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The Doomsday Clock, set by the US-based magazine Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, has been moved to 90 seconds to midnight…

That’s the closest ever to total nuclear doom, the global catastrophe.

The Clock had been set at 100 seconds since 2020. The Bulletin’s Science and Security Board and a group of sponsors – which includes 10 Nobel laureates – have focused on “Russia’s war on Ukraine” (their terminology) as the main reason.

Yet they did not bother to explain non-stop American rhetoric (the US is the only nation that adopts “first strike” in a nuclear confrontation) and the fact that this is a US proxy war against Russia with Ukraine used as cannon fodder.

The Bulletin also attributes malignant designs to China, Iran and North Korea, while mentioning, only in passing, that “the last remaining nuclear weapons treaty between Russia and the United States, New START, stands in jeopardy”.

“Unless the two parties resume negotiations and find a basis for further reductions, the treaty will expire in February 2026.”

As it stands, the prospects of a US-Russia negotiation on New START are less than zero.

Now cue to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov making it very clear that war against Russia is not hybrid anymore, it’s “almost” real.

“Almost” in fact means “90 seconds.”

So why is this all happening?

The Mother of All Intel Failures

Former British diplomat Alastair Crooke has concisely explained how Russian resilience – much in the spirit of Iranian resilience past four decades – completely smashed the assumptions of Anglo-American intelligence.

Talk about the Mother of All Intel Failures – in fact even more astonishing than the non-existent Iraqi WMDs (in the run-up to Shock and Awe in 2003, anyone with a brain knew Baghdad had discontinued its weapons program already in the 1990s.)

…click on the above link to read the rest…

The Final 100 Seconds

June 22, 2020

The Final 100 Seconds

Screenshot of the 2020 Doomsday Clock Announcement from the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists YouTube Channel

Never before this year 2020 has the world-famous Doomsday Clock registered only “100 seconds-to-midnight.” According to the Science & Security Board, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, since WWII, the world has never been so perilous.

Alas, it’s been a long journey (73 yrs) all the way up to 100 seconds to midnight versus the original 1947 setting of seven minutes to midnight. The safest setting was at 17 minutes to midnight in 1991 at the end of the Cold War. The wonderfully famous iconic clock is located in the lobby of the Bulletin offices at the University of Chicago.

Unceremoniously, recklessly the Trump administration carries the indisputable title as one of the most dangerous executives in the history of the country with two key issues that determine the clock’s settings: (1) climate change deniers and (2) atomic bomb explosion enthusiasts for simplicity of political gain, nothing else.

The Doomsday Clock is set by a board of scientists and professionals with depth of knowledge about nuclear technology and climate science. They are established professionals that often provide expert advice to governments and international agencies. Impressively, the Bulletins’ Board of Sponsors includes 13 Nobel Laureates.

The Doomsday Clock is internationally recognized as an important SOS of impending catastrophe. University of Chicago scientists that developed the first atomic weapons in the Manhattan Project founded the concept back in 1945. Thereafter, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists created the Doomsday Clock two years later.

Accordingly, as of June 2020: “In the view of many, the Trump administration’s proposal to expand spending on nuclear weapons is a sad and dangerous illustration of wildly misplaced federal spending priorities.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Haven’t Enough to Keep You Awake At Night? Try The Doomsday Clock For A Truthful State Of The Union

February 3, 2019

Haven’t Enough to Keep You Awake At Night? Try The Doomsday Clock For A Truthful State Of The Union

Tick Tock. The good folks at the Bulletin of Atomic Scientistshave returned to wind their Doomsday Clock. Last Thursday at the National Press Club a group of well-credentialed speakers, including former California Governor Jerry Brown and former Secretary of Defense William Perry, underscored the organization’s warning that we have established residence in “the new abnormal.” Watch the press conference and supportive videos here.

The Doomsday Clock was set last year at a two-minutes until midnight, (midnight being the endgame), and there it now remains. There’s little comfort to be had in standing on what University of Chicago astrophysicist Robert Rosner characterized as a precipice we’d best quickly leap back from. Bulletin president and CEO Rachel Bronson stressed that the clock remaining where it is, the closest it has been to world catastrophe, is not stability, but “a stark warning to leaders and citizens around the world.”

William Perry said the organization views our current situation as precarious as it was in 1953, in the gloom of the Cold War while the Korean War still raged. Jerry Brown said, “The blindness and stupidity of the politicians and their consultants is truly shocking in the face of nuclear catastrophe and danger….the business of everyday politics blinds people to the risk, we’re playing Russian Roulette with humanity,” with the danger of an incident that will kill millions if not igniting a conflict that will kill billions.

Brown told journalists while they may love the Trump tweets and news of the day, “the leads that get the clicks,” the final click could be a nuclear accident, a mistake.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Doomsday “Experts” Warn Of Civilization-Ending Information Wars

January 26, 2019

Doomsday “Experts” Warn Of Civilization-Ending Information Wars

Just when you were running short on things to fear, a group of US “doomsday” experts said on Thursday that information warfare is amplifying major worldwide threats as the infamous Doomsday Clock remained at two minutes to midnight, reports AFP.

Where does this lurking threat lie according to said experts? “The manipulation of facts, fake news and information overload — along with global warming and flirting with nuclear war — are all factors that have brought humans as close to destroying the planet as ever, said the non-profit Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.”

“Humanity now faces two simultaneous existential threats, either of which would be cause for extreme concern and immediate attention,” said the scientists. “These major threats — nuclear weapons and climate change — were exacerbated this past year by the increased use of information warfare to undermine democracy around the world, amplifying risk from these and other threats and putting the future of civilization in extraordinary danger.”

The clock did not budge from last year, but that “should not be taken as a sign of stability,” said Rachel Bronson, president and CEO of the group of scholars and international experts in security, nuclear, environmental and science fields.

“It is a state as worrisome as the most dangerous times of the Cold War,” said Bronson at a press conference in the US capital, describing the current climate as “The New Abnormal.”

“The velocity of information has increased by orders of magnitude, allowing information warfare and fake news to flourish,” she said.

“It generates rage and polarization across the globe at a time when we need calm and unity to solve the globe’s greatest problems.”

This “New Abnormal” is “a state that features an unpredictable and shifting landscape of simmering disputes that multiply the chances for major conflict to erupt,” she added.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Reckless Path to Nuclear Weapons Leaves Us Looking Over the Edge

January 12, 2019

Reckless Path to Nuclear Weapons Leaves Us Looking Over the Edge

The Doomsday Clock is likely to advance again later this January.

What heralded the United States as a uniquely dangerous force was its creation of the atomic bomb, the world’s first nuclear weapon. Prompting this was Albert Einstein‘s signing of a letter regarding nuclear research, drafted by his fellow physicists Leo Szilard and Eugene Wigner, then quickly dispatched on 2 August 1939 to president Franklin D. Roosevelt.

The letter detailed a formulation of “extremely powerful bombs of a new type” which “may thus be constructed”, and urged America to pursue the invention of such weapons before the Nazis. Fear of Hitler attaining atomic bombs was Einstein’s sole concern. Roosevelt responded on 19 October 1939 promising to “thoroughly investigate the possibilities of your suggestion”.

After two years of analysis and inquiries, Roosevelt formally established America’s nuclear program on 19 January 1942, called the Manhattan Project – with a final $2 billion budget supporting it ($36 billion today) and employing over 130,000 people.

Einstein himself, whose parents were Jewish, had much reason to be aggrieved with the Nazis. In March 1933, the 54-year-old Einstein was left severely shaken upon learning that men loyal to Hitler had raided his summer cottage in Caputh, a village just 30 miles from Berlin. His lakeside residence was then converted into a Hitler Youth camp. This was the due thanks afforded to Einstein after decades of glittering service to his country.

Einstein, born in the southern German city of Ulm, quickly renounced his citizenship and spent periods in Belgium and England, before settling in America by the mid-1930s.

In September 1933, after a visit to an exiled Winston Churchill, Einstein said of Hitler’s rise to power,

“I cannot understand the passive response of the whole civilized world to this modern barbarism. Does the world not see that Hitler is aiming at war?”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Countdown to Doomsday: Daniel Ellsberg and the Nuclear Papers

February 2, 2018

Countdown to Doomsday: Daniel Ellsberg and the Nuclear Papers

Photo by August Muench | CC BY 2.0

Just as the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists has moved the Doomsday Clock closer than it has ever been to our species extinction point reports show that the U.S. warfare state is moving its latest high-tech rendition of tactical nuclear weapons, the B-61 “Gravity Bomb,” to airbases on the island of Guam. Is this an attempt to intimidate North Korea? Or is it a stage in a crackpot plan to destroy NK’s ability to carry out what that state has stated categorically is its defensive strategy against just such an attack?

Every sane individual I know understands that as long as nuclear weapons exist someday, and that day looms sooner every day, they will be used. The sponsors of the Bulletin, the Union of Concerned Scientists, was established after World War II and the atomic incinerations of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, by some of the very scientists and technicians who had made the bomb possible and who then understood the nature of the monstrous evil they had unleashed. Though Albert Einstein was not one of those scientists his theoretical physics had abetted the basic formula for fission and the Bomb and, believing that Nazi Germany was working on a bomb too, he urged President Franklin Roosevelt to undertake the Manhattan Project. He came sorrowfully to regret this action and spoke regularly about his opposition to war and the nuclear age. “If only I had known,” he declared, “I should have become a watchmaker.”

The renowned physicist also focused attention on the existential quandary unique to the human species when he said “Mankind invented the atomic bomb but no mouse would ever construct a mousetrap.” Has there ever been another species that actively enabled the instruments of its own extermination?

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Two Minutes to Doomsday

January 30, 2018

Two Minutes to Doomsday

Photo by Toby Scott | CC BY 2.0

Not since 1953, when the U.S. and the Soviets exploded thermonuclear bombs, has the world been such a powder keg!

Only recently, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists moved the Doomsday Clock forward 30 seconds. It now registers two minutes to midnight. Verily, it’s lights out when the clock strikes 12:00 midnight. Ka-boom, it’s over!

What’s going on?

Hitherto, in the aftermath of the Cold War, the clock was set all the way back to 17 minutes to midnight. Thereafter, it wasn’t until 1998, when India and Pakistan staged back-to-back nuclear weapon testing, that the famous timepiece moved forward into single digits once again. It’s important to note that resetting the clock is not a frivolous undertaking. A group of distinguished scientists make that decision.

Here’s the rationale for the move closer to the dreaded midnight hour: Upon the election of Trump, the Science and Security Board for the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists reset the Doomsday Clock to 2 ½ minutes to midnight. That was based upon extraordinarily provocative nasty destabilizing verbiage from the president himself. Indeed, he is commander in chief, ahem.

Thereafter, following the self-crowning glory of Trump’s inauguration, which was an absolute bust, especially as worldwide protests in the streets vastly outnumbered the inauguration, global risks have measurably increased with leaders Trump & Kim exchanging simplistic infantile barbs at every opportunity.

Not only, it’s also a fact that global risks have compounded via U.S.-Russian relations, featuring more conflict than cooperation, as the two Super Powers crank up tensions: (1) continuing NATO military exercises along borders, (2) undermining the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, (3) upgrading nuclear arsenals, and (4) eschewing arms-control negotiations. Truly, America is in conflict within all categories that ricochet into holocaust.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

According to the Doomsday Clock, the End Is Near

January 27, 2018

According to the Doomsday Clock, the End Is Near

The hypothetical “Doomsday Clock” is closer to midnight – the hour of doom – than it has been since 1953, the year that the US and the USSR both tested hydrogen bombs at the beginning of the global nuclear arms race.

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (BAS) announced on Tuesday that the time on the clock was now two minutes to midnight. The BAS is a group of science and policy experts who assess human advancement…and risk…say that we’re getting alarmingly close to the Zero Hour. Their statement said:

To: Leaders and citizens of the worldRe: Two minutes to midnightDate: January 25, 2018

In 2017, world leaders failed to respond effectively to the looming threats of nuclear war and climate change, making the world security situation more dangerous than it was a year ago—and as dangerous as it has been since World War II.

The greatest risks last year arose in the nuclear realm. North Korea’s nuclear weapons program made remarkable progress in 2017, increasing risks to North Korea itself, other countries in the region, and the United States.Hyperbolic rhetoric and provocative actions by both sides have increased the possibility of nuclear war by accident or miscalculation.

But the dangers brewing on the Korean Peninsula were not the only nuclear risks evident in 2017: The United States and Russia remained at odds, continuing military exercises along the borders of NATO, undermining the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF), upgrading their nuclear arsenals, and eschewing arms control negotiations.

In the Asia-Pacific region, tensions over the South China Sea have increased, with relations between the United States and China insufficient to re-establish a stable security situation.

In South Asia, Pakistan and India have continued to build ever-larger arsenals of nuclear weapons.

And in the Middle East, uncertainty about continued US support for the landmark Iranian nuclear deal adds to a bleak overall picture.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

It’s Official! The Risk Of Nuclear Annihilation Is At An All-Time High

January 25, 2018

It’s Official! The Risk Of Nuclear Annihilation Is At An All-Time High

Don’t Panic. It’s only the end of the world…

On Thursday, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists raised the likelihood of an apocalyptic nuclear catastrophe to its highest level in the clock’s 70+-year history, the Washington Post reported.

The clock was moved from two-and-a-half minutes to midnight to two minutes to midnight – like the classic Iron Maiden song…

During a press conference announcing the escalation, the group of scientists comprising the Bulletin offered a “grim assessment” of the factors that preceded the increase: These factors included North Korea’s nuclear program, tensions between India and Pakistan and Russia’s and China’s incorporation of nuclear drills into its military exercise.

President Donald Trump’s mercurial tweets were also cited in the report.

The group which includes 15 Nobel Laureates said the risk of nuclear annihilation in the present day has surpassed previous highs witnessed during World War II, and during the most intense periods of the Cold War.

The organization – which has 15 Nobel Laureates on its board – now believes “the world is not only more dangerous now than it was a year ago; it is as threatening as it has been since World War II,” Bulletin officials Lawrence M. Krauss and Robert Rosner wrote in an op-ed published Thursday by The Washington Post.

“In fact, the Doomsday Clock is as close to midnight today as it was in 1953, when Cold War fears perhaps reached their highest levels.”

The last time the clock advanced so far, the United States had just tested its first thermonuclear device, and the Soviet Union had tested a hydrogen bomb.

Today, Bronson said, “to call the world’s nuclear situation dire is to understate the danger and its immediacy.”

With President Trump’s now infamous “Fire and Fury” remark reverberating in their ears, the committee said it also “considered at length” the unpredictability of US nuclear policy, which one member said “an unpredictability that is embodied in statements and tweets, by the US.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Saving Humanity From Itself

December 12, 2017

Saving Humanity From Itself

Since the beginning of the nuclear age and the dropping of the first atomic bombs, humankind has struggled with the reality of being able to destroy the planet on the one hand and the abolition of these weapons on the other. This year’s Nobel Peace Prize to the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear (ICAN) acknowledges these realities and celebrates the efforts to achieve the latter. The Nobel Peace Prize with its award criteria specifies: the promotion of fraternity between nations; the advancement of disarmament and arms control and the holding and promotion of peace congresses.

From the beginning of the nuclear age in 1945 to the founding of the United Nations, 71 years ago, with its very first resolution–advocating for the importance of nuclear disarmament and a nuclear weapon-free world–nuclear abolition has been the necessary goal for our survival. The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) exemplifies these ideals and brings hope to our world.

In a world armed with some 15,000 nuclear weapons, everything that we cherish and value is threatened every moment of every day. From a limited nuclear war to all out nuclear war between “superpowers,” our future is hanging in the balance. Whether by intent, miscalculation or accident, never before has the world been closer to nuclear war. From the setting of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists Doomsday Clock in January of this year to 2 ½ minutes till midnight–where midnight represents Armageddon from nuclear war and the relationship to climate change–to the dangerous rhetoric between our president and North Korea, China and Russia resulting in the worst relations between nuclear powers in decades, we face great peril.

This year’s Nobel Peace Prize acknowledges the grave humanitarian consequences of nuclear war–a threat for which there is no adequate humanitarian or medical response and whose only solution is prevention through the total abolition of these weapons.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Doomsday clock for global market crash strikes one minute to midnight as central banks lose control

August 17, 2015

Doomsday clock for global market crash strikes one minute to midnight as central banks lose control

China currency devaluation signals endgame leaving equity markets free to collapse under the weight of impossible expectations

When the banking crisis crippled global markets seven years ago, central bankers stepped in as lenders of last resort. Profligate private-sector loans were moved on to the public-sector balance sheet and vast money-printing gave the global economy room to heal.

Time is now rapidly running out. From China to Brazil, the central banks have lost control and at the same time the global economy is grinding to a halt. It is only a matter of time before stock markets collapse under the weight of their lofty expectations and record valuations.

The FTSE 100 has now erased its gains for the year, but there are signs things could get a whole lot worse.

1 – China slowdown

China was the great saviour of the world economy in 2008. The launching of an unprecedented stimulus package sparked an infrastructure investment boom. The voracious demand for commodities to fuel its construction boom dragged along oil- and resource-rich emerging markets.

The Chinese economy has now hit a brick wall. Economic growth has dipped below 7pc for the first time in a quarter of a century, according to official data. That probably means the real economy is far weaker.

The People’s Bank of China has pursued several measures to boost the flagging economy. The rate of borrowing has been slashed during the past 12 months from 6pc to 4.85pc. Opting to devalue the currency was a last resort and signalled the great era of Chinese growth is rapidly approaching its endgame.

Data for exports showed an 8.9pc slump in July from the same period a year before. Analysts expected exports to fall only 0.3pc, so this was a huge miss.

The Chinese housing market is also in a perilous state. House prices have fallen sharply after decades of steady growth. For the millions who stored their wealth in property, it makes for unsettling times.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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