Police get armed drones in Nebraska!!

Geeez, writing about incipient fascism below, hardly did I expect to already see this in the news! Of course they only want to arm police drones with bean bags and tasers and gas now - as if those have not already killed a number of people worldwide when used by police on citizens!  It wasn't reported in too many mainstream media sources, but lots of alternative news sources!

* Washington Times: North Dakota cops can fire Tasers, tear gas from drones

* The Independent: North Dakota becomes first US state to legalise use of armed drones by police

* NPR: North Dakota Legalizes Armed Police Drones

* The Daily Beast: First State Legalizes Taser Drones for Cops, Thanks to a Lobbyist

* Indian Country: Moya-Smith: North Dakota Authorizes Use of Armed Police Drones ... Really.

* TruthDig.org: One Day Soon, That Drone Overhead May Be Pointing a Taser at You:

California police already are considering it.

When demagogues team up

Watched a bit of Donald Trump and Ted Cruz speaking at the Tea Party rally (on TV, of course, even though it was just a couple miles from my home).  How they yelped their lies about the Iran nuclear deal.  They won't admit the deal actually was forced on Iran with even Nobel Peace Prize winner Obama and Vietnam War protester Kerry threatening: "we won't bomb the heck out of you and kill a million plus of your people and starve the rest if you agree to a more strenuous oversight of your nuclear program than any other nation which has joined in International Atomic Agency regime. (Of course, we won't admit our buddies in Israel never joined it and have 400+ nukes that they've threatened to use against our other allies and Russia...)"

And of course how could any savvy person not see that two demagogues Cruz-Trump were slapping each others' backs at  the rally.  Must have been like when Stalin met Hitler in the late 1930s and agreed to carve up Poland, except they were doing it publicly on TV, not in a private room. (That's a Stalinist mustache, FYI.)

I'm happy to say that a quick search showed lots of bloggers and minor personalities have written about either or both being demagogues. Luckily Trump-Cruz are only part Irish, so their racist demagoguery can be blamed more on Cruz' white Latino heritage (which has oppressed black and native Indian peoples through out Central and South America for 500+ years) and Trump's inborn feelings of Germanic supremacy.

I read quite an interesting article on the topic that explained a lot about demagoguery. (Just ignore the stuff about neoliberalism, which is just the flip side of neoconservativism, in that the libertarian aspects of both philosophies have been co-opted by statists). Henry A. Giroux in Donald Trump and the Ghost of Totalitarianism at the Tikkun web site wrote:

Missing from the commentaries by most of the mainstream media regarding the current rise of Trumpism is any historical context that would offer a critical account of the ideological and political disorder plaguing the American society—personified by Trump’s popularity. A resurrection of historical memory in this moment could provide important lessons regarding the present crisis, particularly the long tradition of racism, white supremacy, exceptionalism, war mongering, and extended wars on youth, women, and immigrants. Calling Trump a fascist is not enough. What is necessary are analyses in which the seeds of totalitarianism are made visible in Trump’s discourse and policy measures...Few journalists have acknowledged the presence of  white militia and white supremacists groups at his rallies and almost none have acknowledged the chanting of “white power” at some of his rallies which would surely signal not only Trump’s connections to a racist past but also to the formative Nazi culture that gave rise to genocide....This is a discourse in which totalitarian images of the hero, fearless leader, and bold politicians get lost in the affective and ideological registers of what Hannah Arendt once called “the ruin of our categories of thought and standards of judgment.”[5]  Of course, there are many factors currently contributing to this production of ignorance and the lobotomizing of individual and collective agency.

Giroux refers to Randy Blazak's “Donald Trump is the New Face of White Supremacy” at Counter Punch. Blazak writes:

Trump represents a frightening trend of convenient racism rooted in a belief that America was great before ethnic and racial minorities, women, and sexual minorities wanted equal rights. (What Trump calls “political correctness.”)...in my research I have attended numerous Klan rallies, skinhead gatherings, and meetings of the Aryan Nations, and the rhetoric is almost exactly the same as Trump’s. I was at a Klan Rally in Covington, Georgia in 1991 in which a Klan leader told the small crowd the story of a white woman who had been raped and beaten by an “illegal Mexican.” As with Trump’s story, whether it was true or not didn’t matter. It served to whip the racists into a frenzy.

I remain confidant that Trump will implode at some point.  Someone important will stand up to him in such a way that even the media has to admit what Blazak writes: "Obviously, Trump is a clown who will say anything that feeds his narcissism."  And Trump will storm off the stage.  (Or maybe he'll have his Rick Perry gotcha moment on some factoid that even his bravado can't gloss over.) I'm quite sure Cruz hopes to pick up all those Trump voters.

Hopefully we will escape electing a true demagogue in 2016. But then George W. Bush was elected on a platform of more freedom, less government spending and a humble foreign policy and look what we got.  So even a saner seeming Kasich or whatever Democrat replaces the faltering Hillary may turn out to be the dictator so many of us have been expected will employ jack booted thugs to take us away to the camps.

In case you forget how far we've come since 2001 on the path to giving a warmongering dictator complete power, read  Tom Engelhardt’s “Mantra for 9/11: Exceptional Pain Dispensed by the Indispensable Nation." He writes:

Fourteen years of wars, interventions, assassinations, torture, kidnappings, black sites, the growth of the American national security state to monumental proportions, and the spread of Islamic extremism across much of the Greater Middle East and Africa. Fourteen years of astronomical expense, bombing campaigns galore, and a military-first foreign policy of repeated defeats, disappointments, and disasters. Fourteen years of a culture of fear in America, of endless alarms and warnings, as well as dire predictions of terrorist attacks. Fourteen years of the burial of American democracy (or rather its recreation as a billionaire’s playground and a source of spectacle and entertainment but not governance). Fourteen years of the spread of secrecy, the classification of every document in sight, the fierce prosecution of whistleblowers, and a faith-based urge to keep Americans “secure” by leaving them in the dark about what their government is doing. Fourteen years of the demobilization of the citizenry. Fourteen years of the rise of the warrior corporation, the transformation of war and intelligence gathering into profit-making activities, and the flocking of countless private contractors to the Pentagon, the NSA, the CIA, and too many other parts of the national security state to keep track of. Fourteen years of our wars coming home in the form of PTSD, the militarization of the police, and the spread of war-zone technology like drones and stingrays to the “homeland.” Fourteen years of that un-American word “homeland.” Fourteen years of the expansion of surveillance of every kind and of the development of a global surveillance system whose reach -- from foreign leaders to tribal groups in the backlands of the planet -- would have stunned those running the totalitarian states of the twentieth century. Fourteen years of the financial starvation of America’s infrastructure and still not a single mile of high-speed rail built anywhere in the country. Fourteen years in which to launch Afghan War 2.0, Iraq Wars 2.0 and 3.0, and Syria War 1.0. Fourteen years, that is, of the improbable made probable.

Well, enough. I'm focusing now on promoting specific political alternatives and spiritual views, if I can ever get Wordpress and my new html editor working right!  At least I have an easy new backup music program and have been whipping out new political songs to be put up soon at Youtube/Carolmooresongs.  But at 67 the old fingers and bones and brains just don't work as fast as they used to. But the voice is still strong!

Just one more note - on the new Steven Colbert show. I never was much into Steven Colbert or David Letterman (preferring the rambunctious Jay Leno who is closer to my personality type). However, I did watch his first show on CBS out of random curiosity.  Despite a few funny bits, I was not impressed.

However, I was impressed that Colbert actually DID seem nervous about the sight of CBS president Leslie Moonves sitting there with a button that would turn his 11:30 pm slot back to reruns of my favorite psychic detective "The Mentalist." And just now I've read in the sometimes accurate Wikipedia that Moonves is  "a great-nephew of David Ben-Gurion, the first Prime Minister of Israel." So Colbert knows he better not do anything to rock the US/Israel imperialist boat.  I watched the second night to see if Colbert would rock any boats at all. I was mainly impressed that he was far less nervous and funnier on his secondnight. But his long story about all the technical difficulties that almost kept his show off the air the first night really makes one wonder just how much pressure he is getting.

At least Colbert did make the graphic dig at Trump below.  But he also interviewed the neocons' best hope, the incredibly naive Bush Boy II, "Jeb!" Seeing Jeb!'s list of foreign policy advisors, it's likely he too will be pushed into another horrific war - against Iran, of course.

Strangely, Colbert cut from his first show Jeb!'s rather amusing and mocking impressions of Trump. Other news outlets noted that and played them. (Will link if I find them.)  Colbert even sheepishly admitted it on his second show.  Yes, it's interesting to watch the dictatorship unfold by watching Steven Colbert squirm under the thumb of really big corporate state fascist imperialist America.  Maybe he too wonders when he'll get dragged off to the camps...

UPDATE 9/17/15:  I don't want to dignify Trump (or his also ran buddy Cruz) by writing much more about them. But I will quote what Rand Paul had to say, drawn from this NY Times Op-Ed written by a very disgusted Frank Bruni, "An Overdose of Donald Trump at the G.O.P. Debate":

...Rand Paul took the precise measure of — and raised the correct question about — the egomaniacal front-runner.

“Do we want someone with that kind of character, that kind of careless language, to be negotiating with Putin?” Paul asked.

“I think really there’s a sophomoric quality that is entertaining about Mr. Trump, but I am worried,” he added, and I nodded so vigorously at the “worried” part that I’m going to need balm and a neck brace tomorrow.

Paul went on to single out Trump’s “visceral response to attack people on their appearance — short, tall, fat, ugly. My goodness, that happened in junior high. Are we not way above that?”

No, we aren’t. Or at least Trump isn’t. And “junior high” is too easy on him, too kind. Trump comes from, and belongs in, the sandbox, as he demonstrated the second that Paul paused and Trump fired back: “I never attacked him on his look, and believe me, there’s plenty of subject matter right there.”

Several pundits have noted the similar facial features of the mostly Irish, part German, Senator Joseph McCarthy of 1950s infamy and the part Irish Ted Cruz.  McCarthy under took an unnecessarily persecutory jihad against suspected Communists and ex-Communists in government and other influential fields. And there were quite a few, given that the during the Great Depression many people foolishly thought Communism was the solution to poverty. (And he was right that there were lots of real live Soviet Firster infiltrators as well, as subsequent government releases and academic scholarship has shown.)  But even most anti-communists feel he hurt the cause of exposing the small number of truly dangerous individuals.  (And we're still waiting to see a polite bu thorough investigation of the undue influence of foreign governments in today's government!)

McCarthy was the Donald Trump of his age, gaining massive national attention with his hearings and allegations and obnoxious antics.  McCarthy at least had some minimal factual grounding to his overblown tirades.  With Trump it's all about purely subjective ego and narcissism and the deep need to persecute anyone who isn't good looking and rich enough - unless they adore and follow him unquestionably, that is.

We can only hope that Trump eventually earns the same reputation McCarthy earned for himself. He deserves it. If not, get ready for the demogogues who will take over in the future, be they named Trump or Cruz or Petraeus or some other minor character waiting in the wings with the flare for attention that makes people listen and obey.  Of course, if they listen and take only the most high consciousness suggestions and leave the rest, that's another story...

 

A few more memes of interest...

Just found them hiding in downloads...

UNITED NATIONS SAYS GAZA WILL BE UNINHABITABLE AFTER 2020

Which is what Israel is aiming for, of course. The Syrian refugee crisis must be quite an inspiration for them. Now they know what to do with all those Palestinians, ship them off to Europe in leaky boats and sealed grocery trucks...

But for some lighter fare to escape our horrific reality...

And just in case you missed the poopouri advert, check it out...

Free speech and authoritarian states

From John Whitehead in "We don't need no stinkin' free speech":

      It may seem trivial to be debating the merits of free speech at a time when unarmed citizens are being shot, stripped, searched, choked, beaten and tasered by police for little more than daring to frown, smile, question, challenge an order, or just breathe.
      However, while the First Amendment provides no tangible protection against a gun wielded by a government agent, nor will it save you from being wrongly arrested or illegally searched, or having your property seized in order to fatten the wallets of government agencies, without the First Amendment, we are utterly helpless.

Whitehead - and Greg Lukianoff in the Atlantic -  writes about the absurd political correctness on college campuses now adays, with "trigger warnings" and "hate speech" making students fearful of what they say to or about anyone of a different religion, race, ethnicity and sex or sexual orientation (not to mention all that gender identity stuff).  And this even as the Supreme Court refuses to let even a single protester protest at its own offices when it is not in session and cops shoot people for asking what's going on, or giving them a dirty look.

In my own experience women still are on the bottom of the heap with insults, sexual assaults and males claiming to be females demanding to allow their balls and penises access to public and even private womens' toilets, locker rooms, shelters, prisons, etc.  After all it's a "trigger warning" to say HE doesn't belong in those spaces.  Threatening to kill women who don't want them there is just boys being boys, of course.

It makes me just want to pull those verbal triggers over and over again!! The good news is I finally found an easy computer program for producing background music for my dozens of "out there" songs and soon will be uploading a bunch more in the vein of - and even more outrageous than - the relatively tame ones at Youtube/CarolMooreSongs. In that vein, here's some of my favorite memes of the last lazy month of summer...

AMERICA as SUPERPOWER - MILITARY SPENDING COMPARED

WELL, MAYBE NOT THAT SUPER... 

 

BUT HERE'S THE BOTTOM LINE...

Nuclear war still inevitable or "When will Enola Gay get nuked?"

I just read a "Hiroshima Day"-related article about the restored air force bomber Enola Gay which dropped the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945. The purpose: to scare the heck of the Russians and, oh, yes, tell Japan it was ready to accept peace negotiations...

And looking at it parked all shiny there at the National Air & Space Museum at Washington Dulles International Airport, my first thought was: someday it's probably going to get nuked. Dulles is of course a prime nuclear target in case of nuclear war with Russia or China, the two nations with the most nuclear power to "knock us" (as one general once put it).

This video reminds us what it will be like.  Looks like scenes from the movie THE DAY AFTER.Of course, those living in a dream world will continue to deny the inevitable... But as long as there are patriarchal nation states fighting for territory, power and pride, it is inevitable. Check out Secession.net.

Update: For those who like to list to long discussions without photos, here's how US government covered up its crimes at Nagasaki and Hiroshima.  Lots of other relevant videos searchable on Youtube.

Two Iraqi depleted uranian babies grow up, make news

I happened upon the excruciatingly painful yet inspiring video of Emmanuel Kelly singing John Lennon's Imagine on a tv talent show.  He and his brother Ahmed are both "DU" babies deformed in the aftermath of the United States bombing Iraq from 1991 to 2003 using thousands of armor-piercing munitions reinforced with depleted uranium. (A topic I've covered before here, as well as here regarding US use against Libya in 2011.)  

Many such babies miscarry or die soon after birth, having deformities like hearts or brains growing outside their bodies. Many also live for years, severely deformed with missing limbs, mangled faces and even two heads.  Emmanuel an Ahmed were born with malformed limbs and hips. Their parents abandoned them and they were adopted from a Christian orphanage by an Australian humanitarian Moira Kelly.

Of course, except for the Daily Mail, most sources merely mention they were victims of "chemical warfare", the implication being that Saddam Hussein was responsible. (The fact he got his weapons from the US and used them on Iran, after the US encouraged him to attack that nation also is mentioned too rarely.)  Both boys have done their best to transcend their disabilities. Ahmed is a swimmer who participated in paralympic swimmers competitions.  Most surviving DU babies live in underfunded orphanages or, at best, are trapped with their families waiting to see who will be crippled and killed next, given the instability and violence caused by the United States attacks on that country and region.



I've been remembering lately that all this destabilization and destruction of the Arab world was engineered by neoconservatives and pro-Israel lobbyists in the United States. I remembered the 1996 report prepared for Benjamin Netanyahu called "A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm".  In it neoconservatives - mostly also pro-Israel lobbyists - recommended Israel destabilize nearby nations to its own advantage. And let's not forget the 1997 Project for a New American Century and its "Rebuilding America's Defenses" which expanded on that and similar themes, mentioning in passing how the US needed a "Pearl Harbor" type episode to motivate it to join in destabilizing the region.

Here's one of many analysis of how damaging the "Clean Break" philosophy has been as it become to the American people and the world. It has harmed both the United States (costing 6 trillion or more dollars and thousands of lives) and the Arab world (costing trillions more and hundreds of thousand of lives).  Emmanuel and Ahmed were early victims, before its publication. But we've all been victims since.

In spring of 2014 the National Summit to reasses the U.S.-Israel "special relationship" took place at the National Press Club and aired on C-SPAN. "The nonpartisan symposium examined the impact of the U.S.-Israel relationship on Americans. Speakers and attendees included military, diplomatic, intelligence, academic, governmental, research organization and economic experts, as well as former and current members of Congress." You can see all the videos listed in order with brief intros at the If American's Knew Summit page.  Steven Sniegoski below talks about this issue. As he mentions, the neocons have not yet gotten the United States to fight Israel's war against Iran for it.  But they keep pushing it.  Sane Americans and people world wide have to push back against them, and hard.

Inspiring video against limitations on women

Incredible short video about limitations patriarchy places on women and about the girls who say NO! to those limitations. Made me cry to think how many years (67) I've been told to STOP doing whatever males don't like. And all the different ways I've rebelled against it.  Glad to see these younger women being encouraged early on to rebel since I wasn't much encouraged til I was past 20 years old... Yeah, women's lib! It's even gone commercial!!

Trump/Cosby/Clinton - Demagogue/Rapists/Hypocrite

Watching Fox's Media Buzz today and Trump, Cosby and Hillary Clinton dominated the discussion about news coverage.

And for the umpteenth time I thought:


* Trump is the demagogue I thought Ted Cruz would be.  Maybe he's the inevitable Hitlerian personality who will take power. (Someone else beat me to the morph to the left.) First he came for the Latinos...

* For the world to believe Cosby was a rapist, 30 women attesting to it was not good enough; only Cosby's testimony in a civil suit that he used drugs to get women to have sex with him (voluntarily he alleges) convinced the media and millions of others that it was true. WHAT THE HELL DO THE DOZEN PLUS WOMEN ASSAULTED AND RAPED BY BILL CLINTON HAVE TO PROVE FOR PEOPLE TO BELIEVE IT??

* Hillary, you hypocrite, you know you enabled your molesting/raping bastard husband. Juanita Broadderick feels you tried to intimidate her into silence about Bill raping her in the 1970s. You are no woman of courage... Just an egomaniacal manipulator... 

Two interesting updates: New York Post "Bill Cosby's wife says accusers consented to drugs and sex"  and Justin Raimondo writes Donald Trump: A False Flag Candidate? A warmongering racist lunatic lets loose – and he’s crazy like a fox.  So he is just as dangerous merely running as winning...

One Flag Down, Hundreds More to Go!

Speaking of flags, per the July 4th image below... Right now the confederate flag is coming down in South Carolina.  Good riddance.  As any good libertarian knows, that flag and all flags symbolize the RIGHTS of STATES to get away with as much oppression as they can fool or bully the people who live under them to accept.

The civil war was a war for states' rights, not individual rights, as slaves, Native Americans and women of the time could tell you. The states didn't want the federal government imposing those economic restrictions and tariffs either, they wanted the STATES to impose most laws and taxes.

Slave states that pushed that STATE RIGHT to the point of secession were dealt with harshly by the federal government.  Slave states that did not secede were allowed to keep their slaves a couple years longer than those that did.  So it was a war to free the slaves of SOME states...  It wasn't a war for individual rights, but what war ever really is?

War is about economic and political elites trying to control other peoples and territories, and kill or drive off those not willing to live under the yoke of the state and its by-the-elite-and-for-the-elite laws. As the Eastern Russian speaking Ukrainians, Palestinians concentrated in camps by Israel, Kurds suppressed by several states, Sunnis oppressed by Shiites and Shiites oppressed by Sunnis, Tibetans, Scotlanders, Catalandians in Spain, etc etc etc can tell you.

My two music videos below express my sentiments on the matter... Or see my sorely-needing-updating-revamping site Secession.Net!

The Declaration's most significant point...

Let's not forget the MOST significant sentence in and point of the Declaration of Independence...

Psychotic male strikes again.... It's Patriarchy, Stupid!!!!

Charleston AME Church

Yup, another young psychotic male shoots up a bunch of people, and what is the conversation always about? Gun violence. Gun control. Racism. Supremacism. Police violence. Gang violence. Drug violence. Terrorism. ISIS. US/Israeli imperialism. Ukrainian right sector. Sometimes they even mention mental issues or prisons that only create more skilled criminals. Some non-mainstream media sources mention which anti-depression drugs the psychos were on when they committed their crimes.

But what do all these males have in common? THEY ARE MALES!!!  Products of the psychotic psycho-dynamic called PATRIARCHY.  One gets so tired of having to analyze and categorize and denounce each and ever incident. Sure, women commit violent crimes, but it's usually under the influence of some guy or a result of postpartum depression.

Radical means getting to the root. And the root of human suffering is the psychotic IDEA that dominant males should rule (whether they pose as males or transgenders) just because they are stronger and have a bit more testosterone than females.  And everyone else should behave according to whatever the male-defined ideology is regarding sex/gender, race, religion, culture, politics, economics, etc. --- or else.   And thus we get a world of woe.  

 Wake up, women and rationale men, raise your consciousnesses, transcend all the gender stereotypes, live, love and cry in a healthy manner...

Defense Dept. admits US supported Islamic State vs. Syria...

Foreign Policy Journal reports that Defense Intelligence Agency memos obtained by Judicial Watch show that, to quote the most explicit one from 2012:

“THE WEST, GULF COUNTRIES, AND TURKEY [WHO] SUPPORT THE [SYRIAN] OPPOSITION… THERE IS THE POSSIBILITY OF ESTABLISHING A DECLARED OR UNDECLARED SALAFIST PRINCIPALITY IN EASTERN SYRIA (HASAKA AND DER ZOR), AND THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT THE SUPPORTING POWERS TO THE OPPOSITION WANT, IN ORDER TO ISOLATE THE SYRIAN REGIME…”.

This just confirms the message of Ben Swann's video "Truth in Media: Origin of ISIS" with Antiwar.com's Angela Keaton which traces previously know information about the US involvement. A libertarian, Swan does news on RT.com now. He'll be heading to the camps with the rest of us when the whip comes down...

The dreams of the Sixties' sixty-somethings

I loved the ending of AMC's MAD MEN. Screwed up adman Don Draper OOOming happily on a California hilltop - and the last scene is "Buy the World A Coke" advert.  In the story he was supposed to be in charge of the CocaCola account - if he ever returned to the advertising firm from playing hippy hooky. Artistic license of course, not the real story. 

I worked for several months in 1972 in one of the biggest agencies in New York City and it sure brought back old memories. Except by then most of the younger secretaries ran around bra-less and in jeans. See photo of me holding what we used to smoke in the creative department.  And lots of other places in the building.

Just because the revolution of love, peace and non-aggression didn't happen after the famous "Buy the world a coke" advertisement below, doesn't mean there aren't lots of people who remember there was such a dream from the generation of us Sixties, Sixty-somethings. Including still held by the younger generation which the show's producers and writers represent. So let's chalk it up as one more win for higher consciousness and liberty!

Lusty month of May....

Where did April go? May is my favorite month, being a lusty taurus the bull as I am...

Obviously I have a variety of profound thoughts I express elsewhere, but just to make my fan club happy, here are some relevant memes of interest...

 

 

Hmmm, must have used THAT one before...

Note: I'm sitting on lots of rants against sexism and Racism but too busy doing something about them... the oppression never stops...

OMUC! Israel has nuclear weapons!!

Oh my universal consciousness! The US government finally has released to Americans its evidence that Israel has nuclear weapons.  

Grant Smith of the Institute for Research:Middle East Policy tells the story of how Smith's Freedom of Information Act request finally produced the evidence. Antiwar.com has a good update article about it “End of Israeli ‘Nuclear Ambiguity’ Good For Peace: Can also benefit reporting, public policy debate and taxpayers”.  The mainstream media seem to have largely ignored the story, but what do you expect of state controlled media? The US government and Israel's agents in the US. Ugh....

How long before Israel attacks Iran and starts war with Russia? Will Israel use its Samson Option and bomb Moscow so Moscow bombs the US?  I wonder if there's a betting pool on that - and how to collect the money if you win.  Or maybe a place in a good bomb shelter - if you can get there on time...

Update: Congress dancing to Netanyaha's nuclear tune...

Or as JustIn Raimondo at Antiwar.com says: "When War Comes We Know Who To Blame". He also wants to prosecute members of congress who sabotage a deal with Iran for treason. And don't forget all those Israeli lobbyists and Netanyahu apologists.

Post-nuclear war: horrific diseases and genetic deformities

The video doesn't mention that these horrible disease, now experienced by millions in the world's poorest countries, will become far more prevalent in the after math of nuclear war. Even a war with only 100 nuclear explosion could lead to mass famine worldwide. In a larger war, nuclear destruction of large cities will kill at least half of all physicians and destroy most medical facilities and suppliers in the affected nations.  Radiation will lead to an explosion of genetic mutations worldwide. Horrific deformities in newborns will become even more prevalent and horrific than those seen here. Of course, most such children, and even those with more minor deformities, will be quietly allowed to die or put to death soon after birth, as they were before medical advances.  See relevant articles on the latter here and here. Lots more online.


Here are just a few mostly mainstream articles about the rising threat of world nuclear war, most published over the last year... Remember 2015 is the 70th anniversary of the use of relatively tiny nuclear bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
* Five Ways Nuclear Armageddon Was Almost Unleashed
* Chance of nuclear war is greater than we think
* Two Billion At Risk: The Threat of Limited Nuclear War
* Remembering Hiroshima: Nuclear abolition and the will of the people
* As Hiroshima Day dawns, why are we still tempting nuclear fate?
* Life after a nuclear war revealed: Computer models reveal Earth would suffer a 20-year-long winter and worldwide famine; Their research looked at the detonation of 100 'small' nuclear warheads
* Nuclear doom lurks in U.S. faceoff with Russia over Ukraine
* Vladimir Putin says Russia was preparing to use nuclear weapons 'if necessary' and blames US for Ukraine crisis
* Briefing: The world is facing a growing threat of nuclear war
* The new nuclear age A quarter of a century after the end of the cold war, the world faces a growing threat of nuclear conflict

Update: And let's not forget that in even a small nuclear exchange a lot of nuclear power plants will melt down, either because of direct damage or damage to the energy supplies keeping the nuclear reactor core cooled.  And while a hydrogen bomb may produce a massive explosion, it contains only 10 - 20 pounds of radioactive material. Nuclear power plant facilities often contain tons of active, used and stored nuclear materials. Once there is a relatively small power plant explosion affecting the surrounding facilities, the materials will burn for years, releasing their poisonous radioactivity for decades or longer. Thousands of square miles of land surrounding and downwind from the hundreds of plants will be contaminated. Wind and water will circulate radioactivity around the planet. More information on the number of plants worldwide here and here.

Just one particularly graphic scenario is below, for when power is out all over the world (in the fantasy scenario where all humans just disappear). At least National Geographic had the sense to portray what would really happen without humans maintaining sensitive and dangerous infrastructure. Geomagnet storms knocking out power over wide swaths of the planet could have a similar effect. So could worldwide economic catastrophe, energy shortages, pandemic disease killing off nuclear technicians, widely dispersed earthquakes and tsunamis, asteroid strikes, and all manner of "apocalypse".  For real life meltdowns that already happened see youtube videos on Chernobyl and Fukushima disasters.

"Rising of the Moon" - worldwide...

It's never too late for a woman of 50+ percent Irish descent to catch up on her Irish history (or be reminded of what she's forgotten). Several Turner Classic movies on "Irish Day" (as I call it, having abandoned the Pope 51 years ago) reminded me of the fight against British oppression in Ireland. My grand-mothers on both sides being pure Irish, I certainly got a feeling for rebellion, and a negative opinion of the British in Ireland. It wasn't til my twenties I read deeply of the subject, factoids mostly forgotten in my sixties. (Wikipedia does have it's uses as a review. Of course, some biographies are lyrical poems to the fallen rebels. But what the hey...) I won't dwell on the fact that most of them were violent patriarchs, of course. Or that an updated version of the song below really must get rid of those pikes... Plus one of my own rebellious songs below it. Haven't quite written the theme song for nonviolent radical decentralist libertarian secessionists worldwide - or have I?

Women rising up against sexism...

I'm a few hours late with an "International Women's Day" posting.  Women really have been rising up worldwide the last year or so, as I may detail later. (Meanwhile see this Wikipedia article which some mean guys wanted to delete.)

Some of this year's women's day themes were "Make it happen", "We're Not There Yet", "Lean In" and lots of others spread over social media.  Below are some graphics from various programs worldwide. So many voluntary endeavors I've been involved with turned bad because of rampant patriarchal duels for power and accompanying sexism that drove out so many women and the more sensible men. Anti-sexism work seems to be the number one effort I keep coming back to. But more on that in future days.