Category Archives: The Ukraine.

THE BEADY EYE ASK’S. WHAT DO WE KNOW ABOUT CULTURES COLLIDE THAT SHAPE OUR WORLD?

29 Sunday Jan 2023

Posted by in 2023 the year of disconnection., CULTURES COLLIDE, The Russia Cultures, The Ukraine.

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( Ten minute read)

It is not my intention with this post to examine the history of countries but to look at what we might perceive is the culture of a people of a country as we might see it to day.

LET’S START WITH THE RUSSIA CULTURES.

Russians have always fascinated the West, and countless stereotypes exist about Russia and Russian people.

While some are not too far from the truth, others have no grounding in reality.

The vast majority of us have never visited Russia or for that matter never meet a Russian.

Most of us perceive its culture through the medium of cinema, Doctor Zhivago, War & Peace (1968), Stalingrad etc.

( Here a few other, those highlighted the best of the crop)

Nicholas and Alexandra,  Brother – Brat (1997)  Brat 2(2000)  The Dawns Here Are Quiet, Arrhythmia, 12, Leviathan, Irony of Fate, Man with a Movie Camera (1929) Operation Y and Shurik’s Other Adventures (1965) Andrei Rublev (1966) The Mirror (1975) Moscow Does Not Believe In Tears (1979) Hipsters (2008) Battleship Potemkin (1925) Storm Over Asia (1928) Outskirts (1933) The Cranes are Flying (1957) Night Watch (2004), Aimez-ous- les- uns- autres, Hedgehog in the Fog – Yuri Norstein, (1975) The last of the Czars ( 1920)

Most depict a ruthless culture, as the basic traits of the Russian character, which were visible hundreds of years before Lenin and Karl Marx – Communist, – Ivan the Terrible – out of which at the same time we had Tshaikowski, Peter the Great, Rachmaninov, Chekhov, Tolstoy, Dostoievski, Sakharov, Pasternak, Solzhenitsyn.

The Russian character has been determined to some extent by unrelenting autocratic and governance over many centuries.

However the two main factors in the formation of Russia to day, are it’s vastness and harsh climate, which bread a sense of vulnerability, remoteness, that contribute to is hostility to outsiders.

This vastness has being exploited by not just Tsars, but the Orthodox church producing people like Rasputin who symbolised everything that was wrong with imperial government.

But the culture of the country itself, came from a complicated interplay of native Slavic cultural material and borrowings from a wide kaleidoscope of foreign cultures.  All of which exploited the pathetic backward peasants with indoctrinations, deception, bulling, and taxes.

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A vast country.

Russia has been the biggest country in the world since the 16th century when Russian Cossacks conquered lands on the other side of the Ural Mountains in Siberia and the Far East. These regions account for 77 percent of Russia’s total area.

With 17,125,191 km2, it borders more countries than any other country in the world. It can accommodate India five times, France – 26 times, Germany – 47 times, England – 70 times.  1.7 times bigger than United States.

With a  population of over 150m, it is thought that over 81% speak the official language of Russian as their first and only language but there are over 100 minority languages spoken in Russia today.

It can boast a long tradition of excellence in every aspect of the arts and sciences.

Once the preeminent republic of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (U.S.S.R.; commonly known as the Soviet Union), Russia became an independent country after the dissolution of the Soviet Union in December 1991. (During the Soviet era most customs and traditions of Russia’s imperial past were suppressed.)

Although a majority of Russians are nonbelievers, religious institutions have filled the vacuum created by the downfall of communist ideology.

While Russians and Americans are destined by history and location to see the world in a very different manner, I believe that before the current war in the Ukraine there were sufficient commonality of thinking to provide a basis for fruitful cooperation, before the cold war and the birth of NATO.

Russian values are essentially human, with their hero’s universally authentic, their manifestations and symbols richly artistic and aesthetic.

I believe to succeed with Russia one must maintain theses qualities in clear focus, as opposed to paying to much attention to the enigmatic and often paradoxical aspects of their behaviour and current attitudes.

Although many people related Russia with vodka, it is not only about that. This country has too much history, and it is reflected until now.

Understandably, there’s a widening cultural gap between the older folk in Russia who lived through the Soviet era and the younger generation who’ve embraced the new, cosmopolitan Russia.

No matter how ethnically or religiously heterogeneous some countries might be, they invariably define themselves as ‘nations’ and consider their states ‘national’ or ‘nation states.’

People’ and ‘nation’ are synonyms here, and it is these two categories that impart primordial legitimacy to a modern state.

What does a Russian look like?

The stereotype view:

Bald headed –  Military belt – Bribery  – Vodka swilling –  comrade ‘Russkii’ called Ivan (with over 22 million people (about 15 percent of the total population living below the poverty level.) The word ‘Russkii’ referred more to local customs and culture, while the word ‘Rossiyan’ referred to the whole nation.

Ask yourself this question.

Today’s independent Russia is a country that has risen anew. It has been obliged to solve, practically from scratch, the question of its place in the world — what unites the people who inhabit it, what kind of relationship these people have with the state and what they expect from it.

Russia is always choosing its own “third way.”

While it is a well-known fact that Vladimir Putin worked as a Soviet spy in former East Germany.

Love him or hate him, it’s hard to deny that Putin has made a huge impact on his country and the world.

Under Putin, the Anglo-Russian relationship has turned into a paradox:

With its Oligarchs Russia has failed to shake off accusations of being fundamentally dishonest.

Those who were surprised by Putin’s annexation of Crimea and the subsequent Russian-fuelled conflict in eastern Ukraine should have remembered: six years earlier he set the mould for the “Putin doctrine” in Georgia.

Increasingly hemmed in by NATO’s advance. Russia would use troops to protect its interests in a sphere of influence out side its frontiers.

The Ukrainian conflict has ruptured relations between Russia and the west over the past year, but in fact it is merely the latest example of Putin asserting Russia’s “rights” in its former backyard, known in Russia as “the near abroad”.

Putin’s position has huge backing in Russia – and plenty of support from those in the west who believe that NATO only exists to deal with the insecurities that its existence creates.

The charitable view of Putin’s foreign policy is that he stands up to western hegemony and, with China, acts as a balance to the overweening military and political power of the US/NATO.

He can plausibly claim to have history on his side in opposing Washington over the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, but  his stance on Syria and unwavering support for Bashar al-Assad has been open to greater criticism.

Under Yeltsin, Russian pursued a policy of grudging cooperation with NATO.

All that changed under Putin. Since his first interview with the BBC, Putin has insisted that NATO’s eastward expansion represents a threat to his country.

I understand that history is about politics. Since war is a continuation of politics by other means there is something in Russian culture today making most Russians—even highly educated people—incapable of simple manifestations of human solidarity..

Russians remain largely a community of subjects with low public trust and solidarity. If they lack these when it comes to their own relations, why should they show solidarity with their neighbours?

Russian oppositionists believe that the essence of Russia does not lie in its “brainless leaders” but in Bulgakov, Akhmatova, Mandelshtam, Brodsky and other geniuses of Russian culture. Their legacy is everlasting, and in a way, they are the real Russia.

In the minds of many Russians, Russia is not just another country. It is a country with a great mission—namely, to save the world from the corrupting influence of the spoiled West. For this reason, all things Russian must be great: its territory, its army, even its language has to be (as one Russian genius put it) “great and mighty.” Neighbouring nations who reject this great mission are, at best, silly children in need of education, at worst, scoundrels and traitors who must be decimated, deported, and so on.

That might be so.

In either case, they cannot be left to their own devices to sort out their own happiness.

Accordingly, many Russians are prepared to suffer privations themselves or inflict equal suffering on their neighbours, if it proves Russia’s greatness to the world.

Cultures colloid and people die. Moreover, Putin is not just collective—he is repetitive. In other words, behind the real Vladimir Putin stands the collective Putin of the Russian people. Until this changes unfortunately it will remain a percolating philistine, separate civilization, vindicated by NATO to which “Western rules” do not therefore apply.

Russia now needs to review its ideological and doctrinal documents underpinning the ongoing effort to achieve civic solidarity and national identity.

It’s just that it doesn’t make much of a difference for Ukrainians, not then and especially not today.

The third-largest ethnic group in Russia, are Ukrainians making up about 2% of the population – around 1.9 million.

Your and our silence on the war is pitiable.Ukraine Live

Aa a result of the supply of Western advanced weapons to Ukraine, we know that  Russia will be “moved from a concept of special operation to a concept now of a war against NATO and the West.

“Davay!” (Let’s do it), “Poekhali!” (Let’s roll), or even the Soviet-era, “Vzdrognem!” (literally “Let’s shudder,”)

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people.https://youtu.be/1z9zZOUlPuw

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THE BEADY EYE SAY’S: THE UKRAINE WAR IS NOW A WAR WHERE THERE CAN BE NO WINNERS. HERE ARE SOME ENTRENCHED TRUTHS.

26 Thursday Jan 2023

Posted by in 2023 the year of disconnection., The Ukraine., Uncategorized

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( Six minute read) 

The war is now in its ninth month and has a long way to go, it isn’t remotely over.

In other words, the beginning of 2023 in the Ukraine looks a lot like 2022.

It has triggered a global energy crisis and supply chain problems that have halted post-pandemic recovery in many poorer countries.

The war has evolved into one of attrition, grinding on with no end on the immediate horizon.

Putin’s idea that was, the Ukrainian population would either accept their fate as a Russian colony or perhaps even welcome it, is a farcical as Hitlerism vision of a fatherland.

The fighting in Ukraine is effectively now divided into two theatres:

The Donbas region in the east, much of which Russia has captured, where Ukrainian forces are seeking to slow Russia’s advance, and the south, where Ukrainian forces are preparing to launch a counteroffensive to recapture lost territory, with a possible renewed Russian offensive in the east.

At the moment, though, that path seems firmly closed off with the arrival of German manufactured tanks, and American tanks promised if they are supplied in the near future.  

If the Ukrainian counteroffensive succeeds, Putin could come to deem the cost of victory in the east too high. 

If the counteroffensive fails.

A failed offensive that ends in a retreat would be disaster for Ukraine, leaving it militarily weaker and more diplomatically isolated come spring.

Alternatively, Ukraine could become a victim of its own success.

If its forces encroach too far on what Russia may soon officially designate its own territory in the Donbas, Putin could retaliate by using low-yield nuclear weapons, which are designed to be used on the battlefield.

So should a Ukrainian offensive roll over this new self-declared border, the use of nuclear weapons to break up the attack will be on the table. This is not unthinkable — it is only unpalatable.

The Kremlin’s possession of nuclear arsenal means no one can force it to stand down without total annihilation Nuclear explosion

If anything we are closer to the war spreading.

Short of  annihilation this is no longer just a question of who beats whom. 

 

The war asks, how much are we willing to tolerate the unchecked and aggressive use of force, particularly across national boundaries by bigger powers.

However reconsidering the West role in the democratic world after its messy and chaotic exit from Afghanistan.

Inevitably this will mean serious reflection at its (ongoing) history of propping up dictators and turning a blind eye to human rights abuses in the name of diplomacy.

For the war to truly end and for peace to be stable, there has to be some change in Moscow.

The quickest and least bloody path to ending the conflict runs through a settlement negotiated by both sides.

At some point the supply of Western weaponry will dwindle.

Putin’s willingness to escalate and target civilian infrastructure, shows that his all or nothing attitude has not abated.

Remember that he has other, less risky means of terrifying Ukraine and intimidating the West. Chemical weapons.

Putin has made it clear that Russia has no intention of retreating. 

Someone is dreaming or receiving the wrong message that events suggest the war is over. I’ve seen nothing to indicate that any administration has any war termination policies other than the problem is that much of the discussion has relied on a series of unstated and unexamined assumptions about war termination and escalation.

Scrutinizing these assumptions, however, reveals two conclusions.

First, Russia does have a plausible path to victory in the conflict, and will likely prevail absent a significant increase in Western military assistance. Second, the Russians do not have an effective counter to increased Western aid to Ukraine.

If we accept this line of argument, it seems clear that absent a significant increase in outside support for Ukraine—minimally, a dramatic increase in supply of military equipment, but more likely some sort of direct intervention in the form of a peacekeeping mission or imposition of a no-fly zone—Russia will ultimately prevail.

The challenge, however, is to control escalation to avoid the possibility of, in the worst case, a general nuclear exchange. The fear i seems to be that Russia will escalate the conflict, either in intensity or geographic scope in response to an increase in aid or direct intervention.

But why do we think this would be the likely Russian response? 

Russia could escalate to nuclear weapons, of course. But to what end? Can Russia win a nuclear exchange?

It is difficult to construct a plausible argument regarding that.

There is no nuclear option, whether tactical or general, that provides Russia with a war-winning solution, except in the case that a Russian use of nuclear weapons induces the rest of the world to surrender to Russia’s demands.

The issue of escalation has to be placed in the context of strategic logic.

Escalation is a danger particularly when one side or the other possesses some degree of escalation dominance—that is, that escalation changes the conflict in a way that benefits one side or another. There is no evidence, however, that Russia possesses any degree of escalation dominance at present.

On the contrary, in the current situation, Russia benefits to the extent the conflict remains Russia against Ukraine.

Let us make no mistake.

Russia is currently on a path to victory because its strategy is now grounded in a logic of terror and brutalization. Every day that Russia is able to strike Ukrainian civilians with near impunity pushes Ukraine’s leadership closer to the need to surrender in order to prevent a virtual, or literal, genocide. The only way to reverse this is a dramatic increase in outside assistance to Ukraine.

The Russians may be brutal, but they are not irrational.

As stretched as they already are, the last thing they need or can sustain is a wider conflict. Escalation dominance rests with NATO and the West. We should take advantage of it. We just aren’t being helpful in terms of encouraging an end to hostilities.

And there’s a lot we could be doing to spur negotiations along.

In any case, there is no reason to assume that irrationality or a desire to die a martyr’s death animates Putin.

Wars often continue beyond the point at which, with hindsight, they might in terms of rational strategy have been better stopped. the ending of wars is often associated with some form of regime change.

For Putin, whatever his original goals for the war, the continuation in fighting is now essentially about regime survival. Even if the costs of the war continue to grow, and even if some kind of political settlement could be reached, Putin is likely to continue to fight in the hope of obtaining a settlement that can plausibly be portrayed as a victory, because without this his political position may be fatally weakened.

In ending the fighting between Russia and Ukraine, traditional structural obstacles to conflict termination are likely to create major challenges, irrespective of the mounting costs for both sides.

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THE BEADY EYE SAY’S. WE ENTERING AND ERA OF MORE WARS. WE WILL NOT ERADICATE VIOLENT CONFLICT IN OUR LIFETIME.

05 Thursday Jan 2023

Posted by in #whatif.com, Civilization., The Ukraine.

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( Twenty minute read)

The major cause of war is war.

Today’s wars are mostly undeclared, undefined and inglorious affairs typically involving multiple parties, foreign governments, proxy forces, covert methods and novel weapons.

We have just had the season of good will, with every war movie made from Dunkirk to Dancing with the wolves’ presented on TV as Entertainment.

It is sad that we have to continue to confront the pernicious argument of the “deep roots” of warfare in humanity.  There is absolutely no scientific evidence in either biology or archaeology (the only two disciplines that really count in this debate) for human warfare going back more than 10,000 years.

While in the real world we go about our lives as if it is the norm to witness more and more Conflicts/Wars.

The world is scary enough without forever imagining smoking guns morphing into mushroom clouds.

If one quality characterizes our wars today, it’s their endurance.  They never seem to end. Our media outlets, intelligence agencies, politicians, foreign policy establishment, and bureaucracy are so intertwined with military priorities and agendas as to be inseparable from them.

One does not have to go back too far to remember hearing.  If we withdraw from Afghanistan, the government of Hamid Karzai will collapse, the Taliban will surge to victory, al-Qaeda will pour into Afghan safe havens, and Pakistan will be further destabilized, its atomic bombs falling into the hands of terrorists.

The truth is that no one really knows what would happen if a war starts.Nuclear war by StefyTheSerbian on

60% of the world’s wars have lasted for at least a decade,

Why?

Because we’ve managed to isolate war’s physical and emotional costs however we do well to have an understanding of how they broke out in the first place.

Northern Ireland:

Started on Oct 1968 when a banned civil rights march in Londonderry led to clashes between police and protesters, it sparked widespread disorder and rioting across Northern Ireland. For many, this is the moment 30 years of violent conflict known as the Troubles began.

Ethiopia’s Tigray war:

A dispute over territory along their shared border was the cause of a war fought between Ethiopia and Eritrea from 1998 until 2000.

The roots of this crisis can be traced to Ethiopia’s system of government. Started on 4 November, when Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed ordered a military offensive against regional forces in Tigray.

Afghanistan:

America’s Afghan war is now its longest ever, part of the open-ended US “global war on terror” launched after the 2001 al-Qaida attacks. The US invasion initially aimed to kill or capture the al-Qaida terrorists responsible for the 9/11 attacks. But it quickly expanded into a “regime change” operation tasked with eliminating the Taliban and creating a functioning, democratic state.

Turmoil in Libya actually began in October 2011 when the dictator Muammar Gaddafi was overthrown in a popular revolt backed by the UK, France and the US. Libya’s civil war entered its 7th year this month.

Yemen:

The conflict is in its sixth pitiless year. The Yemeni government, led by exiled president Abd Rabbu Mansour Hadi, and the Houthi rebel movement, which represents Yemen’s Zaidi Shia minority – are backed by regional rivals Saudi Arabia and Iran respectively.

Syria:

Started with an uprising against the autocratic presidency of Bashar al-Assad formed part of the 2011 Arab Spring revolts. It quickly turned into full-scale war as Assad’s regional foes, notably Saudi Arabia, seized a chance to overthrow a regime allied with Iran. Since then upwards of half a million people are estimated to have died.

Democratic Republic of Congo:

How this started is Anyone’s guess. The country experienced an extraordinary civil war between 1997 and 2003 when an estimated five million people died. Continuing instability in lawless areas of north-eastern DRC bordering Uganda stems from that period. Across the country the security situation has deteriorated markedly as government authority has collapsed, emboldening rival militia groups who hold sway over large areas of territory, often competing for the DRC’s rich resources.

Israel-Palestine conflict:

Started after world war two when Jews fleeing Europe where given Arabic land now conflict over who owns the region.

In Israel-Palestine, war – or rather the absence of peace – has characterised life since 1948.

Somalia:

Somalis have endured 40 years of fighting. These are but a few examples in a world where the idea of war without end seems to have become accepted, even normalised.

In the 19th and 20th centuries, broadly speaking, wars commenced and concluded with formal ultimatums, declarations, agreed protocols, truces, armistices and treaties.

Libya:

A classic case of a state of chaos deliberately fed and manipulated by external powers, in this instance Turkey, Qatar, Russia, Egypt and the UAE. Here, as elsewhere, rival rulers claim to be upholding order or fighting “terrorism” while, in reality, they seek to extend national influence and economic advantage. As long as these aims remain unmet, they show scant interest in peace.

Russia Ukraine war:

Started in 2014 after the people of Ukraine elected a new president, Petro Poroshenko. This was not welcomed by Russia, which saw Ukraine as its own territory. In response to the election, Russian troops invaded Ukraine and took control of Crimea.

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In most cases wars are initiated by governments, not by populations. And, most of the time, they are the result of disputes over resources and land, or of a government’s desire to increase its influence and power.

It binds people together – not just the army engaged in battle, but the whole community. It brings a sense of cohesion, with communal goals, and inspires individual citizens (not just soldiers) to behave honourably and unselfishly, in the service of a greater good. It supplies meaning and purpose, transcending the monotony of everyday life. Warfare also enables the expression of higher human qualities that often lie dormant in ordinary life, such as courage and self-sacrifice.

War used to creates a sense of unity in the face of a collective threat but now new technologies and weapons such as drones and cyber warfare are lowering the up-front cost of conflict while enlarging potential theatres of war. Global warming is turning the newly accessible Arctic into a vast, pristine battleground. Outer space presents infinite possibilities for violence.

For many people, if they are honest, war has a fatal attraction. As WB Yeats noted after the 1916 Easter Rising in Ireland, violent conflict can spawn a “terrible beauty” – a mix of fascination and horror that is difficult to forswear. This seems tantamount to suggesting that human beings fight wars because we enjoy doing so.

Warfare provides people with a semblance of psychological positivity in oppressed societies where other outlets are lacking but this sort of fatalism undermines efforts to achieve permanent peace.

Believe it or not it was not until  January 22, 2021, when the requires 50 states signed up to the he UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons it entry into force, and  became law.  AS IF PEOPLE MATTERED.

Let’s reject the idea that war is either admirable or good.

Let’s reverse the militarization of so many dimensions of our society.

Let’s recognize that expensive high-tech weapons systems are not war-winners.

Let’s retool our economy and reinvest our money, moving it out of the military-industrial complex and into strengthening our anaemic system of mass transit, our crumbling infrastructure, and alternative energy technology.

It’s time to make war a non-profit, last-resort activity.

Many people think that if war is ancient and innate, it must also be inevitable, militarism remains entrenched in modern culture however the archaeological record, for 190,000 years of human existence, there is simply no evidence of warfare in the human repertoire.

War stems primarily not from our warlike nature or competition for resources but from “the institution of war itself.” represented by NATO which lacks  factors that distinguish peaceful from nonpeaceful systems. These include “overarching common identity; positive social interconnectedness; interdependence; non-warring values and norms; non-warring myths, rituals, and symbols; and peace leadership. Only when we have a shared commitment to “non-warring norms and values,” which can make war within the system inconceivable.

War’s roots extend back hundreds of thousands or even millions of years, and that war is an adaptive trait, favoured by natural selection. The evidence however is overwhelming that war is a relatively recent cultural invention. War emerged toward the end of the Paleolithic era, and then only sporadically.

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We have to find alternative activities to give us that sense of feeling alive, of belonging and purpose.

If these needs are unsatisfied, and if there is an obvious enemy or oppressor to direct them towards, then warfare is almost inevitable.

We know that any stable, lasting peace depends on creating societies with a richness of opportunity and variety that can meet human needs. The fact that so many societies throughout the world fail to do this makes our future prospects of peace look very bleak.

So can we end wars?

Actually, that’s the wrong question. The right question is: How do we end war?

Ending war, which makes monsters of us, should be a moral imperative, as much as ending slavery or the subjugation of women Presently it can only be aspiration

As inequality is the root of violence, it is  also rooted in the climate crisis and resulting resource scarcity, poverty and dislocation.

Fitna  (which can mean both “charm, enchantment, captivation” and “rebellion, riot, discord, civil strife is a fitting word for describing not only the Islamic sphere but the troubled state of the world as a whole in 2020, beset as it is by wars without end.

Another related factor is the collapse of the western-led consensus favouring multilateral, collaborative approaches to international problems. This is matched by the parallel rise of authoritarian and populist regimes that prioritise narrow national interest over perceptions of the common good.

It is obvious that the invasion of the Ukraine by Russia has now turned into another proxy war.

Ukraine was a part of the Russian empire until the fall of the USSR in 1991. This war has been going on for seven years developing into an ugly strain of Ukrainian nationalism that made life difficult for ethnic Russians in Ukraine.

Ukraine has since tried to align itself with the West.

After citizen protests led to the removal of Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych in 2014 (who leaned toward Russia), Moscow annexed Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula. Last year, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy asked to be able to join the intergovernmental military alliance NATO.

Russia feels strongly against NATO’s eastward expansion. According to Russia, this would provide NATO members the opportunity to establish military bases in the region. 

Supplies of weapons and large-scale financial assistance are important, but not enough to bring a end to this war which is developing into a war conducted by drones, laptops, Mobil phones, in its current phase, the conflict appears to have become a war of attrition.

The current war will change the perception of traditional alliances, Russia’s containment and possible future threats.

The war will continue to transform the world.

Depending on when and how it ends, and providing that Heir Putin doesn’t push the  button, we will find out how far back history has rolled for Europe.

On a global level the war may be seen as a manifestation of power transition and a struggle for dominance. No military is perfect. Putin has repeatedly made nuclear threats since he began the invasion of Ukraine.A Russian nuclear missile is seen during a parade in Moscow.

All wars come to an end, either by the fighting reaches a stalemate, but a frozen conflict that can heat up or cool down depending on the range of factors.

Not all wars end with a clear victory for one side but with this conflict, a peace deal, though a settlement is difficult,  because of Russia’s and Ukraine’s different goals and what they both view as their rightful territory.

It is unlikely now that Russia would be able to turn the war around entirely and achieve its original aims, but it could accept a “victory” in the form of a peace deal in which it takes more territory than it had before the invasion began.

As long as Putin is at the country’s helm, it would be very unlikely that Russian forces would retreat entirely. The chances of him being overthrown in a coup are perhaps higher than ever, but this will not happen while the war remains active. However, a total Russian retreat could be possible if Putin were to be ousted or die.

Ukrainians believe outright victory is possible.

In the end countries will use Ukraine as a battering ram for reasons of their own.

NATO declaring war on Russia would be too create a major war that could pull in other countries like China. 

The notion of Russia’s absolute incompetence must be eliminated before Heir Putin is back into pushing a button.

If a year or more of fighting will achieve nothing, then why prolong the bloodshed?

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THE BEADY EYE LOOKS AT THE STATE OF THE WORLD. THE GOOD. THE BAD. AND THE UGLY.

31 Monday Oct 2022

Posted by in 2022: The year we need to change., Aid, Civilization., State of the world, Technology v Humanity, The Microchip., The state of the World., The world to day., THIS IS THE STATE OF THE WORLD.  , Twitter, We can leave a legacy worthwhile., WHAT IS TRUTH, What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage., World Leaders, World View.

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( Fifteen minute read)

We all know that Global leaders face formidable challenges, from dizzying technological progress and geopolitical tension to climate change to growing inequality but ours is an age of culture wars, identity politics, nationalism and geopolitical rivalry, all driven by smartphones.

An age of division, within and among countries with a global downturn that has meant that many of the foundation stones that we used to mark adulthood no longer exist.

This means international treaties and agreements must be framed or reworked to be sensitive to these requirements, including those relating to trading rules, investment agreements, intellectual property regimes and not world aid budgets becoming trickles of political conscious. 

Monetary and financial policies need to be reoriented, to encourage greater inclusion of those excluded and to make the financial system one that provides financial security.

Of course the likely hood of achieving any of this in our life times is zero, and will remain so, till our goals in education changes from  needles consumption towards non-material goals, to protect the earth which we all rely on for life.

Indeed extreme wealth now needs to be eliminated and replaced by extreme generosity.

Prior to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the survival of an overarching concept of “one world” seemed at least conceivable, however difficult. But wars are transformative. The primacy of economics can no longer be assumed.

While technology continues its transformative march the Earth’s ecological and human systems are in severe crisis.

Although there is a wealth of information available, much of it is fragmented and the convergence of issues facing the earth are so interrelated that most of them cannot be fully understood out of context.10 Things Going On In The World Right Now That You Need To Know About

So here is some of that context:

THE UGLY:

33% of the world’s people live under authoritarian, non-democratic regimes.

On any given day at any given moment in your life, there are at least 15 wars and armed conflicts actively going on all around the world. Most are dismissed, forgotten, ignored and under-reported while the world stays busy looking the other way.

Civilians are being murdered, tortured and displaced due to terrorism, government instability and human rights violations. When these wars are completely forgotten and ignored, each and every death is even more tragic.

Over 100 million people live in slums.

3 billion of the world’s people (one-half) live in ‘poverty’ (living on less than $2 per day).

Poor countries (which contain 4/5th’s of the world’s people) pay the rich countries an estimated nine times more in debt repayments than they receive in aid

The richest 1% of the world’s people earned as much income as the bottom 57%. The wealth of the world’s 7.1 million millionaires ($27 trillion) equals the total combined annual income of the entire planet.

17 million people, including 11 million children, die every year from easily preventable diseases and malnutrition.

Nearly 160 million children are malnourished worldwide.

1.1 billion do not have safe drinking water. By 2025, at least 3.5 billion people or nearly 2/3rd’s of the world’s population will face water scarcity.

3.4 million people died prematurely as a result of outdoor air pollution.

The development and release of genetically engineered organisms and their products has proceeded globally at a rapid rate.

Millions of patents are in process and all living creatures are considered potential candidates for genetic modification and cultivation as bio-factories for human purposes and profit.

An estimated 27 million people are enslaved around the world, including an estimated 20 million people held in bonded labour (forced to work in order to pay off a debt, also known as ‘debt bondage’)..

700,000 people annually, and up to 2 million, mostly women and children, are victims of human trafficking worldwide (a modern form of slavery — bought, sold, transported and held against their will in slave-like conditions)..

About 246 million, or 1 out of 6, children ages 5 to 17 worldwide are involved in child labour.

275 million children never attend or complete primary school education. 870 million of the world’s adults are illiterate.

Half of the forests that originally covered 46% of the Earth’s land surface are gone.

Between 10 and 20 percent of all species will be driven to extinction in the next 20 to 50 years. 60% of the world’s coral reefs, which contain up to one-fourth of all marine species, could be lost in the next 20-40 years.

Bee numbers decreasing worldwide,

Global warming is expected to increase the Earth’s temperature by 3C (5.4F) in the next 100 years.

There are over 45 million refugees and internally displaced people in the world.

Desertification and land degradation threaten nearly one-quarter of the land surface of the globe.

Over 70,000 new chemicals have been brought into commercial production and released to the environment in the last 100 years.

Higher sea level (a consequence of climate change), particularly in low lying areas, will contaminate groundwater by pushing to the surface toxic substances that have been underground for many years.

THE BAD:.

Global co-operation remains essential. However deep the rifts become, we share this planet. We still need to avoid cataclysmic wars, economic collapse and, above all, destruction of the environment. None of this is at all likely without at least a minimum level of co-operation. Yet is that at all likely?  No.

Given the immense political and organisational challenges, the chances that humanity will prevent damaging climate change are slim.

The whole human race will run out of ‘Patience’ 

Smartphone is now ‘the place where we live’ however free speech is a power now being bought by the rich – Twitter – Elton Musk who will not ensure that unless it is controlled it will be offensive to someone.

Microchip technology has modified existing patterns of human activities such as personal, social, political, and economic spheres.

However making the production process safer for the environment might be the hardest problem they have faced.

Every microchip is a metropolis.

Unfortunately, like every city, these chips consume an immense amount of resources and generate truckloads of waste. The microchip is essentially made from sand—albeit sand that has been melted, purified, and refined until it is over 99.9999 percent pure silicon. Overall, a microchip is a structure that stands in abject defiance of the second law of thermodynamics: It creates a region of extreme order from a whole lot of chaos, and that does require a lot of energy.

The comforts of modern life gifted by these wonder chips come at the expense of a vast amount of resources.

One or more microchips runs every one of the 40 billion connected devices currently in use—a figure that’s expected to jump to 350 billion by 2030.

They have created a storm of microchip embedded devices which affect our daily lives.

There is enough depleted uranium in the world.

THE GOOD:

Even though it may feel there hasn’t been much uplifting news lately, there are still a lot of reasons to be optimistic.

The smartphone is changing the world, its vastly different uses are reducing corruption, enabling transparency, making it possible to document both good and evil political debate.

We’re close to eradicating some diseases, a vaccine against Malaria is one step closer.  Cancer deaths are dropping.

More and more people are moving to alternative media sources in order to find truth. We are seeing this happening in real time.

There is amazing amounts of information are at everyone’s fingertips, and instantaneous communication to almost anywhere is essentially free. We all live our lives awake and a sleep, in small bubble of self  awareness, unaffected or detached or deceived by a politically noxious combination of lies as to what is happing around us, till it comes home to roost, then its to late.

The word apocalypse has its roots in the Latin word apocalypses, meaning to uncover. That is what we are experiencing right now—the uncovering or revealing of the truth. The sooner we all come together to embrace this, the sooner it will become our reality.

All human comments appreciated . All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin 🚮

Contact: bobdillon33@gmail.com

THE BEADY EYE ASKS. WILL RUSSIA INVADING UKRAINE LEAD TO WW3?

16 Sunday Oct 2022

Posted by in #whatif.com, 2022: The year we need to change., Human Collective Stupidity., Mr Putin., Our Common Values., Reality., Russia / Ukraine ., RUSSIA/ UKRAINE/ US/ NATO/ EU., Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Telling the truth., The cost of war., The state of the World., The Ukraine., The world to day., Truth, Unanswered Questions., Uncategorized, War, We can leave a legacy worthwhile., Where's the Global Outrage.

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No one knows and no one wants to find out.

Let’s cut right to the chase here:

The only certainty about the war over Ukraine is that all existing certainties have been shattered.

If one listens to main media it would be fair to say that it is in a warp way encouraging Mr Putin to use nuclear weapons, ( not that he needs encouragement )

So how worried should you be?   How does this end?

It is difficult to see how Putin “wins.” But he cannot accept defeat.

As long as there is no direct conflict between Russia and NATO then there is no reason for this crisis, bad as it is, to descend into a full-scale world war.

Is this true?

It’s always hard to predict what Mr. Putin is going to do, and anyone who says they know him really well … would not be telling you the complete truth.”

The hard facts are that this has now developed into a NATO backed war.

So what are the likely outcomes?

The spectrum of possible outcomes ranges from a volatile new cold or hot war involving the United States, Russia, and China; to a frozen conflict in Ukraine; to a post-Putin settlement in which Russia becomes part of a revised European security architecture.

That is as honest an assessment as anyone who isn’t Vladimir Putin can give you.

But the wild card here is the state of Putin’s mind.

The whole idea after the Second World War was we’re going to try to set up a system whereby we live in a world in which big countries cannot just decide we’re going to send in our military and take this territory that belongs to this other country has never worked.

There is almost zero mutual trust remaining between Russia and the West.

While the conflict is tragic for the Ukrainian people, it’s unlikely to lead to World War III because, at the moment, it appears that no world leaders want it to escalate to that degree, and efforts are being made to make sure fighting stays within Ukraine’s borders.

There are three major factors that make Europe today different from in the 1930s and ’40s and could prevent World War III.

The first is the NATO alliance.

The second factor is the presence of nuclear weapons.

The third is that the Ukraine is not a NATO member, so there is no formal obligation to come to its defence.

Where is this war going to go is however the big question keeping the world on edge:

It is fair to say that China or the USA would not allow their countries to be surrounded by nuclear missiles.

So be in now doubt that intellectual laziness, historical amnesia and dishonesty will take lives in the years to come.

History is indeed little more than the register of the crimes, follies and misfortunes of mankind.” – Edward Gibbon (1737-1794) or to quote the late Norman Mailer, “Whatever else it is, history is a bitch.”

There is a saying that nothing unites a country better than being invaded by an enemy but Putin’s actions have far-reaching implications for global politics and democracy.

This is a dangerous backdrop against which to have a blazing public row over who is to blame for the ongoing crisis in Ukraine.

Europeans need to ask themselves hard questions. Are they willing to confront Russia? Is Russia going to challenge the borders of NATO? And how should Europe respond?

The immediate question is how to diminish Russia’s ability to threaten its neighbours.

The West’s political, economic, and military posture toward Russia is obviously in a state of flux at the moment. As a result unlike the Soviet Union, Russia is no longer a global competitor to the United States and there is no strong ideological component that unifies and divides the international community with regard to Russia.

Rather, what we see is a revisionist Russia (with somewhat limited capabilities to project force beyond its borders) that is challenging core principles of the international community.

So we have a long and potentially very unsettled period ahead of us that no radiation will cure.

All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.

Contact: bobdillon33@gmail.com

THE BEADY EYE ASK’S. IS THERE AN INVISABLE AGENDA BEHIND THE RUSSIAN – URKRAIN INVASION.

26 Friday Aug 2022

Posted by in The cost of war., The Ukraine., Ukraine/Russian war., War

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( Three minute read) 

Is there now another epoch-making struggle going on in the background?

 Are we caught in-between globalist agenda for total control?

There have been many wars — terrible wars — fought on Planet Earth over the past 100 years.  We know that wars lead to deaths, destruction and lay the foundations for the next war.

The Ukraine conflict is fundamentally a war between East and West, between radically different cultures, different races, different religious orientations, and between very different people there is just no telling how this ongoing saga will end up.

However, the greatest war of them all could literally be around the corner, unless it is stopped by the people of this planet.Ukraine-9bd90

While there are several weighty co-factors at work, there are also numerous variables which can short-circuit the extremely precarious current trajectory toward full scale nuclear war.  

Were that to happen, this world can forget it ever existed and say goodbye to our cosmic identity.  

So what is behind this war or any war for that matter. 

Consciousness is limited by identity. and identity is limited by ignorance with most people tending to identify themselves with narrow categories – a nationality, a race, a religion, which leads not only to conflict but also to a stunting of imagination and potential. 

If we could widen our sense of identity, into the universe, we would  be saved from untold trial and tribulation.

When we see ourselves this way it would be the first steps towards identifying with our place in a universe ( that we have convincing evidence actually exists) in which no wars will change the light of different outcomes. 

Of course all of this is far in the future.   

It is clear that the Ukraine is shaping up to be the “War of the Millennium” and things will change very quickly depending on where one is domiciled on the planet. 

Why? 

Because globalization has inextricably interconnected the financial and economic sectors throughout the community of nations, each and every market is deeply affected by the other markets and the ongoing technospheric breakdown, which is now accelerating (due to Global Climate Change,) will only add more fuel to this fire.

In Vladimir Putin, the West is confronting a polished warrior who will not be intimidated or threatened, deceived or bamboozled, bulldozed or railroaded … as the Anglo-American Axis (AAA) does everywhere else on the Planet Earth.

Historically, Russia has always gone its own way.

After all, it is world supremacy vs. national sovereignty which is and has always really been at stake.

Given the realities of a much larger conflict going on in the Ukraine — one where East and West are at loggerheads in the most profound and fundamental ways — there is very little that can be done on the political level or diplomatic fronts … unless the West relents.   

This is a struggle for a new “indivisible world” includes “indivisible security”, “indivisible diplomacy” and “indivisible wealth”

The final breaking point has not yet arrived, but as the war intensifies the Ukraine appears to be the real location of Armageddon.

At present Ukraine is the very claw of a bird that has force the power of this world to get into a sanctions war, introduce sanctions that are unprofitable for themselves, or extremely unpleasant from the point of view of political consequences, and get a demonstration of the impossibility of achieving their goals by such methods.

Without Ukraine-2022, this would be impossible. This is exactly what are we starting to observe right now.

You don’t have to be told that it is very easy to start a war and a total other kettle of fish to stop.

Take the Iraq it started with Weapons of Mass Deception.  

The question is when should our hard earned income be paying for state-supported killing and the obscene loss of innocent lives, nattily called “collateral damage.”

When should we back decisions that cause untold trauma, pain, suffering, dismemberment, mutilation and death in the name of freedom and ferreting out terrorists.

War clearly generates money for weapons manufacturers, arms dealers, and many corporate entities who profit from conflict.

How can we make peace pay?

Without our money and our acquiescence, there can be no wars. 

The rapid advancement of technology is not only fundamentally altering the ‘game’ it is the Game.. What if they gave a war and nobody showed up? 

Of course, the people don’t want war…But after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it’s a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to greater danger.”

— Hermann Goering at the Nuremberg trials. 

All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin/

Contact:  bobdillon33@gmail.com 

THE BEADY EYE LOOKS AT HOW THE MICROCHIP IS SHAPING THE WORLD.

15 Friday Jul 2022

Posted by in 2020: The year we need to change., Artificial Intelligence., Dehumanization., Digital age., DIGITAL DICTATORSHIP., Fourth Industrial Revolution., Humanity., Nanotechnology, Reality., Speed of technology., State of the world, Technology v Humanity, The Microchip., The Obvious., The state of the World., The world to day., What is shaping our world., What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage.

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(Seven-minute read)

How Has The Microchip Changed The World?

The impacts of the microchip have been enormous.

They are either the savior of the world or the annihilator. 

It would not be an exaggeration to say the world would not be able to continue without the Chip that drives technology. 

They are around us everywhere.  Our phones, of course, our laptops, our iPads – all of those things we’re now surrounded by this technology.

More than likely.

THEY WILL END UP BEING IMPLANTED IN OUR BODIES IF WE ARE TO STAY OR EVER LEAVE THIS PLANET.

THEY ARE NOT ONLY SHAPING THE PLANET BUT OUR EXPLORATION OF THE UNIVERSE (WITH THE JAMES WEBB TELESCOPE RECENTLY SENDING THE DEEPEST PENETRATION PICTURE OF SPACE.) 

                      ————————   

Despite being a piece of real estate no larger than a fingernail, the modern microchip is home to billions of transistors, miles of metallic interconnects, and layers of structures stacked on top of each other like skyscrapers.

Overall, a microchip is a structure that stands in abject defiance of the second law of thermodynamics: It creates a region of extreme order from a whole lot of chaos, and that does require a lot of energy.

One or more microchips run every one of the 40 billion connected devices currently in use—a figure that’s expected to jump to 350 billion by 2030.

Every time we make a Zoom call, between our personal devices, routers, data centers, satellites, and peripheral devices, at least a quintillion microchips were called to work.

Unfortunately, these chips consume an immense amount of resources and generate truckloads of waste.

The microchip is essentially made from sand—albeit sand that has been melted, purified, and refined until it is over 99.9999 percent pure silicon.

The arduous task of turning these disc-shaped, purple-colored wafers into microchips and memory devices falls on the fabs,(a fab or fabs is a term commonly used to describe a fabrication plant responsible for making semiconductor devices) which are high-tech facilities scattered across the world, with the majority in Southeast Asia.

A “fab” that processes 50,000 wafers—the silicon platform on which chips are built—per month consumes over 1 TWh of electricity a year.

That’s as much power as is required by a city of 100,000 residents.

Moreover, a rough estimate pegs the water consumption of a fab at over 19 million liters per day. That’s the amount of water consumed by a city of 60,000—for a whole year! In addition, these facilities utilize tons of chemicals, most of them expensive and toxic, and generate tons of waste, which include greenhouse gases like SF6, CF4, NF3, and C4F8.

There are over 1,000 semiconductor fabs operating globally today.

They make $450 billion worth of microchips a year and generate 50 million tons of carbon dioxide annually.

This complex semiconductor fabrication process is nestled at the heart of an elaborate web of international assembly lines. The company that makes the wafers and the fabs that create the microchips can be located in different parts of the globe. The assembly of the actual device likely takes place in a different company at a third location, and the end user could be anywhere in the world.

This means that the company whose name is on the final product might have very little control over the conditions and practices of the fabs.

Further, different parts of the semiconductor lifecycle are regulated by different environmental legislation, making not just the implementation of sustainability efforts, but also the tracking of their environmental footprints, complicated.

The elements of lithography, sand and silicon crystals, sit atop a silicon wafer

Given the size of the microchip, these numbers seem extraordinary.

However, this could very well be the price that we pay for the complexity of a chip, and the comfort it brings into our lives.

                       ———————————–

Advances in the technology sector have seen revolutionary gadgets surfacing because of this little mysterious device.

Microchip technology has modified existing patterns of human activities such in personal, social, political, and economic spheres.

Microchips are clearly being utilized for several other purposes.

In military applications, the microchips were used to build the Minuteman II missile in the 1960s. To add to that, a Z-40 semi-automatic pistol with a microchip embedded in its grip was released to avoid the use of the pistol by any unauthorized user.

In Industrial applications, scientists have employed the use of a microchip-based technology to detect the type and the progression of cancer in patients. Because of this technology, patients can now be informed of their prognosis within a few hours.

Chip improvements have led to increased computing power and incredible memory function.

Microchips have enabled applications like on-device artificial intelligence (AI) and virtual augmented reality to come to life.

Gains in data transfer such as 5G connectivity have been enhanced by the microchip technology.

Microchip technology has made huge advances in technology.

Objects and devices such as communication devices, vehicles, personal entertainment devices, GPS tracking devices, weapons, identification cards, micro-ovens, supercomputers, and many other applications use microchipMicrochips’ distinctive mode of collecting data and transmitting data to its exact destination has made information easier to handle.

The epic and revolutionary manufacturing techniques of microchips have created a storm of microchip-embedded devices that affect our daily lives, both positively and inevitably negatively  

Regardless of the industry, modern electronics use thousands, millions, or even billions of semiconductors on a single chip.

As a result, today as consumers demand more electronics, one of the most important components of any circuitry has become something of a scarcity. is that there is a massive shortage.

This has happened over the past year, largely due to a significant shortage of the most basic building block of technology:

Semiconductors.

                     ——————————

It is likely that microchip manufacturing will continue to be a major consumer of electricity, water, and chemicals.

So in shaping our world we could ensure that the energy is supplied by renewables, that the water is recycled, and the chemicals are processed without damage to the environment. In other words, we must be relentless in our efforts to make microchips more sustainable. And we should never forget that the comforts of modern life gifted by these wonder chips come at the expense of a vast amount of resources.

Microchips act as a key unit for programming the conversion of the car industry to electric cars, which is increasingly dependent on electronics, the lithography industry, the smartphone industry, and the internet to name just a few of the trillion applications over the past several decades.

The microchip industry filled by the need for big science is growing exponentially year on year. 

The problem is embedding them in objects is one thing, deciding in which devices to embed them and what systems to build around them is another matter altogether.

Laws governing their application are literally in human hands for now but not much longer.  

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THE BEADY EYE ASKS. WHERE HAVE ALL THE STATEMEN GONE?

17 Sunday Apr 2022

Posted by in 2022: The year we need to change., Climate Change., Fake News., Human Collective Stupidity., Human values., Humanity., Modern day life., Mr Putin., Our Common Values., Political lying., Political Trust, Politics., Russia / Ukraine ., RUSSIA/ UKRAINE/ US/ NATO/ EU, Technology v Humanity, The essence of our humanity., The Obvious., The state of the World., The Ukraine., The world to day., THE WORLD YOU LIVE IN., THIS IS THE STATE OF THE WORLD.  , We can leave a legacy worthwhile., WHAT IS TRUTH, What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage.

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(Twenty-minute read ) 

  • Faith in the future is justified when investments succeed in improving the future. 

Every country is a work in progress but there are gaping holes where the leadership should be.

Politicians are hanging on to power instead of working for the construction of a better world. We are getting “selfish politicians and cynicism” instead of the statesmen needed to challenge the current crisis all over the world.

We now have a US President who does not know what the word genocide means and a Uk Prime Minister that lies to his Parlement and a Putin that has lost the plot.

The idea that the Prime Minister or president “runs a country” is just nonsense.

The lack of thought invested in the future is a real and pressing problem.

Today’s politicians play on our inherent, false phobia of the word fear; they milk it for every vote it’s worth.

This creates a natural void between the average citizen and the ruling class. 

The only difference perhaps is that nowadays we put a camera on them 24/7, and we expect them to give an answer to a problem mere minutes after some event occurred.

In the past, politicians probably had more time to think, and far less time to speak (or at least, fewer things they said were being recorded). As a result, modern politicians seem to make more mistakes.

I fear it will take a terrifying depth of crisis before there comes a point when this isn’t enough anymore and they will have to face their people with the big picture – which is to ask how much do we want to survive?

                                  ————————– 

Statesmanship is fleeting, and we don’t really appreciate it until it’s gone.

We desperately need a statesman—but, sadly, all I can hear are politicians.

If the world ever needed a Stateman it is now. 

Real statesmen rise above the tawdry political arguments of the day to the much higher realm of political strategy, what is right for the nation, right for everyone, and betters the human condition.

The statesman shuns media campaigns, opting for the power of the written and spoken word. He is an accomplished public speaker that looks over the horizon for future requirements.

Statesmanship and ethics are inseparable. We need a lot of both. We’ve already got a lot of politicians. We need a lot more statesmen. Making no private promises, granted no special favors, and received no personal gifts which would compromise his official integrity.

                                   _________________

What are the differences between a Statesman and a Politician? Winston Churchill, Franklin D Roosevelt and Joseph Stalin at the Yalta Conference, February 1945.

Not all politicians are statesmen. 

Statesmen spend the money, borrowing what’s necessary, to grow the country, restore confidence in the government and the future, and prevent devastating wars—even if the benefits of their actions are not immediate and measurable, but spread instead over many generations. 

Politicians, by contrast, “save money now” to “enhance today’s surplus” or “decrease today’s deficit”—even if “saving money” means leaving embassies unprotected from terrorist bombs, and our intelligence establishment less capable and integrated than it could have been.  

Statesmen see far into the future and know that good investments pay for themselves over and over again, for generations.  

Politicians tend to be penny wise and pound foolish—or perhaps more accurately, present-wise and future-foolish. They are in a “bubble” shuffling portfolios amongst themselves. They have no real-world experience. They go straight from education into politics via internships. They have no choice but to find a way to get people’s attention, in preparation for the next election and fear is one of the best attention-getters of all.

                                           —————

In this age of media coverage, the problem we have is twofold what to believe and what not to believe. 

The Underworld of the huge overarching media presence means that politics is not in control because no system is in control or in a position to lead society.

Take the war in Ukraine for example.

Can The West Stop Russia by Strangling its Economy?   No 

They only reflect liberal frustration over the West’s limited power to

prevent Russia’s war in Ukraine. 

Why?

Because in 2001, the incident of 9/11 changed the whole scenario of the world. US started its War against Terror and announced that it will target anyone, anywhere, who threats the US security and its citizens. Under this US invaded Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya and attacked Daesh in Syria without facing any opposition from other countries at United Nation Security Council (UNSC).

After 30 years, of peace now Russia led by President Putin has challenged the new world order in Eastern Europe, by accepting two eastern regions of Ukraine (Donetsk and Lugansk) as independent regions and allowing its forces to invade Ukraine on Feb 24, 2022.

It’s clear that Russia is not dependent on the west as the west is dependent on Russia. So there is something amiss with a  black-and-white view of the situation in Ukraine.

Since the end of the Cold War, the West has refused to make any concessions to Russia’s security concerns. Neither NATO nor the Western powers, in general, have been willing or able ‘to empathize with the Russian perspective on this crisis’.

Moscow is repeating that it will withdraw its troops from Ukraine only if Ukraine recognizes Crimea as a part of Russia and two eastern regions, Donetsk and Lugansk as independent states, moreover Ukraine makes the constitutional amendment that it will not join NATO.

The truth is that after fighting alone and not getting ground or air support from the West ( because of the fear of a nuclear war) Ukraine has only one option left to compromise and accept the Russian demands for the sake of their and our survival.

Ukraine must learn from Afghanistan’s lessons, and not allow big powers to play a proxy war in its country.  

Putin’s invasion of Ukraine will lead to a new world order with an era of grinding compromise. The “new world order” is going to be dominated by Russia and China. Mr. Putin and Mr. Xi are writing their own rules.

The real danger is that the global balance of power is not just being recast, but gradually unraveling. History shows that changes to the balance of power rarely occur without serious conflict.

We must do what we can to contain Vladimir Putin’s aggression in Ukraine. But we also need to be clear-eyed about it and face the costs.

Economics can’t be separated from politics, and neither can be separated from history.Illustration on a new world order where Russia and China dominate by Alexander Hunter/The Washington Times

One lasting story of this war could be the way that Europe uses it to launch its next stage of integration.

                                        ————-

 We cannot continue to fight each other in useless wars.

Take Climate Change.

The UN secretary-general, António Guterres, called the recent IPCC report on the climate crisis a “code red” for humanity. “We are on the verge of the abyss,” he said.

You might think those words would sound some kind of alarm in our society.

Since no one treats the crisis like a crisis, the existential warnings keep on drowning in a steady tide of greenwash and everyday media news flow.

The facts are crystal clear, but we just refuse to accept them. We refuse to acknowledge that we now have to choose between saving the living planet or saving our unsustainable way of life.

Because we want both. We demand both. But the undeniable truth is that we have left it too late for that.

And no matter how uncomfortable that reality may seem, this is exactly what our leaders have chosen for us with their decades of inaction. Their decades of blah, blah, blah. In short, we are totally failing to even reach targets that are completely insufficient in the first place.

Science doesn’t lie, nor does it tell us what to do.

But it does give us a picture of what needs to be done. We are of course free to ignore that picture and remain in denial. Or to go on hiding behind clever accounting, loopholes, and incomplete statistics. As if the atmosphere would care about our frameworks. As if we could argue with the laws of physics.

The climate and ecological emergency are, of course, only a symptom of a much larger sustainability crisis. A social crisis. A crisis of inequality that dates back to colonialism and beyond. A crisis is based on the idea that some people are worth more than others and, therefore have the right to exploit and steal other people’s land and resources.

It’s all interconnected.

It’s a sustainability crisis that everyone would benefit from tackling. But it’s naive to think that we could solve this crisis without confronting the roots of it.   Inequality. 

All it would really take is one – one world leader or one high-income nation or one major TV station or leading newspaper who decides, to be honest, to truly treat the climate crisis as the crisis that it is. One leader who counts all the numbers – and then takes brave action to reduce emissions at the pace and scale the science demands. Then everything could be set in motion towards action, hope, purpose, and meaning.

Who will that leader be?

Ask any hundred people to define a good leader and how many definitions do you think we’d hear?

The leaders of the free world just serve to reassure people that there is someone in charge, someone with a plan while high technology is creating the way we think and feel. 

We have to get used to living in a world without leaders.  

We must understand that global warming is a true threat.   

We have to become conscious of environmentally friendly measures of living.

                                       —————–

This is where we are at the moment.

I and you are going to see a lot of the long-term effects of what’s happening now with Climate change. 

Time will tell if great statemen will return to power and change the direction in which current politicians are leading the world.

Without leaders, there is little alignment and hardly any coordinated moving together towards common goals. Without leadership, there is hardly a chance for fair distribution of wealth nor for peace.

This doesn’t mean that leadership as such grants these values but without leadership, it’s probably impossible to enjoy them at all. 

Three-quarters of the world could not give a dame about the war in Ukraine, Syria, and Yemen, or any of the other wars. 

Only resistance from within Russia can shorten the conflict. 

Brussel is pretty much kowtowing to the gazillion of different demands of basically all European leaders and interest groups, resulting in policies that are confused, contradictory, and ultimately useless.

European leaders with the outbreak of war in Ukraine are reduced to the role of extras. 

Unfortunately, we lack business statesmanship in the advertising Industry promoting more and more consumption for short-term profits with the media whose role seems to be to stop the shaping of modern statesmen.

                                      ———————-

There is only one choice that is to declare war on Climate change. 

 

All human comments are appreciated. All lie clicks and abuse are chucked in the bin.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE BEADY EYE SAYS. WE ALL KNOW THAT WAR IS ORGANIZED BARBARISM ON AN ENORMOUS SCALE.

12 Tuesday Apr 2022

Posted by in 2022: The year we need to change., THE ISRAELI- PALESTINIAN PROBLEM., The Ukraine., THE WORLD YOU LIVE IN., THIS IS THE STATE OF THE WORLD.  , Truth, War Crimes., Where's the Global Outrage.

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( Seven-minute read) 

No matter how much you know — or think you know — about any War, there are always more horrible things lurking in the shadows.Nazi military parade

Cast your eyes over any recent conflict, and you’ll see a litany of generals, politicians, and nations that have gotten away with stuff so horrific it defies comprehension.

This post is not an attempt to justify crimes of warfare. It is a feeble attempt to highlight the double standards went it comes to defining them.

                                      —————–

Our best hope of curbing humankind’s peculiar talent for superfluous
violence and extravagant self-destruction lies in the ideal of humanitarianism.

What is a war crime? 

War crimes are often associated with atrocities committed on a scale that defies credulity. I.E the number of victims did not pass some arbitrary threshold. At the most basic level, war crimes are [objectionable] acts committed by combatants, either against other combatants or against noncombatants—that is, civilians—during wartime.

Mass murder and genocide—crimes against humanity and atrocities committed on a large scale—have become the hallmarks of war crimes.

The question is who or what decides which acts are war crimes.

In an eerie echo of our own time, defining war crimes is not so much the issue anymore.

It’s prosecuting them actually, administering justice that is the primary obstacle.

The ICC is the product of a strand of idealistic thinking about justice between waring states stretching back at least to the first world war.

                                  —————-

In world war two was it a crime to kill 60,000 to 80,000 people in Hiroshima and another 75,000 in Nagasaki or 100,000 people in one night during the firebombing of Tokyo, an event barely talked about today.

In the American war in Vietnam, was it a crime to shower 45 million liters of the herbicide Agent Orange? In the process, it doomed up to 4.8 million Vietnamese residents.

Ask someone today to list war crimes of recent history and he or she may think of ethnic cleansing in Bosnia or genocide in Rwanda, the Afghan war, the Syrian War, the Yemeni War, the Iraq war, the list is endless.

The overall theme is hard to miss but there is a vast gulf separating our indifference to war crimes. 

A few months after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 (hereinafter referred to as “9/11”), the Bush Administration decided that the Geneva Conventions did not protect members of Al Qaeda.

The president (George W. Bush) thinks the ICC is fundamentally flawed because it puts American servicemen and women at fundamental risk of being tried by an entity that is beyond America’s reach, beyond America’s laws, and can subject American civilians and military to arbitrary standards of justice.

Another example is that there are clear parallels between Russian and Israeli violations of international law, including the committing of war crimes by Israeli military actions in the occupied Palestinian territories.

There are no sanctions against Israel that have so far desisted from joining nations including the US, Europe, the UK, Australia, and Japan in the imposition of an “unprecedented” number of sanctions on Russia, Belarus, and the two breakaway Ukrainian regions of Donetsk and Luhansk in the wake of the invasion. 

According to Israel’s controversial Law of Return, “Jews, their children, grandchildren and spouses” are all eligible to visit Israel and claim Israeli citizenship. 

However, millions of Palestinian refugees are unable to return to the homes they and their forebears were expelled from in Israel and the occupied West Bank in 1948 and 1967.

Israel has granted citizenship to Russian mining oligarch Mikhail Prokhorov, a figure linked to President Vladimir Putin and known to be one of the world’s richest men.

Last year, the two countries said the ICC should drop an investigation of Israel in part on the grounds that Palestine is not a sovereign country, although it is recognized as a state by the UN.

Netanyahu has accused the ICC of “pure anti-Semitism” for investigating attacks and has said Israel does not accept the ICC’s jurisdiction, however, it does not have to. 

Whatever the answer, it seems unlikely that President Bush or Benjamin Netanyahu, will ever be tried for war crimes but the question of whether they actually committed war crimes remains.

                                         ——————

Neither the US nor Russia nor China nor Ukraine are members of the ICC. 

If justice in general moves slowly, international justice barely moves at all.

Investigations at the ICC take many years. Only a handful of convictions have ever been won and by the time the Barbarian is locked up there is nationwide amnesia.

Court proceedings can be brought in one of two ways:
 
Either a national government or the UN Security Council can refer cases for investigation. Russia, a permanent member of the UN Security Council, has veto power over council actions.
 

In all likelihood, there will never be a trial for either President Bush or Putin not to mention Benjamin Netanyahu,. 

Why?

I think it has a lot to do just with the power, the authority, of well-heeled countries, powerful countries, to shield their political and military members from prosecution by bodies like the ICC. 

Even if we were able to bring War Criminals to trial we just don’t have a true international police force that would arrest the offenders. 

                                   —————————

War is a place where young people who don’t know each other and don’t hate each other, kill each other, by the decision of older rulers who know each other and hate each other, but don’t kill each other. 

It’s a world in which if you have the power you also have the power not to be held accountable for your power.

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Where are we with the Russian Ukraine war?
 
Could Russian leaders be brought to justice under international law?
 
Yes.  Because they fall under the overarching crime of aggression, all uses of armed force by Russia on Ukrainian territory can be viewed as illegal.
 
But that doesn’t mean the country pointing the finger has always been in the right itself.
 
Are countries supplying arms prolonging the war? Yes  
 
The national interest is for this war to end. If we wish to stop war crimes then we need to stop the war. Prolonging it will only see more of the same.
 
We should not be blackmailed and guilt-tripped into feeding more weapons into the meat grinder. How about, just for once, we put our own interests first?                                            
 
On the other hand, understanding the twin meanings of ‘humanity’ means something universal and immensely important”. Recognising its worth is “the least we owe the dead.
 
Meanwhile, NATO is just itching to get further involved in the war. 

We live in a world in which making the wrong comment on social media can lead to people losing their jobs but where politicians and public officials, whose actions affect the lives of millions and whose failure can lead to deaths in the most unimaginable circumstances, can simply walk away and into their next lucrative assignment.

While our own media doubles down on warmongering. They seem not to care if further escalation will plunge all of Europe into economic hardship or risk wider conflict. For some reason, it’s news to Western pundits that war isn’t very nice.

In the end, this war is shining a light on just how useless our United Nations is and dark skin automatically made you less than human.

There was a day that the UN could muster Blue helmets to intervene in conflicts. Now, all it can do is pass worthless resolutions.

                                    —————– 

When it comes to war crimes, Ukraine’s hands are also blooded.

What’s bizarre about this is that these countries that are supplying millions in arms are the same people courting Ukrainian membership of the EU, as though Ukraine was some kind of liberal democracy.

As with all wars, they end with denials of involvement in killing the innocent which are called collateral damage or a mistake of identification by a rogue drone, or ballistic rocket.     

The issue of reparations doubtless will be raised in negotiations to resolve the conflict and as an international condition for resuming any normal relationship with Russia. If the sanctions are eventually lifted in stages, it could prove effective to include conditions requiring the surrender of indicted fugitives.

Perhaps if the United Nations were to tell Mr. Putin that it is going to place a few thousand Blue Helmets between the present front lines Russia would think twice about any further advancement. 

( It is however due to the presence of Nato on the Russian borders too late. As they would be labeled Nato, not UN) 

All human comments are appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.