Who Would Want To Destroy The World? More People Than You Might Think

As well as megalomaniac tyrants woth access to weapons of mass destruction, mad scientists busy genetically modifying viruses and bacteria in order to weaponise the air we breathe and the water we drink, the corporate greed that drives companies to fill our food and environment with toxic shite in their quest for bigger profits, we have social justice warriors calling for the genocide of ethnic Europeans (having completely failed to notice that they, themselves, are mostly of European extraction, and eco – warriors claiming that the only way ro “save the planet” is through the extinction of humanity. Obviously these somewhat less than bright sparks have never heard that old riddle that goes, 2if a tree falls in the forest and there is nobody around to hear it does it make a sound. Here’s one p-o-v on that, which suggests that vibrations in the air as would be caused by a tree hitting the ground cannot be called a sound unless they collide with the eardrum of a creature that knows what a sound is.

So who wants to destry humanity and do they have a supportable argument?

Who Wants To Destroy The World

More people than you might expect — and new technologies might give them the power to do it

Authored by Phil Torres, Originally published at Medium.com

Photo: NurPhoto/Getty

For most of human history, the question of who would want to destroy the world didn’t much matter. The reason, of course, was that that no individual or group of humans could demolish civilization or cause our extinction. Our ancestors just didn’t have the tools: no amount of spears, arrows, swords, or catapults would have enabled them — even the most bloodthirsty and misanthropic — to have inflicted harm in every corner of the world.

This changed with the invention of the atomic bomb. While scholars often identify 1945 as the year that human self-annihilation became possible, a more accurate date is 1948 or 1949, since this is when the United States stockpiled enough nuclear weapons (about 100) to have initiated a hemisphere-spanning “nuclear winter.” (See this work in progress for why I’m focusing on 100 nuclear weapons as a threshold.) A nuclear winter occurs when soot from burning cities significantly reduces the amount of sunlight reaching Earth’s surface for a period of months or years, thereby causing temperatures to plummet and famines to ensue. Quite unsettlingly, it wasn’t until the 1980s — decades after we had enough nukes to blot out the sun — that the nuclear winter phenomenon was first identified, although lingering questions remain even today.

Thanks to new technologies, nonstate actors such as terrorist groups and lone wolves are getting in on the action, too, and might be more willing than national governments to push the proverbial doomsday button.

The U.S. monopoly on world-ending power didn’t last long: by 1953, the Soviet Union had likewise expanded to 100 weapons. Now there were two nations on Earth that could obliterate civilization. But again, this didn’t last very long. The United Kingdom joined the club of potential world-enders around 1962, China around 1971, and France around 1973, with Israel, Pakistan, and India becoming members of this club in the 2010s. Hence, in less than a century, the world went from containing zero actors capable of unilaterally destroying the world to eight.

This is a scary situation. Unfortunately, it’s getting worse — much worse. The reason is that states are no longer the only players in the game. Thanks to new technologies, nonstate actors such as terrorist groups and lone wolves are getting in on the action, too, and they might be a lot more willing than national governments to push the proverbial doomsday button.

My own research suggests that the percentage of people who would push a doomsday button, if it were placed within finger’s reach, is fairly small, but the absolute number is unacceptably high. Even a quick Google search seems to affirm this. Consider the following answers, taken from different online sources, to the question of whether one would destroy the world if one could (quoting typos and all):

“Yes. It is obvious that we gain nothing from living and there is a huge amount of human suffering that I find quite unjustifiable. The complete annihilation of the human race would be the greatest act of compassion ever.” Reddit.com

“Yes, we suck as a human race.” Reddit.com

“Yes. Because you all are assholes. And this is not a joke I would love to push something that ends humanity. I always thought about it and now there is the question about that topic and I am happy to say I want you all dead everyone single one of you fuckers. Please give me the chance to wipe out humanity.” Reddit.com

“My view is that Mankind is a plague… I vote to destroy mankind and let nature start over.” Debate.org

“The human animal is the only evil animal in the animal kingdom. We destroy everything… I email the president weekly and beg him to push the button and stop the madness already.” Debate.org

“In the short time we’ve been on this planet, humans have already destroyed so much. We destroy ecosystems, and kill off entire species of animals… The world would be better off without humans as a whole.” Debate.org

Of course, saying something definitely isn’t the same as doing it. Even so, can we be fully certain that not a single person in the world would attempt to follow through on his or her annihilatory fantasies? One way to approach this question is to look for historical examples of groups or people who both expressed a desire to kill everyone and committed some terrible act or acts of violence. The combination of these two phenomena implies that such people would be willing to act on their omnicidal (meaning killing everyone) impulses and willingly, perhaps even eagerly, push a doomsday button. So are there such examples?

Unfortunately, yes. Lots of them. And they seem to fall into a handful of basic categories.

Eric Harris mused, “I think I would want us to go extinct,” to which he added, “I have a goal to destroy as much as possible… I want to burn the world” and “I just wish I could actually DO this instead of just DREAM about it all.”

Consider the disturbing case of Eric Harris, the psychopathic mastermind behind the 1999 Columbine High School massacre. His journal is full of all sorts of genuinely horrifying, ghoulish fantasies. On several occasions, he explicitly mentions his burning desire to extinguish humanity. At one point. he writes: “If you recall your history the Nazis came up with a ‘final solution’ to the Jewish problem. Kill them all. Well, in case you haven’t figured it out yet, I say ‘KILL MANKIND’ no one should survive.”

Elsewhere, Harris mused, “I think I would want us to go extinct,” to which he added, “I have a goal to destroy as much as possible… I want to burn the world” and “I just wish I could actually DO this instead of just DREAM about it all.”

When Harris and Dylan Klebold, his partner in crime, perpetrated their massacre in Columbine, they were equipped with garden-variety weapons. Dangerous to be sure, but hardly capable of “burning the world.” Can there be any doubt, though, that if Harris — who was relatively intelligent and liked math and science — had had access to some of the advanced technologies of tomorrow, he would have, when committing suicide, tried to go out with a much bigger bang?

The Columbine massacre had a huge influence on later rampage shooters, some of whom also dreamt of omnicide. For example, in 2007, an 18-year-old Finnish student named Pekka-Eric Auvinen shot several people at his school, which he also tried to burn down. Like Harris, he wrote about “a final solution” as “the death of the entire human race,” and described his massacre as “an operation against humanity with the purpose of killing as many people as possible.” Yet another rampage shooter from Finland, Matti Saari, wrote in his suicide note, “I hate the human race, I hate mankind, I hate the whole world, and I want to kill as many people as possible.”

Then, of course, there was Elliot Rodger, the incel psychopath who killed seven people and injured 14 in the 2014 Isla Vista killings. In a video shot one day before the rampage, he said in no uncertain terms: “I hate all of you. Humanity is a disgusting, wretched, depraved species. If I had it in my power, I would stop at nothing to reduce every single one of you to mountains of skulls and rivers of blood. And rightfully so. You deserve to be annihilated. And I’ll give that to you.”

School shooters and other lone wolves have idiosyncratic motives, such as a misanthropic hatred of humanity, or a desire to retaliate against women for perceived romantic and sexual slights. Together, though, they comprise a relatively cohesive category of omnicidal actors, and a relatively unpredictable one at that.

Another type of omnicidal actor comes in the form of apocalyptic terrorists who believe that to save the world, it must first be destroyed. ISIS, arguably the largest and richest terrorist group in history, is a paradigm case. While some members of ISIS probably didn’t hold apocalyptic beliefs, the leadership most certainly did — and they made strategic decisions based on these beliefs. The man who essentially founded ISIS, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, believed that Islam’s version of Armageddon was about to unfold around the small Syrian town of Dabiq. Hence, the name of the group’s propaganda magazine, Dabiq. After the U.S. military killed al-Zarqawi in 2006, leadership of ISIS transferred to Abu Ayyub al-Masri, a fevered apocalypticist who insisted that the Islamic end-of-days messianic figure, the “Mahdi,” was about to appear in Iraq. Like al-Zarqawi, he based his strategy on his apocalyptic belief — and it backfired. He soon met his end at the hands of Western forces.

Both of these individuals really believed that the end was nigh, and that it was their duty to use violence — catastrophic violence, to be more specific — to bring about the apocalypse. ISIS members talked about acquiring nuclear weapons, releasing deadly pathogens, and building dirty bombs. I personally haven’t spoken to a single terrorism scholar who doesn’t think that ISIS would have gleefully pushed a “destroy-the-world” button, especially if Western forces were marching toward Dabiq.

But ISIS is far from the only apocalyptic group. Famously, the doomsday cult Aum Shinrikyo attempted to trigger Armageddon by releasing sarin in the Tokyo subway in 1995. Here in the U.S., more than a dozen hate groups subscribe to Christian Identity, an apocalyptic worldview that endorses the use of catastrophic violence as a means of triggering a “race war” that will initiate the end of the world. And one of the bloodiest conflicts in human history, the Taiping Rebellion, involved an apocalyptic movement called the “Taiping Heavenly Kingdom.” This was led by a man named Hong Xiuquan, who believed that he was the brother of Jesus Christ, “commissioned by the Lord of Heaven to slay the devil-demons (Manchus) whose rule had brought ruin to China.”

A final type of omnicidal actor lingers within the outermost fringe of radical environmentalist, anarcho-primitivist, and Neo-Luddite ideologies. Ted Kaczynski, better known as the Unabomber, provides an example par excellence. Beginning in 1978, Kaczynski perpetrated numerous domestic terrorist attacks, killing three people and injuring 23 others. A former UC Berkeley mathematics professor and Harvard alumnus, Kaczynski didn’t wish for humanity to go extinct. Rather, he wanted to trigger a global revolution against industrial society, with the ultimate goal of causing its collapse. Kaczynski ultimately didn’t care whether his revolution would cause people to die, since in his utilitarian calculus the ends would justify the means. As Kaczynski wrote in 1995: “This revolution may or may not make use of violence; it may be sudden or it may be a relatively gradual process spanning a few decades. Its object will be to overthrow not governments but the economic and technological basis of the present society.”

In contrast, other actors in this category have explicitly embraced pro-extinction convictions. For example, the Gaia Liberation Front (GLF), an ecoterrorist group, holds as their mission “the total liberation of the Earth, which can be accomplished only through the extinction of the Humans as a species.” In advocating this, they argue that “if any Humans survive, they may start the whole thing over again. Our policy is to take no chances.”

How might they accomplish their omnicidal aims? GLF contends that bioengineering is “the specific technology for doing the job right of annihilating humanity — and it’s something that could be done by just one person with the necessary expertise and access to the necessary equipment.” They continue: “…genetically engineered viruses… have the advantage of attacking only the target species. To complicate the search for a cure or a vaccine, and as insurance against the possibility that some Humans might be immune to a particular virus, several different viruses could be released (with provision being made for the release of a second round after the generals and the politicians had come out of their shelters).”

Technologies such as gene drives, digital-to-biological converters, and CRISPR-Cas9 are making it increasingly feasible to synthesize designer pathogens that could be far more devastating than anything found in nature.

This parallels an anonymous article in the Earth First! Journal, published in 1989, meaning that this idea has been around for a while: “Contributions are urgently solicited for scientific research on a species specific virus that will eliminate Homo shiticus from the planet. Only an absolutely species specific virus should be set loose. Otherwise it will be just another technological fix. Remember, Equal Rights for All Other Species.”

While the most radical fringe of the environmentalist movement has avoided the limelight in recent years, some experts, such as the terrorism scholar Frances Flannery, expect a resurgence as climate and biodiversity crises worsen. This poses an obvious danger in a world replete with bullets and bombs; but it poses an existential threat in a world of cheap and easy gene editing. Technologies such as gene drives, digital-to-biological converters, and CRISPR-Cas9 are making it increasingly feasible to synthesize designer pathogens that could be far more devastating than anything found in nature.

Are there any solutions to the problems posed by virus-toting omnicidal maniacs? One hard-to-avoid — and completely terrifying — answer is mass surveillance. This could take the form of what the philosopher Jeremy Bentham called a “panopticon,” whereby the state (perhaps run by computer programs designed specifically to govern — a form of government called “algocracy”) monitors every action of its citizens. The obvious danger is that this could collapse into tyrannical totalitarianism, which itself constitutes an existential risk.

Another possibility involves what the science fiction writer, David Brin, dubs the “transparent society.” This would make surveillance egalitarian, so to speak: everyone would be able to see what everyone else is doing all the time, thereby enabling those watched to watch the watchers. Brin doesn’t argue that this is an ideal situation, only that it’s a better situation than one in which the state has all the power. Perhaps a total loss of privacy is the cost of existential security.

Alternatively, I have previously claimed that, in order to reduce the risks posed by malicious agents like those mentioned above, society should prioritize mitigating climate change and ecological destruction. Both phenomena are threat multipliers and threat intensifiers, which means that they’ll introduce new problems while making old problems even worse. Better environmental policies would lower the threat posed by ecoterrorists, whose fundamental complaint — “Humans are stupidly destroying the biosphere” — is scientifically accurate. Such policies would also decrease the number and severity of natural disasters, which could fertilize apocalyptic fervor among religious extremists. As the terrorism scholar Mark Juergensmeyer has remarked, “radical times will breed radical religion,” a hypothesis apparently supported by the rise of ISIS during the Syrian civil war.

Moving forward, people who care about human survival need to think hard not just about the various technologies that will become available, but about the types of actors who might try to use these technologies for catastrophic ill. The future of the human race could quite literally depend on it.

OneZero

The front lines of the future. A new Medium publication about tech and science.

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Polish Government Policy To Suppress Discussion Of Holocaust

by Ian R Thorpe
This blog does not get many readers, it was never intended to the reason for keeping it going is to do with Search Engine Optimisation for other blogs. So not many people will have seen our previous post about a German historian questioning the official narrative on the Holocaust. Those who did however, might have wondered why we would post such a thing.

As the founder of the blog I will explain that neither I nor my colleagues question the fact that very bad things happened to members of Jewish communities in Germany and central Europe between 1933 and 1945. We all, have a questioning nature and did not believe (or disbelieve) the details but broadly the story stood up to examination.

Then it became fashionable among political activists to call for ‘Holocaust Denial’, the opinions of people who claimed the story of mass exterminations, was not true to be criminalised. And that made us suspicious because we all believe in free speech. Only fascist regimes try to suppress open debate, and as far as all of us are concerned, because in the medieval era we would have been executed for our rejection of God, Jesus and the Church, we defend the right of people to question r reject something the authorities insist we accept is true. It is also no different to criminalising ‘climate change denial’, opposition to mass immigration, the introduction of Genetically Modified food crops or globalisation.

Criminalising ideas is the territory of tyrants, and as it becomes more obvious that the ruling elites are moving towards establishing a global totalitarian government, is it any wonder more people, if not exactly questioning The Holocaust, are questioning the eagerness to suppress free discussion of an event which has shaped much of the political evolution in the free world since 1945.

And since we started to question, it is clear there are a number of gaping holes in the Holocaust narrative, which apparently nobody wants to try to explain. Here’s another:

New Polish historical policy could silence Holocaust debates

WARSAW, Poland (via Associated Press) — Poland’s governing party is seeking to shape the country’s future by controlling perceptions of the past.

The conservative Law and Justice party’s strategy includes the use of museums, film, public television and other tools to promote certain episodes in Poland’s history, like the anti-communist resistance after World War II. More controversial, though, are attempts to suppress discussion and research into painful topics, primarily Polish violence against Jews during the Nazi occupation.

Law and Justice, which since last year has wielded more power than any party in post-communist times, sees the moves as harnessing history in a mission to build a stronger nation state. President Andrzej Duda said the nation’s new “historical policy offensive” aims to create a new generation of patriots and “to build up the country’s position in the international space.”

Critics see historical revisionism that will produce little beyond national self-righteousness and will prevent an honest reckoning with the country’s wartime history — an extremely complex story that includes suffering and heroism of the highest order but also cases of murder and betrayal by Poles of defenseless Jews.

Read All >>>

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Elsewhere: [ The Original Boggart Blog] … Daily Stirrer …[Little Nicky Machiavelli]… [ Ian’s Authorsden Pages ]… [Scribd]…[Wikinut] … [ Boggart Abroad] … [ Grenteeth Bites ] … Ian Thorpe at Flickr ] … [ Tumblr ] … [Ian at Minds ] … [ Authorsden blog ] … [Daily Stirrer News Aggregator]

China State Paper Warns of War Unless US Backs Down

Well you can’t say I have not tried to warn you which nation posed the greatest threat to world peace (and no, Obama worshippers, it’s not China but the one lead by the failed aquatic pedestrian, peacemaker and joybringer with jug ears) …

from Information Clearing House

A Chinese state-owned newspaper, GMA News of BEIJING said on Monday that “war is inevitable” between China and the United States over the South China Sea unless Washington stops demanding Beijing halt the building of artificial islands in the disputed waterway.

The Global Times, an influential nationalist tabloid owned by the ruling Communist Party’s official newspaper the People’s Daily, said in an editorial that China was determined to finish its construction work, calling it the country’s “most important bottom line.”

The editorial comes amid rising tensions over China’s land reclamation in the Spratly archipelago of the South China Sea. China last week said it was “strongly dissatisfied” after a US spy plane flew over areas near the reefs, with both sides accusing each other of stoking instability.

China should “carefully prepare” for the possibility of a conflict with the United States, the newspaper said.

“If the United States’ bottomline is that China has to halt its activities, then a US-China war is inevitable in the South China Sea,” the newspaper said. “The intensity of the conflict will be higher than what people usually think of as ‘friction’.”

Such commentaries are not official policy statements, but are sometimes read as a reflection of government thinking. The Global Times is among China’s most nationalist newspapers.

READ MORE:

Time to start stockpiling porridge oats and dried beans in the cellar? A few tins of corned beef will not go amiss either. Any war would be of short duration but we might be stuck in the fallout shelters for quite a while.

This used to be a satirical blog but it’s impossible to satirize the bunch of clowns that make up the leadership of the western world.

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"We Are Not At War With ISIS Or Russia, We Are At War With The ECB": says Grillo

People sometimes ask me why we gave up making this blog funny or satirical most of the time. The answer is simple: While the world situation is highly dangerous at the moment our western leaders are such inept clowns it is hard to make fun of them as they do increasingly accurate impressions of The Three Stooges.

Beppe Gillo, leader of Italy’s Five Star movement (the Italian UKIP) is a comedian and he agrees that there is no point slapping a pie in the faces of Obama, cameron and Hollande (the FUKUS axis leaders) when left to their own devices they will do a Norman Wisdom style stumble and fall face first into a cowpat whenever a situation that requires a modicum of intelligence is required.

Beppe Grillo (Source)

Grillo also feels, as this blog does, that wile our leaders beat the drum for war in Ukraine, war in Syria, war everywhere, the real war we are involved in right now is with our own elites.

Italy’s Grillo Rages “We Are Not At War With ISIS Or Russia, We Are At War With The ECB”

Next week, Italy’s Beppe Grillo – the leader of the Italian Five Star Movement – will start collecting signatures with the aim of getting a referendum in Italy on leaving the euro “as soon as possible,” just as was done in 1989. As Grillo tells The BBC in this brief but stunning clip, “we will leave the Euro and bring down this system of bankers, of scum.” With two-thirds of Parliament apparently behind the plan, Grillo exclaims “we are dying, we need a Plan B to this Europe that has become a nightmare – and we are implementing it,” raging that “we are not at war with ISIS or Russia! We are at war with the European Central Bank,” that has stripped us of our sovereignty. (from Zero Hedge)

Beppe Grillo said yesterday:

It is high time for me and for the Italian people, to do something that should have been done a long time ago: to put an end to your sitting in this place, you who have dishonoured and substituted the governments and the democracies without any right. Ye are a factious crew, and enemies to all good government; ye are a pack of mercenary wretches, and would like Esau sell your country for a mess of pottage, and like Judas betray your God for a few pieces of money. Is there a single virtue now remaining amongst you? A crumb of humanity? Is there one vice you do not possess? Gold and the “spread” are your gods. GDP is you golden calf.

We’ll send you packing at the same time as Italy leaves the Euro. It can be done! You well know that the M5S will collect the signatures for the popular initiative law – and then – thanks to our presence in parliament, we will set up an advisory referendum as happened for the entry into the Euro in 1989. It can be done! I know that you are terrified about this. You will collapse like a house of cards. You will smash into tiny fragments like a crystal vase. Without Italy in the Euro, there’ll be an end to this expropriation of national sovereignty all over Europe. Sovereignty belongs to the people not to the ECB and nor does it belong to the Troika or the Bundesbank. National budgets and currencies have to be returned to State control. They should not be controlled by commercial banks. We will not allow our economy to be strangled and Italian workers to become slaves to pay exorbitant interest rates to European banks.

The Euro is destroying the Italian economy. Since 1997, when Italy adjusted the value of the lira to connect it to the ECU (a condition imposed on us so that we could come into the euro), Italian industrial production has gone down by 25%. Hundreds of Italian companies have been sold abroad. These are the companies that have made our history and the image of “Made in Italy”.

Time To Invest In Pork Bellies And Beans

Preparing for war: Pork bellies and beans (source)

When I was in my teens (yes I can remember that far back) everybody was interested in the events leading up to World War One (Our Grandads had been involved you see)and being an avid reader I devoured various novels and memoirs on the social conditions, political chicanery, elitist snobbery and stupidity and commercial opportunism that guided our blundering path to a senseless conflict.

And one think that fascinated me, because I knew nothing of the soldiers’ diet was the economic advice to invest in pork bellies and beans.

Many commentators in traditional and new media have commented on how similar current political conditions are to what happened in 1914, with powerful alliances refusing to back down. And then today I read something that is really worrying.

Having $50 billion of assets under potential seizure is enough to make anyone wince. However, despite a carefuly worded statement on the Yukos award, (a dispute over some Russian oil company) Vladimir Putin seems totally unfazed by the threat of further sanctions being imposed over the flight MH17 controversy. Now I think I understand why, and it’s very concerning.

As The FT reports:

The award is a landmark not just for its size – 20 times the previous record for an arbitration ruling. The tribunal also found definitively that Russia’s pursuit of Yukos and its independently-minded main shareholder, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a decade ago was politically motivated.

Though Russia cannot appeal against the award, Moscow said it would pursue all legal avenues for trying to get it “set aside”.

Even if the ruling stands, shareholders face a tortuous battle trying to enforce it. If Moscow refuses to pay, they must pursue Russian sovereign commercial assets in the 150 countries that are party to the so-called 1958 New York Convention on enforcing arbitration awards.

But perhaps this explains why Putin is not coming out swinging, as The FT concludes,

One person close to Mr Putin said the Yukos issue was noit significant in light of the bigger geopolitical stand-off over Ukraine.

“There is a war coming in Europe,” he said. “Do you really think this matters?”

Source: The Financial Times

Well, got to go, I have to instruct my broker to buy pork bellies and beans futures.

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Having crossed swords this morning with someone who is quite sure that every word of propaganda is absolute gospel truth and he works in a university so knuckle dragging oiks such as me, who do not spend their lives insulated from reality in universities have no right to disagree with him (Boggart Blog tip: If you want to play the intellectual bully the first requirement is to actually possess an intellect,) therefore there can be no doubt whatsoever that Vladimir Putin personally fired the missile that brought down the Malaysia Airlines flight over Ukraine (I love hyperbole).

I love the naive belief of these “evidence based thinkers” that the inability of us sceptics to prove the Russian separatists did not do it serves as proof that they did. But I would remind readers that Boggart Blog has never said the pro Russian rebels in Ukraine did not bring down the plane, only that the evidence they did that has so far been offered is flimsy and full of holes. There is also much stronger evidence emerging which implicates the Kiev government. This may turn out to prove nothing more that the Kermlin propaganda dept. is more competent than the British and American propaganda departments.

Saying “Our guys are wearing white hats so the other guys are guilty,” is not how scepticism works however. And the problem our “evidence based” chums often encounter is that evidence does not necessarily confirm their wild assumptions.

Take a look at this for example:

The Los Angeles Times:

Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 was cruising just 1,000 feet above restricted airspace when it was struck by a missile in Ukraine’s Donetsk region, according to aviation and intelligence officials.

Despite ongoing violence in eastern Ukraine, including the recent downing of two military aircraft, Ukrainian aviation officials had closed the region’s airspace only below 32,000 feet in altitude.

The Boeing 777, en route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, the Malaysian capital, with 298 people aboard, was at 33,000 feet when it vanished from radar screens, according to European aviation authorities.

Read all

That report does not prove responsibility but it does show the failure of western governments to make commercial airlines aware of the risks of overflying Ukraine’s conflict zone. It does however note that western intelligence was aware the only SAM equipment the rebels have is the MANPAD shoulder held launcher which fires missiles effective up to altitudes of 17,000 feet.

Reuters comments:

Malaysia Airlines filed a flight plan requesting to fly at 35,000 feet throughout Ukraine airspace but was instructed by Ukraine air traffic control to fly at 33,000 feet upon entry ….

While CBS, in an article entitled “‘Big Question’ Is Why Plane Was Flying Over War Zone” asks the question many bloggers have been asking:

The Atlantic raises the competence issue:

Did aviation authorities know that this was a dangerous area?

Yes, they most certainly did. Nearly three months ago, on the “Special Rules” section of its site, the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration put out an order prohibiting American pilots, airlines, charter carriers, and everyone else over whom the FAA has direct jurisdiction, from flying over parts of Ukraine.

So we see that it is not quite so clear cut as White Hats and Black Hats. I must admit to not having a clue who was responsible for bringing down Flight MH17 or whether it was a deliberate act of terrorism or a terrible accident.

What I find obscene however is the eagerness of politicians and media commentators in the west to blame Russia (and possibly provoke a global war – yesterday I wrote about what the mainstream media are not telling you, forgetting to mention that the Chinese have condemned the FUKUS axis rush to blame Russia). Has everyone forgotten already the false flag gas attack in Syria, the ‘humanitarian mission in Libya which turned into a regime change war and turned Libya into a failed state and the failed wars in Iraq and Afghanistan initiated by the western powers.

Western leaders don’t just want war, they’re mad for it. Perhaps they think that as in the 1930s, a global conflict will pull the west out of a prolonged economic depression.

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Putin Flushes The Dollar Down The Toilet – We Told You So

Vlad knows the value of western co – operation (picture source)

Not long ago members of our little team posting on Boggart Blog, Little Nicky Machiavelli and The Daily Stirrer warned you that the USA and EU had a lot more to lose than Russia if they got into an economic war with The Kremlin.

One proud, patriotic and utterly stupid American loftily informed me that the America had nothing to fear because the world trades in US dollars. That used to be right, unfortunately it is no longer so because China and the rest of the BRICS along with Iran and several other significant holders of vast natural resources have been dumping the dollar and making bilateral trade agrements for several years.

Well as usual, drawing on our vast pool of business and life experience we were right at this information that came to us via News Beacon Ireland shows.

Russia announces that it will sell (and buy) his products and commodities – including oil – in roubles; not anymore in dollars.

Putin has been preparing this move — the creation of a payment system in roubles completely independent and protected from the Dollar and the killer speculations of the big Western financial institutions — for a long time.

After sanctioning several Russian banks to punish Russia for Crimea, the Washington politicians were told by the financial power-to-be to step back because obviously, the Wall Street vampires understand that putting Russian banks outside the reach of their blood sucking teeth is never a good idea.

For Wall Street and the city’s financial services, countries like Russia should always have an open financial door through which their real economy can be periodically looted. So Washington announced that it was a mistake to enforce sanctions on all those Russian banks; only one, the Rossiya bank shall be hit by sanctions, just for propaganda reasons and to make an example out of it.

It is what Putin needed. Since at least 2007, he was trying to launch an independent Rouble System, a financial system that would be based on Russia’s real economy and resources and guaranteed by its gold reserves. No tolerance for looting and financial speculation: A peaceful move, but at the same time a declaration of independence that Wall Street will consider as a “declaration of war”.

According to the Judo strategy, the sanction attack created the ideal situation for a “defensive” move that would redirect the brute force of the adversary against him. And now it’s happening. Bank Rossiya will be the first Russian bank to use exclusively the Russian rouble.”

Here’s a view of the current situation from another perspective from Zero Hedge:

“They Never Learn” – Russia’s Take On The “West” And The Shifting Geopolitical Balance Of Power

UPDATE – 31 March:
Dollar Hegemony Under Attack By Export-Superpowers Germany and China

‘The word dollar didn’t even come up. “The volume of transactions that can be carried out in the Chinese currency in international and German financial centers is not commensurate with China’s importance in the global economy,” the Bundesbank explained in its dry manner on Friday in Berlin, after signing a memorandum of understanding with the People’s Bank of China. President Xi Jinping and Chancellor Angela Merkel were looking on. It was serious business. Everyone knew what this was about. No one had to say it.

The agreement spelled out how the two central banks would cooperate on the clearing and settlement of payments denominated in renminbi – to get away from the dollar’s hegemony as payments currency and as reserve currency.’

Continue reading:

The world is run by insane people doing insane things – John Lennon

Journalism is reporting news somebody does not want reported, everything else is public relations – George Orwell

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Beanz Meanz War

It can’t be the rent boy President who is pushing the USA to war with Russia over Ukraine can it? He’s the peacemaker and joybringer after all, the great conciliator whose skin colour along was going to make us forget our differences and all join hands and sing Kumbaya. So as Vladimir Putin remains intransigent about Russia’s claims to Ukraine, who exactly is propelling the push to war?.

It can’t be little William Hague, he hasn’t got the balls; or Francoise Hollande, he’s too busy with his many mistresses. That leaves only one possible candidate US Secretary of State, the Scooby Doo villain lookalike John Kerry.

Scooby Doo villain John Kerry

Let’s get this straight, right? Last week the USA sent Kerry to negotiate a peace settlement and Kerry told Russsia if the Crimea independence referendum goes ahead there will be consequences. The United States tells us is all for democracy and democracy is about voting and making sure the majority rules. If a majority in Crimea votes to align itself with Russia because most Crimeans have an affinity for Russia, the United States and the United Nations, the latter sitting on the lap of the former, will decide democracy is illegal. And then there will be war.

Yesterday Estonian Defense Minister Urmas Reinsalu said he’s sure Russia plans to invade Ukraine. This was carried uncritically and sans any objective examination by the corporatist establishment media in the United States. Ukra ine has admitted there are no Russian troops on the border poised to strike but the US Administration chooses to behave as if Reinsalu is Putin’s official messenger. And who is the loudest rattler of the US sabre? John Kerry.

What does Kerry have to gain from war you might well ask.

It is traditional in US futures markets that the run up to war causes a spike in the price of pork bellied and beans. And what business is the source of John Kerry’s billionaire wife?

“I would have gotten away with it too if you pesy bloggers hadn’t stuck your noses in”

UPDATE – 17 March
Interesting to not that stock markets in London and New Yorn opened sharply up this morning. As Milo Minderbender in Catch 22 said, “War is good for business.”

What We Are Not Being Told About Ukraine

Another day passes and there is now hardly a word in mainstream media print and broadcast news about Ukraine. Has it all blown over you might well ask. Actually while a localised and limited shooting war would have been tragic for the people of Ukraine, Russia and some surrounding territories it would have afected people in the EU, Britain and the USA very little.

What’s happening now poses a far greater threat to our prosperity both in the short and long term and to the kind of future we can look forward to. Jere’s a summary of some stories that were not reported in western media.

Russia Threatens to Drop The Dollar and Crash The U.S. Economy if Sanctions Are Imposed – West Goes Ahead With Sanctions Anyway

On Tuesday Reuters reported that a Kremlin aid Sergei Glazyev had announced that if the U.S. were to impose sanctions on Russia Moscow may drop the dollar as a reserve currency and refuse to pay off any loans to U.S. banks saying that Moscow could recommend that all holders of U.S. treasuries sell them if Washington freezes the U.S. accounts of Russian businesses and individuals.

“We would find a way not just to reduce our dependency on the United States to zero but to emerge from those sanctions with great benefits for ourselves,” said Glazyev. “An attempt to announce sanctions would end in a crash for the financial system of the United States, which would cause the end of the domination of the United States in the global financial system”

That statement is startling by itself, but the true gravity of this situation is only evident when you consider it in context. China has taken Russia’s side in the Ukraine conflict (they are after all allies) and China holds the lion’s share of U.S. treasuries. If Russia puts out the call to drop the dollar China would have a choice: either hold on to those treasuries while the dollar slides (losing their shirt in the process) or join Russia and dump their holdings as well. It should be pretty obvious which way China would go.

As The Guardian reports however, that the USA has unilaterally decided to go ahead with sanctions against Russsia in retaliation for Putin’s refusal to back down and withdraw Russian troops from Crimea.

US imposes visa restrictions on Russian officials as Obama signs sanctions order
Employing his favourite tool for by passing the democratic process, On March 6 The Emperor Obama signed an executive order extending US sactions against Russia. (Read More on sanctions story at The Guardian)

Getting into an economic war with Russia would create a pile of problems for the Obama Administration, first it would drive a wedge between the USA and it’s EU allies most of which are heavily dependent on Russian gas for their domestic and industrial supplies. Secondly, failing to consider the consequences of Russia’s allies responding to such a move by applying sanctions of their own is, typically asinine. When Obama signed the sanctions order, authorizing economic action against the Russians he may have performed his usual arrested adolescent feat of convincing himself that we he speaks, nobody could possibly disagree with him.

Experience of dealing with other world leaders has taught him nothing in this respect. So was the massianic one hoping that on realising they had incurred his displeasure Russia would capitulate, beg for mercy and start dancing to Washington’s beat. It’s hard to imagine The White House corps of diplomats, advisors and political scientists could be so thick, but Obama has had five years to fill key roles with his personal rent boys appointees. Maybe they were just too busy planning the next frat party to think things through properly.

Either way, the outcome is the same. The U.S. government’s constant meddling in the domestic affairs of sovereign states has now embroiled it in a geopolitical game of chicken and if one side or the other does not blink soon there will be an almighty fracas.

Unfortunately though they initially picked a fight with the corrupt but democratically elected government of Ukraine in the hope of humiliating Russia by drawing its neighbour and close ally into the US / EU / NATO sphere of influence, by sponsoring regime change the USA has brought itself into conflict with the world’s 8th largest economy (by GDP), having already for a while been at loggerheads with China, the second largest economy and holder of huge amounts of US debt.

In the latest development India sided with Putin by announcing Russia’s interests in Crimea are legitimate (Times of India).

The question now is how will the rest of the world react. Iran’s position is a foregone conclusion and Saudi Arabia will demand a heavy price for its support, even from a traditional ally. With Japan, like the EU, hamstrung by economic difficulties and Australia and Canada likely to offer token support while Britain’s David Cameron’s hands will be tied by Parliament that in the wake of futile wars in Iraq and Afghanistan has become somewhat isolationist.

The lines of economic warfare have been drawn up, and as sides are being picked it looks as if the USA is backed by weaklings, wusses and economic basket cases. Get ready to kiss your savings goodbye. And find a good recipe for bone broth.

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Songs Of War

They’re All In It Together

Told you so. The three main political parties are all the same organisation, a local branch of the New World Order, they cover one anothers’ arses and serve the same masters. Want proof?

Here it is:

David Cameron blocks report that exposes Tony Blair’s Iraq war crimes

‘David Cameron is blocking publication of the Iraq Inquiry report because it confirms a secret conspiracy by Bush and Blair to take the US and Britain into an illegal war.

While David Cameron was laying wreaths of poppies at the Cenotaph this weekend, to remember the past war dead, he has been blocking an inquiry set up to tell the truth about the war in Iraq.

That is the meaning of the refusal of the Cabinet secretary, Sir Jeremy Heywood, to release records of conversations between then prime minister and US president George Bush, in the run up to the war on Iraq.

Read full article

Now WTF is a Conservative Prime Minister whose party is trailing in the polls thinking about when he passes up the chance to nail a Labour former Prime Minister as a traitor and war criminal? If Cameron was a politician rather than a New World Order office boy he could have stitched up Labour and guaranteed winning the next election three times in the past three weeks.

And you know how the old saying goes, once is circumstance, twice is coincidence and three times means you’ve been kicked up the arse by your corporate bosses.

I’m not going to do a Russell Brand and say don’t vote. I say vote for absolutely anybody so long as they have nothing to do with the three main parties.