Monthly Archives: April 2018

Societal Death or Transfiguration?, Cinema Visions of Humanity Facing Extinction

Posted on by

How should world society respond to the approach of human extinction compelled by implacable external forces, such as: radioactive fallout after a global nuclear war (as in Nevil Shute’s novel On the Beach), or an alien invasion by a species of technologically superior beings from outer space, or an impending collision between Earth and a massive planetoid, or (as seems most likely today) by runaway and irreversible Climate Change?

The general question has long been the seed for spinning out entertaining speculations in fantasy novels and science-fiction movies, but now it has become a serious matter of immediate concern for an increasing number of geo- and social- scientists and social planners. Mayer Hillman, an 86-year-old social scientist, urban planner and senior fellow emeritus of the Policy Studies Institute in England, says (in an article published by The Guardian on 26 April 2018, https://amp.theguardian.com/environment/2018/apr/26/were-doomed-mayer-hillman-on-the-climate-reality-no-one-else-will-dare-mention):

“We’re doomed. — The outcome is death, and it’s the end of most life on the planet because we’re so dependent on the burning of fossil fuels. There are no means of reversing the process which is melting the polar ice caps. And very few appear to be prepared to say so. — I’m not going to write anymore [about the projected consequences of runaway Climate Change] because there’s nothing more that can be said. — With doom ahead, making a case for cycling as the primary mode of transport [instead of automobiles] is almost irrelevant. — We’ve got to stop burning fossil fuels. So many aspects of life depend on fossil fuels, except for music and love and education and happiness. These things, which hardly use fossil fuels, are what we must focus on. [Hillman is amazed that our thinking rarely stretches beyond 2100 when discussing scientific predictions on the increase of average global temperature.] This is what I find so extraordinary when scientists warn that the temperature could rise to 5C or 8C. What?, and stop there? What legacies are we leaving for future generations? In the early 21st century, we did as good as nothing in response to Climate Change. Our children and grandchildren are going to be extraordinarily critical. — Even if the world went zero-carbon today that would not save us because we’ve gone past the point of no return. [Action by individuals to limit their ‘carbon footprint’ – their direct and indirect production of greenhouse gases is] as good as futile. [National action by the UK along the same lines is also irrelevant] because Britain’s contribution is minute. Even if the government were to go to zero-carbon it would make almost no difference. — [The world as a whole would have to go zero-carbon, but can that be done without the collapse of civilization?] I don’t think so. Can you see everyone in a democracy volunteering to give up flying? Can you see the majority of the population becoming vegan? Can you see the majority agreeing to restrict the size of their families? — Wealthy people will be better able to adapt but the world’s population will head to regions of the planet such as northern Europe which will be temporarily spared the extreme effects of climate change. How are these regions going to respond? We see it now. Migrants will be prevented from arriving. We will let them drown. — [Few scientific, political; and religious leaders have been honest with the public on all this, in order to protect their own positions] I don’t think they can [be forthright] because society isn’t organised to enable them to do so. Political parties’ focus is on jobs and GDP, depending on the burning of fossil fuels. — [Can the now obvious signs of advancing Climate Change spark an epiphany in humanity’s collective mind, and cause it to relinquish its ultimately self-destructive fossil fueled binge?] It depends on what we are prepared to do. Standing in the way is capitalism. Can you imagine the global airline industry being dismantled when hundreds of new runways are being built right now all over the world? It’s almost as if we’re deliberately attempting to defy nature. We’re doing the reverse of what we should be doing, with everybody’s silent acquiescence, and nobody’s batting an eyelid.”

Now, let us consider the 2017 American movie Downsizing, given this context.

Downsizing is an intelligent and, by American standards, subtle cinematic science-fiction social satire about the individual’s problem of securing sufficient wealth to comfortably sustain their lives in a secure cosmopolitan community for the duration of their lifespan. This movie was conceived by Alexander Payne and his writing partner Jim Taylor, and directed by Payne who has numerous successful movies to his credit: Election (1999), About Schmidt (2002), Sideways (2004), The Descendants (2011) and Nebraska (2013). Downsizing was not well-received by the majority of the viewing public because it is a film about ideas, thus requiring thinking for its enjoyment, as opposed to being a cinematic delivery vehicle for emotive sensations and jolting stimuli to provide passive unthinking viewers with 135 minutes of thrilling distraction.

The central pit in Downsizing, around which the screenplay and the screenwriters’ implied social commentaries have been grown like the flesh of a stone-fruit, is that science has discovered a process for harmlessly shrinking living cells and organisms, enabling humans to be reduced to Lilliputian size so that their existing savings and equity in the “big world” can economically sustain them in lifetimes of luxury in the “small world,” because their “ecological footprints” – both for consumption and waste production – have been miniaturized. The attraction for “getting small” is basically a get-rich-quick scheme leading to an endlessly sustainable high-life coupled with the pleasurable sense of eliminating one’s big-world guilt over contributing to Climate Change and the environmental degradation of the planet, which is caused by its “overpopulation” with “big” capitalist-minded, wasteful and exploitative people. In brief: having it all.

The problem with making an expensive ($68M) artful cinematic work whose purpose is to stimulate thoughtful societal awareness – if you want to recoup your investment – is that you have to market it successfully to the masses of cinema-viewing yahoos. Downsizing was released on 22 December 2017, and as of 1 February 2018 (its theatrical closing) had only grossed $55M. It just didn’t hit the yahoo g-spot, and they hated it for boring them.

The “lesson” in the screenplay of Downsizing, which was delivered in a clear sedately-paced and understated way (which I like), is that the solution for achieving fulfilling individual lives in peaceful and comforting societies is for the people of such would-be societies to take care of one another: popular humanitarian socialism. Regardless of whether a society enjoys being situated in a natural or artificial paradise and is economically secure, or whether it is environmentally and economically stressed and doomed to extinction, the best that it can ever be for all of its inhabitants during its duration is entirely the result of its peoples’ commitment to construct mutually fulfilling lives of cooperation and compassion, instead of seeking to escape – from the masses of the less fortunate – into exclusive refuges and redoubts of enclosed privilege to continue with lives of egotistical self-centeredness and selfish indifference.

This message is ancient. It was part of the Buddha’s “Triple Jewel” teaching to his disciples and fellow monks and nuns (the Sangha), to ‘take care of one another’:

I will go to the Buddha for refuge.
I will go to the Dharma [the teachings of Buddha; the Buddhist way of life] for refuge.
I will go to the Sangha [harmonious community] for refuge.

The Buddhist sense of ‘taking refuge’ expressed here is not a running away from the rest of the world, but a commitment for living a truer life within it, based on Buddhist precepts.

There have been many book and movie stories centered on the idea of: individual fulfillment found through mutual help for securing group survival if possible, versus seeking individual escape from group peril, and from guilt over abandoning responsibility. Three such stories that came to my mind while pondering the movie Downsizing were the films: Lost Horizon (1937), The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), and Zardoz (1974).

Lost Horizon is Frank Capra’s film of the James Hilton fantasy novel about Shangri-La: a fabulous and peaceful Buddhist-style refuge from modern society and its torments, situated in a life-extending green valley that is hidden within the otherwise frigid and snowy expanse of the high Himalayas. But, can Shangri-La truly be an escape?

The Day the Earth Stood Still is Robert Wise’s movie of Edmund H. North’s screenplay of Harry Bates’s story of an alien ambassador, Klaatu, and his all-powerful robot, Gort (with a heat-ray beam-weapon dematerializer), who arrive in a Flying Saucer to deliver a message to humanity from an alien Federation of Planets: live peacefully on Earth and join our Federation as an independent planet, but do not militarize space with your rockets and nuclear bombs, because we would take that as a mortal threat and then our space-patrolling robot police, like Gort, would “reduce your Earth to a burned-out cinder.” Humanity’s escape to the good life, which is offered in this movie fantasy, would be achieved by forsaking war-making in all its forms to instead gain the advanced knowledge and technology of Klaatu’s interplanetary civilization, and that technology would vastly enhance the quality-of-life of the popular humanistic socialism that humanity would have to adopt as its new social paradigm.

Zardoz is John Boorman’s film about a far future post-apocalyptic immiscibly stratified static society that is suddenly ruptured by violence against its tiny elite, which results in a complete blending of humanity and a rebirth of human evolution. The Eternals are non-aging humans who live in a paradisal community, the Vortex, bubbled from the external misery by invisible force fields, and containing advanced endlessly-fueled hidden technology that automatically maintains the Eternals’ unending and idyllic existences. All the fruits of humanity’s previous achievements are now maintained in the Vortex, but the Eternals are all bored with their immortal lives of effortless omniscience and leisure. The vast expanse of the Outlands beyond the Vortex is a wasteland inhabited by the Brutals, people reduced to being isolated dumb animals without any civilization or social cohesion, scrounging through the wreckage of the previous world for each individual’s survival. Among the Brutals is a horse-riding semi-organized militia of enforcers, the Exterminators, who receive guns from Zardoz, a god in the form of a huge flying stone head that orders the Exterminators to enslave defenseless Brutals into chain-gangs to perform rudimentary agricultural labor, or other such work as mining, as might be required to supply the Vortex with what its denizens desire. The Exterminators punish any infraction and every failure by a Brutal – however trivial – with instant death by gunfire. The Exterminators, all men, also exult in their power and preference by their god, Zardoz, by freely raping and pillaging among the Brutals. Zardoz tells them: “The gun is good.” It is the hobby and amusement of Arthur Frayn, one of the Eternals, to carry on the charade of being Zardoz (piloting the stone head, and supplying the Exterminators with commands and cascades of firearms). It happens that through an instance of Arthur Frayn’s carelessness one of the Exterminators, Zed, manages to get into the Vortex and once there evolves despite an oppressive captivity, from Brutal ignorance to Eternal knowledge, and this leads to the complete and violent death of Vortex society, and transfiguration of humanity. The movie Zardoz is a dark – black – analog to the much gentler if still subtly sharp Downsizing.

The essential lesson of responding to the approach of a destructive inevitability beyond your society’s power is to engage in compassionate cooperation to make your society as good as it can be for as long as you and it can be made to last, and to find your life’s fulfillment in doing so.

This idea is captured visually so simply in the last moments of Downsizing that it remains invisible to the majority of the viewing public. And so our fractious collectivity cruises onward, untrammeled, towards its willfully unexpected collision with fate.

<><><><><><><>

Societal Death or Transfiguration?, Cinema Visions of Humanity Facing Extinction
30 April 2018
https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/04/30/societal-death-or-transfiguration-cinema-visions-of-humanity-facing-extinction/

<><><><><><><>

Of related interest:

The Righteous And The Heathens of Climate And Capitalism
12 March 2012
http://www.swans.com/library/art18/mgarci43.html

<><><><><><><>

The Pentagon Papers in the Movies

Posted on by

The Pentagon Papers is the informal name given to a 47 volume, 7,000 page secret history of the US government’s actions in its pursuit of war in Vietnam, from 1954 to 1967, to prevent the adoption of communism in a unified Vietnam, and ultimately to contain the spread of the political and ideological influence of the People’s Republic of China. This report was commissioned by Robert S. McNamara (US Secretary of Defense, from January 1961 to February 1968) in 1967, and produced by RAND Corporation personnel including Daniel Ellsberg, to assemble an accurate history of the actual US policies (and their consequences) regarding Vietnam, which were enacted in secret by the Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson Administrations.

As early as 1965, McNamara saw the war as an ‘unwinable’ failure. He wanted to understand how this Cold War initiative in Southeast Asia had metastasized into a disaster and quagmire, and the Pentagon Papers were supposed to be the explanatory dissection, essentially a pre-mortem of this still-in-progress and irrationally unacknowledged catastrophe bullheadedly pursued by America’s leadership class.

The report was conducted as an internal study within the Pentagon (based entirely on document searches, no interviews were conducted), and marked “Top Secret – Sensitive” so as to keep it secret from the political and military leadership (the Johnson Administration) that did not want to hear fact-based conclusions that would destroy their illusions about their Vietnam War. The Pentagon Papers factually contradicted all the public pronouncements about the war that had been issued by Presidents from Truman through Johnson (1954 to 1967), and then from 1969 on by Nixon, about the purpose of the war (‘defending democracy against communist dictatorship’), the progress being made militarily to reach the publicly stated US goals (‘always improving’), and the extent of military operations (‘limited and measured strikes within Vietnam,’ “no wider war”).

The reality was that the purpose of the war, which maintained its inertia and caused its expansion, was the vanity of an American political and military leadership that feared losing face — what Henry Kissinger calls “credibility” — by being the “first president” (national administration) to “lose a war.” The “enemy” would win at tremendous cost of human life because the Vietnamese people were adamant to gain the right of self-determination as regarded their own lives and the format of their own political institutions within their own country.

The second type of lie by the US government that the Pentagon Papers devastatingly exposed was that the reports of military progress in the field were complete fabrications, and in fact the situation for the US troops was always deteriorating despite the monumental destruction and genocidal level of killing that the American technological war machine produced.

The third type of lie that the Pentagon Papers contradicted, with mountains of classified documentation from the State Department and the Pentagon, was that throughout the course of the war the US Presidents had always sought to expand the infusion of troops and military equipment, the magnitude of operations, and the ranging of operations into neighboring countries. Nixon continued this pattern of deceiving the public — whose sons and even daughters (nurses) — were bleeding and dying to provide the expendable labor needed to feed this behemoth of war-making hubris. Nixon (and Henry Kissinger) even expanded the war in 1970 with a secret invasion of Cambodia.

In 1971, Daniel Ellsberg and Anthony J. Russo leaked the Pentagon Papers to the public. How the leakers came to their commitment to act, how they accomplished this very risky caper, and what the profound consequences were, make for a compelling story — really a complex of entwined stories — that has been approached from several angles by movie-makers.

The Post is Steven Spielberg’s new movie (with Tom Hanks and Meryl Streep) about the publication of the Pentagon Papers in 1971. As true with all Spielberg movies, it has a quick pace, builds excitement, and ends happily. This movie makes the central hero Katharine Graham, the publisher of the Washington Post (newspaper) at that time. So, the movie is a ‘woman overcoming patronization (domination by men)’ feel-good story (because she gave the go-ahead to publish extracts of the Pentagon Papers despite oppositional threats by the Nixon Administration) as well as one about the importance of safeguarding the 1st Amendment rights of media to publish the truth about the malfeasance of government; to help the US people safeguard their democracy. So, a reasonably good movie (2017).

However, the real heroes of the entire series of events are the people who put their lives on the line to get the Pentagon Papers out of government safes and into the hands of the people (Daniel Ellsberg and Anthony J. Russo, both of whom the government prosecuted for leaking classified info, and more or less for “treason” = life in jail). The first of those US people to get the papers from Ellsberg and Russo were the reporters and editors at the New York Times and then the Washington Post (editor Ben Bradlee, publisher Katharine Graham), so they would have a chance (if they had the guts) of widely disseminating them through newspaper publication.

A superior movie (far superior in my opinion) about this great and patriotic leak is the 2003 film The Pentagon Papers starring James Spader (playing Daniel Ellsberg), with Paul Giamatti (playing Anthony J. Russo, who pushed Ellsberg into leaking the papers, and helped him copy and distribute them); with Alan Arkin playing an important supporting role (head of the RAND Corporation).

So, by all means go and enjoy the Spielberg movie with popular stars, but make sure not to miss the 2003 movie The Pentagon Papers for the real story (or just see it instead). It is a finely made and excellently played/acted movie, which clearly lays out the incidents of the real story (Ellsberg’s story from 1964 through 1973, in which Russo’s personal story is entwined), and the historical results and significance of that story: a major blow to the government’s effort to continue the Vietnam War, and for the Nixon Administration to continue.

Understanding the story of the Pentagon Papers is important to appreciate the true merits of the actions of Chelsea Manning, Julian Assange and Edward Snowden in recent years – and to properly identify the real crimes and the real culprits then and now.

Excerpt from “The Pentagon Papers” movie (2003)
4 September 2015, [3:42]
https://youtu.be/Nti8r-5prGg

<><><><><><><>

The Other Conspirator, the story of Anthony Russo
3 June 2015, [7:06]
https://youtu.be/TUv26sh_moU

<><><><><><><>

How draft resisters inspired Daniel Ellsberg to release the Pentagon Papers
17 January 2018, [3:55]
https://youtu.be/qQ6NKTruNHE

<><><><><><><>

The Most Dangerous Man in America (Daniel Ellsberg) – Trailer
25 November 2010, [2:27]
https://youtu.be/XwXylIaJ_Lg

<><><><><><><>

The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers (Full Documentary)
3 February 2018, [1:30:30]
https://youtu.be/xWJhWaBytqs

<><><><><><><>

Kill for Peace, Bomb for Justice, Behead for Nookie

Posted on by

<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>

Kill for Peace, Bomb for Justice, Behead for Nookie

Whenever you want to do something cruel, blame the necessity of it on God: Like the Allah-blamed wannabe caliphate of female sex slavery between Syria and Iraq, even between Arabia and Afghanistan; and the blue-eyed Christ-blamed same in Bible-thumping America.

Right now there is a contest between superpowers, mini-superpowers, micro-superpowers, and proxy wannabe powers to see who can kill the most Muslim civilians from Yemen through Palestine, Syria through Afghanistan, and even out to Burma, but mostly in the Levant.

Just yesterday (14 April 2018) Trump’s America threw in over $200M of ante-in poker chips (i.e., 112 Tomahawk cruise missiles bombing in) to the Syria gaming table of the Levant poker game, in league with returning players England and France, and all three are now mixing it up with new player China and always-in players: Israel, Syria, Russia, Iran, Turkey, shadow-player Arabia, and the usual regional proxy penny-ante bit players.

America must bomb the Syrian military because it kills masses of trapped innocent unarmed civilians, with poison gas and aerial bombs, and we want it to stop. America must not bomb the Israeli military because it kills masses of trapped innocent unarmed civilians, with hails of bullets and aerial bombs, and “we” don’t want it to stop. Nuance is important here, for statesmen-like conscience-free immorality.

Imagine if the Syrian and Israeli ghetto-blasting militaries could 69 their injustices for justice: The Syrian military poison-gas missile-bombing the Israeli military to distract it from killing Palestinian civilians, and the Israeli military retaliating by jet fighter airplane fire-bombing the Syrian military to stop it from killing Syrian civilians, who along with the Palestinians during the welcomed confusion would break out of their respective corralled ghettos to stampede free across the land from the Jordan and Euphrates to the sea, inundating the rabid remnants of the Syrian, Israeli, and Levant-stationed Iranian, Russian, etc., militaries biting each other’s asses in a range war of attrition, as a tsunami of popular revolution sweeping the land clean of authoritarian fundamentalism and imperial capitalism’s Sodom and Gomorrah colonies and Fort Apache military bases.

Such a World War 2-and-Three-Quarters could be a good reality if it didn’t result in a power vacuum that sucked back in new hordes of political opportunists crazed to kill for piece, bomb for “justice” and behead for nookie. To prevent that, we would need a whole series of simultaneous tsunami wave-trains of popular socialist revolution sweeping lands clean worldwide, to bust us all free of capitalism’s ghettos and eradicate the neo-feudalism of stifling authoritarian fundamentalism. That would be World War 3, a long shot last hope for popular liberation that would be increasingly beautiful as it was decreasingly bloody. Nuance is unnecessary for popularly obvious conscience-rooted compassionate morality.

<><><><><><><>

Kill For Peace, Bomb For Justice, Behead For Nookie
16 April 2018
https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/04/16/kill-for-peace-bomb-for-justice-behead-for-nookie/

<><><><><><><>

The Atlantic Overturning Current Is Slowing

Posted on by

<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>

The Atlantic Overturning Current Is Slowing

The Atlantic Overturning Current is part of a worldwide twisted loop of ocean water, called the thermohaline cycle (thermo = heat, haline = salt), which emerges very salty and warm out of the Gulf of Mexico, travels north as a surface current along the east coast of North America, veers east in the North Atlantic toward Europe, then loops back west to a region just south of Greenland where it cools and sinks to the ocean floor – because it has become denser than the surrounding and less salty North Atlantic waters (colder water is denser than warmer water, and saltier water is denser than fresher water of equal temperature). The dense highly salted descending water then runs as a cold deep ocean current south along the east coast of South America, and continues in a complicated path along the ocean floor into the Pacific Ocean, where it warms and eventually rises to become a surface current of more buoyant less salty water. This current distributes solar heat collected by ocean waters in tropical latitudes to higher latitudes (closer to the poles).

In 2004, Peter Schwartz and Douglas Randall described the thermohaline cycle this way: “In this thousand-year cycle, water from the surface in tropical areas becomes more saline through evaporation. When it circulates to the poles and becomes cold (“thermo”), the greater density still present from higher salt (“haline”) concentration causes the water to sink to great depths. As with most large-scale geological processes, the thermohaline cycle is not thoroughly understood. Wallace Broecker has been studying the cycle for decades and, according to the December 1996 issue of Discover magazine, he has shown that the thermohaline cycle has not always been in operation, and that it has a strong effect on global climate.”

In 2003-2004, the US Department of Defense commissioned a secret study of what might be the worst possible effects of Global Warming triggering an “abrupt climate change” in the near future, in order to estimate the potential liabilities that military planning would have to consider (to maintain US security, and global power). This study was conducted during the climate-change-denying George W. Bush Administration. When the existence of the resulting report, produced by independent researchers Peter Schwartz and Douglas Randall, became publicly known there was such a public outcry (bad PR for the DOD) that the report was declassified and made publicly available.

The Schwartz-Randall report pointed to the abrupt onset of a significantly colder, dryer climate in the Northern Hemisphere as the most perilous possible consequence of Global Warming up to about 2010, because such warming (the trapping of incoming solar radiation and outgoing infrared radiation from the land and oceans, by greenhouse gases in the atmosphere) might cause the thermohaline cycle to stop. How? Global Warming causes glaciers and ice caps to melt, and such fresh (unsalted) meltwater from Greenland floods into the North Atlantic where the thermohaline current dives to the ocean floor. This fresh surface water dilutes the high salinity of the presently descending thermohaline current, making its waters less dense (less heavy) and so less likely to sink. Sufficient freshening of the thermohaline current would cause it to stop entirely, shutting off this global conveyor belt of climate-regulating oceanic solar heat.

Though abrupt climate change is a less likely and worst case scenario as compared to gradual climate change, Schwartz and Randall concluded that such an occurrence would “challenge United States national security in ways that should be considered immediately.” The climatic cooling that might occur in the Northern Hemisphere as a result of a collapse of the thermohaline cycle could be like the century-long period 8,200 years ago with temperature 5 °F (2.8 °C) colder, or the 13 century-long period 12,700 years ago with temperature 27 °F (15 °C) colder. The shift to colder climate could occur as rapidly as 5 °F (2.8 °C) of cooling per decade. So, the world could plunge into a new Ice Age within a period of twenty years. In their 2004 report, Schwartz and Randall showed data on the salinity of the North Atlantic since 1960; the trend was a steady freshening. (I wrote about the above in an article for the Internet, in July 2004).

A 2015 scientific publication of new observations on the “Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation” (the Atlantic part of our thermohaline cycle) concluded that “the melting Greenland ice sheet is likely disturbing the circulation.” The Phys.org news article (https://phys.org/news/2015-03-atlantic-ocean-overturning-today.html) about this study [Rahmstorf, S., Box, J., Feulner, G., Mann, M., Robinson, A., Rutherford, S., Schaffernicht, E. (2015): “Evidence for an exceptional 20th-Century slowdown in Atlantic Ocean overturning.” Nature Climate Change (the journal)] concluded:

“The scientists certainly do not expect a new ice age, thus the imagery of the ten-year-old Hollywood blockbuster ‘The Day After Tomorrow’ is far from reality. However, it is well established that a large, even gradual change in Atlantic ocean circulation could have major negative effects. ‘If the slowdown of the Atlantic overturning continues, the impacts might be substantial,’ says Rahmstorf. ‘Disturbing the circulation will likely have a negative effect on the ocean ecosystem, and thereby fisheries and the associated livelihoods of many people in coastal areas. A slowdown also adds to the regional sea-level rise affecting cities like New York and Boston. Finally, temperature changes in that region can also influence weather systems on both sides of the Atlantic, in North America as well as Europe.’ If the circulation weakens too much it can even break down completely – the Atlantic overturning has for long been considered a possible tipping element in the Earth System. This would mean a relatively rapid and hard-to-reverse change.”

On April 11, 2018, an article titled “Stronger evidence for a weaker Atlantic overturning” appeared at Phys.org (https://phys.org/news/2018-04-stronger-evidence-weaker-atlantic-overturning.html). This article notes:

“The Atlantic overturning—one of Earth’s most important heat transport systems, pumping warm water northward and cold water southward—is weaker today than any time before in more than 1000 years. Sea surface temperature data analysis provides new evidence that this major ocean circulation has slowed down by roughly 15 percent since the middle of the 20th century, according to a study published in the highly renowned journal Nature by an international team of scientists. Human-made climate change is a prime suspect for these worrying observations. There have been long debates whether the Atlantic overturning could collapse, being a tipping element in the Earth system. The present study does not consider the future fate of this circulation, but rather analyses how it has changed over the past hundred years. Nevertheless, Robinson cautions: ‘If we do not rapidly stop global warming, we must expect a further long-term slowdown of the Atlantic overturning. We are only beginning to understand the consequences of this unprecedented process—but they might be disruptive.’ Several studies have shown, for example, that a slowdown of the Atlantic overturning exacerbates sea-level rise on the US coast for cities like New York and Boston. Others show that the associated change in Atlantic sea surface temperatures affects weather patterns over Europe, such as the track of storms coming off the Atlantic. Specifically, the European heat wave of summer 2015 has been linked to the record cold in the northern Atlantic [caused by the inflow of cold Greenland meltwater] in that year—this seemingly paradoxical effect occurs because a cold northern Atlantic promotes an air pressure pattern that funnels warm air from the south into Europe.”

While the scientists are not being alarmist Jeremiahs and warning of an imminent climapocalypse as depicted in the Hollywood movie “The Day After Tomorrow,” they nevertheless make it clear that if this Global Warming caused (fossil-fuel-burning human caused) slowing of the thermohaline cycle continues to the point of a dead stop, then this would likely be a tipping point of the entire Earth System of climate leading to “a relatively rapid and hard-to-reverse change” — not for the better.

<><><><><><><>

Thirsty Invaders, Chasing Heat
19 July 2004
Manuel García, Jr.
http://www.swans.com/library/art10/mgarci18.html

<><><><><><><>

Now appearing at Counterpunch:

An Oceanic Problem: the Atlantic Overturning Current is Slowing
13 April 2017
https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/04/13/an-oceanic-problem-the-atlantic-overturning-current-is-slowing/

<><><><><><><>

Schwartz-Randall report
http://stephenschneider.stanford.edu/Publications/PDF_Papers/SchwartzRandall2004.pdf

<><><><><><><>

The Atlantic Overturning Current Is Slowing
20 April 2018
https://dissidentvoice.org/2018/04/the-atlantic-overturning-current-is-slowing/

<><><><><><><>

April Springs

Posted on by

<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>

April Springs

I’ve outlived my dreams
and discovered true achievements
have all been unseen, now
traceless remnants I left in your pasts
reward me as
life’s glints scintillating memory’s deep
– a net of gems –
moments with twinkles in certain eyes,
sudden smiles across certain lips,
visions of grace rim-lit by cascades of light,
skin soaking warmth through hair tingling breeze,
the sound of breath holding me close in hushed dark,
bursts of emotion on seeing your face,
the touch of your hand walking timeless through space,
smells of your earthy excitement that sparked me alive,
your joyous abandon in muscular tussles,
the beating of hearts pulsing each other,
the image of your sweet repose,
the beauty of your thoughtful care,
the tolerance of your silent anger,
the gentleness of your just revenge,
the fading of sorrows trailed by regrets,
desires mellowing to insights on youth,
the blending of memories to soothing acceptance,
the calming of passion becomes gratitude
and awareness sharpened by time becomes peace.

9 April 2018

<><><><><><><>

Zionism’s Palestinian Problem, And Ours

Posted on by

The “Palestinian Problem” for Israeli Zionists and their codependents (e.g., the AIPAC-bought U.S. two party system) is: how do we get rid of the Palestinians as fast as possible – to get all the Levant real estate we want, free and clear – while not going too fast so as to stir up the concerted ire and actual physical opposition of the combined rest of the world?

The consensus now seems to be for the equivalent of a Wounded Knee (1890, South Dakota) every few months, punctuating the continuous intentional erosion of living conditions in the “reservations,” like Gaza, by the controlling “whites.” But, that limit is always being tested with an eye toward accelerating the removal.

The attitudes of Western liberals (and conservatives, but they’re remorseless) towards the Palestinians is equivalent to that of the 19th century American public towards the American Indians: acceptance of their inevitable (but not to be delayed) disappearance for the sake of “progress,” occasionally garnished with a sense of pity for “the primitives” by the cultured and comfortable sentimentalists of the privileged bubbles.

Given the self-serving attachment of the American ruling class to Zionist manifest destiny in the Levant, and the irrational popularity for that support by the American public (especially its lunatic religious segment), it is likely that a sacrifice of war dead and lost potential national social development, equivalent to that made between 1962 and 1975 to prop up the anticommunist regimes of South Vietnam, would be tolerated by the American public for the sake of maintaining the Israeli state in its present apartheid form.

The best – and infinitesimally slim – hope for the liberation of Palestine would be a revolutionary change of the US government to a socialist model, with the consequent removal of Israeli lobbying influence, correctly identified as “foreign interference.”

For that to happen we would first have to embrace the truth that ethnic cleansing and slavery form the historical foundation of American capitalism. America’s continuing embrace of Zionist manifest destiny is a projection of our own denial of our history by cloaking it in romanticized myths about ourselves as heroic 7th and 9th Cavalries riding out of Fort Apache to save wagon trains of virtuous settlers penetrating wild lands whose primitives are hostile to our advance of “progress.”

Given the realities of power in today’s world, and the reality of individual human weakness against it (and generally), what can insignificant people like us, the readers and writers of obscure blogs like this, do to change tragic situations like the relentless suppression of organized Palestinian life, by superpower design?

Political and journalistic activists will always find it easy to answer that question by telling you to devote yourself to tasks, groups and movements they think important, because it is always easy to tell other people how they should spend their money and time, and live their lives, in order to fulfill your own preferences.

I would suggest that the best first answer we each can make for ourselves is to just stop believing, or acquiescing to, the propaganda – the excuses – that cloak the continuation of these war crimes, and to not be reticent about expressing that unbelief. Attitude can be contagious, the disempowerment of the fabled Naked Emperor began with the disbelief of a child, after all.

Beyond that, the second and subsequent answers depend on a myriad of personal factors and individual circumstances; I certainly can’t make generalizations about others. But, I am convinced that the first step for everybody is a clear-eyed embrace of the truth, however unpleasant that truth and unsociable its expression.

I keep thinking of Albert Camus’s epigram: “I rebel, therefore we exist.”

<><><>

Israel Kills Palestinians, and Western Liberals Shrug. Their Humanitarianism Is a Sham.
2 April 2018
Mehdi Hasan
https://theintercept.com/2018/04/02/israel-killing-palestine-civilian-liberal-humanitarian/

<><><><><><><>

Now (9 April 2018) published at Counterpunch:

https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/04/09/zionisms-palestinian-problem-and-ours/

<><><><><><><>