Doug's Darkworld

Washington has lived in a self created fantasy world for about 100 years now, and every time reality has threatened to overturn their narrative, they’ve pretty much doubled down on it. Sadly most of the American public has bought into the fantasy narrative, and cheers on whatever war is being currently touted by Washington as “The good fight.” There was a brief period during and immediately after the disastrous Vietnam War when some Americans became aware their government was lying, but the corporate takeover of America’s mainstream media had pretty much shut that down by 1980 or so. Phew, the wars continue and the corporate profits roll in. And now in Ukraine, possibly the most fantasy based war yet, where what we hear on the “news” is almost pure drivel.

Here is an excellent article that goes into a lot of historical detail about how we got into this mess: Washington Is Delirious With War Fever – For No Reason of Homeland Security. One of the most interesting parallels is the end of WW1 and the Collapse of the Soviet Union. In both cases the victors drew lines on the map with almost no consideration for the facts on the ground, instead they were drawn up for imperial ambitions, and often in the case of America, for domestic political concerns. Pretty much like all of European history, except in the past the winners they didn’t pretend they were the good guys creating a better world. World War Two was almost entirely because of the horrific conditions forced on Germany by the Treaty of Versailles after World War One; and right now it’s looking like World War Three might very well ultimately result from the horrible conditions placed on Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Another curious point the article makes is that the Ukrainian military has been all but destroyed, and it really hasn’t impeded the Russian advance much. One certainly wouldn’t know that from western media coverage, where the plucky Ukrainians are valiantly defending their independence from Russian aggression. Putin has announced he is limiting military activity around Kyiv and going to concentrate on the Donbass and Crimea. If I had to guess now, I’d say that unless Ukraine agrees to Russia’s demands, which are perfectly reasonable despite the hysterics emanating from Washington, Putin will simply occupy the Russian majority areas of Eastern Ukraine. That would give him the buffer he wanted and protect the Russians living in such areas. The last thing Putin wants is to occupy all of Ukraine and end up with an endless guerilla war.

Would Washington accept a defacto Russian victory? Not sure they would have much choice, sanctions aren’t going to stop Russia, in fact it can well be argued that the sanctions will cause far more harm to the world economy than Russia’s economy. Cutting off one’s nose to spite one’s face so to speak. You’d think by now that Americans would realize just how counterproductive sanctions really are. From Cuba, Iraq, Iran, to North Korea sanctions have done nothing but hurt the poor in those countries but make their people and governments more determined to resist US hegemony. Alas Washington isn’t worried about effectiveness, as long as the war profiteering continues forever, all good.

Meanwhile, in other world affairs, the news from Antarctica is extremely grim. Background: Antarctica is essentially composed of two ice sheets, the WAIS and the EAIS. Until now, the effects of global warming have largely been confined to the west, as the WAIS is considerably less stable than the EAIS. When the WAIS slides into the ocean, the world’s sea levels will rise about 3.3 m (11 ft). To say this would be a global catastrophe is an understatement. And to date there is no understanding of how likely this is to happen anytime soon, but scientists are gravely concerned that the collapse is already underway.

Until now the EAIS was thought to be much more stable than the WAIS, in fact it was considered by many to be effectively invulnerable to global warming. That may be about to change as East Antarctica has been hit by unprecedented warming, and this just happened: Ice Shelf Collapse in East Antarctica. Yes, an ice shelf on the edge of the EAIS has collapsed, catching scientists by complete surprise. While it seems unlikely that the EAIS will collapse anytime soon, if it does the results would be far worse than the collapse of the WAIS. If the EAIS collapses, it could raise global sea levels as much as 53.3 m (175 ft). IE, most of the world’s great cities, as well as many entire countries would be inundated.

So yes, while America argues about Oscar slapping, we are sleepwalking into nuclear war and catastrophic global warming. Woohoo! What a time to be alive. There is a silver lining though, maybe Biden is smarter than I imagine. Even a modest nuclear war would cause dramatic global cooling, a nuclear winter lasting years. No more global warming. Brilliant!

Copyright © 2022 Doug Stych. All rights reserved.

Image: Self explanatory. Public domain image found on Snappygoat, no attribution required.