and is going into the arctic ocean. There is an arctic sea current that runs by fulushima. It is transporting highly irradiated water, from Fulushima into the arctic ocean. How come no one ever says anything about these things?
      https://earthfirstjournal.org/newswire/2012/08/30/russia-dumped-17-nuclear-reactors-and-tons-of-waste-in-the-arctic/

      https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_disposal_of_radioactive_waste

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  2. One activity that all human beings can not resist is foretelling the future. And apocalypses are always there waiting to exploit fears and terrors. Two horrifying futures that get too little attention are the next large asteroid to impact the earth and create unimaginable changes; and global cooling bringing severe food shortages. Global cooling is worse than global warming.

    Meanwhile back at the Congress we have some swearings in and just some swearing. And I wonder if Nancy Pelosi's main goal is to emasculate Donald Trump?

    I really do not think Japan and Korea will ever go to war against each other as it would profit neither. The world is safer now than during the authentic Cold War.

    Apart from the two apocalypses I mentioned above all the other horrifying possibilities can be handled by concerted human action.

    Liberal democracy. Better government in the USA would entail better people. How to get better people? For a start we might try avoiding so much hyperbole. Rep Hank Johnson, the Congress person who worried that more soldiers on Guam would cause it to capsize, considers Trump a Hitler. Probably not really though.

    Each generation sees the end of the world approaching, and then it dies largely of natural causes.

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  3. Yellowstone Massive New Magma Pocket Discovered Can Fill Grand Canyon 11 Times Over!
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fdOnUd6VGe8

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