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Syria: Glimpse of the future as rapid climate change continues? Image: By Ahmed Abu Hameeda on Unsplash

Three outcomes could follow if climate change stokes mayhem, conflict and violence. It might be helpful to think about the strains to come.

LONDON, 22 February, 2019 − Stand by for long hot summers marked by riot and racial tension. As climate change stokes mayhem, global warming is likely to see a direct rise in human irritability.

Climate change accompanied by natural disaster such as flood or drought could lead to harvest failure and food and water shortages for which people must compete.

And the same natural disasters could lead to a generation of babies, children and adolescents more likely, because of disadvantage and deprivation, to become more prone to violence in adulthood.

Researchers in the US have been thinking carefully about the links between climate change and conflict. This, they write in Current Climate Change Reports, has a long history, and a huge range of studies have addressed the hazard.

And they see more civic strife and conflict on the way. Some of it is likely to involve climate refugees, or ecological migrants: persons driven from their homes by climate change. The steady rise in global temperatures could also help incubate the conditions for global terrorism.

“Syria offers us a glimpse of what the future might look like as the climate continues to change rapidly”

“This is a global issue with very serious consequences. We need to plan for ways to reduce the negative consequences,” said Craig Anderson, a psychologist at Iowa State University in the US.

“An inadequate food supply and economic disparity make it difficult to raise healthy and productive citizens, which is one way to reduce long-term violence. We also need to plan for and devote resources to aid eco-migrants in their relocation to new lands and countries.”

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

The Rising Tide of Civil Unrest Globally

January 9, 2019

The Rising Tide of Civil Unrest Globally

COMMENT: Hello Martin,
thanks a lot for your awesome work. I am from Germany and just wanted to let you know that the political situation here is more and more becoming like 1933. Last week, there was a bombing of an AFD office in Döbeln (Saxon). Luckily nobody got injured. Yesterday one AFD Politician, Frank Magnitz was brutally attacked by 3 masked men and severely injured. He is only alive because a workman saw the attack and prevented worse. If you see the pics of him, it is pure luck he is still alive. They hit his head with a log and kicked it with their boots! This was a clear murder attempt! Still, the other political parties find it hard to condemn the deed. Some even claim it is deserved and the ‘evil fascists’ need to be stopped – even by killing them! This is getting extremely worrying and a lot of people are scared that we will head into a civil war, caused by murderous leftists.

Greetings, P

REPLY: Unfortunately, this is exactly what the computer is forecasting. We are in a rising cycle of civil unrest. The political divide is growing everywhere even in the United States. This will ONLY lead to outright violence and in many cases civil war. The left is ALWAYS the most violent. They are not tolerant of opposition. I did not vote to for President Carter back in the 70s. Nevertheless, I made a fortune due to his inflationary policies and I never protested against him or claimed he was not my president.

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

Will the 2020 Presidential Election be the Most Violent in American History?

December 5, 2018

Will the 2020 Presidential Election be the Most Violent in American History?

QUESTION: Mr. Armstrong; Thanks to you I am paying closer attention to what people are saying in politics these days. It seems to be that this was not a Blue Wave they were waging but a Blue War. It is very disturbing to see the hatred is still brewing against anyone who just wants to be left alone. Is this the foundation for the rising civil unrest that turns to a civil war?

ANSWER: Unfortunately, YES! It is really very bad. The CNN political analyst Kirsten Powers actually said that all white women who voted for Donald Trump are racist! She then added that there were those who felt they had to select Trump because Hillary Clinton was simply a terrible candidate whom they could never support. We have three girls all under thirty in the office and they do not identify with Hillary’s ’60s Bra-Burning attitude. The one thing they did not like was Hillary said women were equal and should be drafted into the army as well.

The Clintons have been touring Canada with their usual exploitation to raise a never-ending pot of money. The attendance has been at best 50%. They are drawing fewer and fewer audiences.

It will only get much worse over the next two years and by the time we get to 2020, it is not going to look very civil out there. We have crossed the line. Violence and hate speech is not the norma. There is no tolerance for people to accept an opposing view.

U.S. Supreme Court decided on March 6th, 1857 (1857.178), ruled (7–2) that a slave (Dred Scott) who had resided in a free state and territory (where slavery was prohibited) was not thereby entitled to his freedom because African Americans were not and could never be citizens of the United States.

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

Does Society Turn More Violent During its End Times?

October 27, 2018

Does Society Turn More Violent During its End Times?

QUESTION: Is MMA the new Roman Colosseum? I’m a layman in history but didn’t blood sports rise in popularity during Rome’s decline? Now everyone and their mother is talking about MMA, and random celebrities e.g. Logan Paul or now Trump Jr. are jumping in the octagon or being challenged.

JR
ANSWER: Yes. For some reason, society begins to turn more violent toward its end times. Mixed martial arts is a full-contact combat sport that allows striking and grappling, both standing and on the ground, using techniques from other combat sports and martial arts. It is an interesting pattern. The Christian Persecutions really came into full swing only as the Empire was collapsing during the 3rd century.

Food, Justice, Violence and Capitalism

October 9, 2018

Food, Justice, Violence and Capitalism

In 2015, India’s internal intelligence agency wrote a report that depicted various campaigners and groups as working against the national interest. The report singled out environmental activists and NGOs that had been protesting against state-corporate policies. Those largely undemocratic and unconstitutional policies were endangering rivers, forests and local ecologies, destroying and oppressing marginalised communities, entrenching the corporatisation of agriculture and usurping land rights.

These issues are not unique to India. Resistance against similar practices and injustices is happening across the world. And for their efforts, campaigners are being abused, incarcerated and murdered. Whether people are campaigning for the land rights of tribal communities in India or for the rights of peasant farmers in Latin America or are campaigning against the fracking industry in the UK or against pipelines in the US, there is a common thread: non-violent protest to help bring about a more just and environmentally sustainable world.

What is ultimately fuelling the push towards the relentless plunder of land, peoples and the environment is a strident globalised capitalism, euphemistically termed ‘globalisation’, which is underpinned by increasing state surveillance, paramilitary-type law enforcement and a US-backed push towards militarism.

The deregulation of international capital movement (financial liberalisation) effectively turned the world into a free-for-all for global capital. The ramping up of this militarism comes at the back end of a deregulating/pro-privatising neoliberal agenda that has sacked public budgets, depressed wages, expanded credit to consumers and to governments (to sustain spending and consumption) and unbridled financial speculation. In effect, spending on war is in part a desperate attempt to boost a stagnant US economy.

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

The US Need Not Inevitably Descend into Violent Chaos If and When Disaster Strikes

September 13, 2018

The US Need Not Inevitably Descend into Violent Chaos If and When Disaster Strikes

Liberal opponents of serious, aggressive action on climate change like California Governor Jerry Brown are the strange bedfellows of right-wing survivalists on one thing: Both are quick to warn darkly that if environmentalists have their way and impose strict cuts on oil, gas and coal production or on mileage standards for automobiles and pollution controls on power plants, or in the case of right-wingers, if the banking system is allowed to continue to run US economic policy and the Fed isn’t audited, the irate citizens of the US will descend into an orgy of anarchic violence and mayhem.

The argument is that if Americans are told they can no longer drive gas-guzzling automobiles and blast their air conditioners at will, or if the US financial system again collapses as it did in 2008 leading to the Great Recession, the people of this country will essentially go mad and a lawless chaos of dog-eat-dog, kill thy neighbor for his food, will ensue.

“It will be like the Great Depression all over,” I read in one account of a recent report by one JP Morgan Chase analyst who is predicting a dramatic market crash of over 40% followed by armageddon. (I learned about this little report of impending disaster from a former cop friend who advised me to get a gun and plenty of ammo and to stock up on food to be able to protect my family.)

But this is truly ignorance regarding what actually happened when everything did collapse back in the Great Depression and Dust Bowl.

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

“I’m Totally Freaked Out”: Brazil’s Elite Fleeing Bloodshed And Chaos

August 4, 2018

“I’m Totally Freaked Out”: Brazil’s Elite Fleeing Bloodshed And Chaos

Amid the economic, political, and social collapse, Brazil has been described by many as being in the midst of a “zombie apocalypse” as years of corruption and violence spectacularly implodes all at once.

Horrified by the out of control violence and pessimistic about the nation’s political and economic outlook, thousands of wealthy Brazilians are now fleeing the country.

Thiago Lacerda, a high-profile actor, is one of the thousands of celebrities, bankers, lawyers and affluent Brazilians considering emigration before the next round of turmoil.

“I’m totally freaked out by what’s been happening, especially here in Rio [Rio de Janeiro],” Mr. Lacerda told The Wall Street Journal.

The 40-year-old actor said he has considered moving his family to Europe for the safety of his three children. “In several years, they’re going to want to go out, to start dating, without worrying about getting shot.”

Naercio Menezes Filho, director of the center for public policy at Insper, a São Paulo business school, commented on the situation and pointed out — the elite fleeing the country is the newest trend amid the threat of gang violence and economic instability.

According to a study published in June by Brazilian polling agency Datafolh, about 52 percent of the wealthiest Brazilians — those with a monthly income of more than $2,500 — want to emigrate, while 56 percent of college graduates have plans on leaving the country.

“The hope that Brazilians once had in their country has gone out the window, and many people are now reaching the conclusion that things are unlikely to change in the next few years,” said Mr. Menezes Filho.

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

What’s Wrong With the United States?

May 18, 2018

What’s Wrong With the United States?

Photo source jqpubliq | CC BY 2.0

Despite the myth perpetrated by United States spokespersons, the country is not, and never has been, a beacon of peace and freedom, the ‘land of the free and the home of the brave’, or a democracy that is the envy of the word. It is, and always has been, a racist, imperialist society, an oligarchy and, as the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. once said, the greatest purveyor of violence in the world.

Today it is living up to violent, bloody truths that comprise its existence. We will look at just a few of the circumstance today that embody that violence.

+ The U.S. has just violated an international treaty, by withdrawing from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), an agreement also signed by Russia, China, England, France, Germany, the European Union and Iran. The purpose of this agreement was to regulate Iran’s nuclear ambitions (such as they are), in return for the lifting of sanctions imposed upon that country. The JCPOA was signed by the U.S under President Barack Obama, but it was not an agreement between him and the other nations; it was a binding agreement under international law. By violating it, the U.S. has send a strong message to the world that its word cannot be relied upon; has betrayed some of the country’s closest and oldest allies, and may even sanction them if they continue to do business with Iran, which each of the other signatories says they will do, since Iran is and has been in complete compliance with the agreement.

Additionally, the U.S., which has been at war for 225 years of its 242 year history, and which is currently bombing seven countries and supporting terrorist groups in Syria, accuses Iran, which has not invaded another country since 1798, of being the world’s foremost sponsor of terrorism. This is Orwellianism at its best.

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

Character, Not Control, Is the Antidote to Evil

April 21, 2018

Character, Not Control, Is the Antidote to Evil

Every hero is a potential villain who chose differently.

Humans are dangerous creatures capable of great evil. This inescapable truth bombards us every time we turn on the news. The weight of this knowledge bears down on every human soul, and with every tragedy, we are starkly reminded of it. We cry out for someone to save us from our inherent capacity for evil. Or perhaps we say to ourselves, “I could never do that.”

But you’re wrong, you could do that.

Humans can kill. We can harm, we can steal, we can commit grave atrocities. Why? Because we are free.

Being free means that your choices are your own. There is no government agency capable of monitoring our every action, our every violent thought, our every evil instinct. No government organization can prevent every act of violence because every act of violence is an expression of human power. There is no bureaucracy that is more powerful than the actions of individual humans who are free to choose to be evil.

With every tragedy—every school shooting, every act of terrorism, every high profile murder—we as a species ask why this is happening. How could any human choose to do harm? Yet perhaps the question isn’t why it happened. Perhaps the question is why more of us don’t commit atrocities.

We Cannot Be Good if We Cannot Do Wrong

Psychologist Dr. Jordan B. Peterson says that we can have no insight whatsoever into our capacity for good until we understand our capacity for evil. I think he’s right. Until we acknowledge that humans can be evil, we cannot choose to be good. If we did not possess the ability to do great harm, there would be nothing commendable about not doing so.

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

Enough Is Enough: If You Really Want to Save Lives, Take Aim at Government Violence [SHORT]

March 27, 2018

Enough Is Enough: If You Really Want to Save Lives, Take Aim at Government Violence [SHORT]

Enough is enough.

That was the refrain chanted over and over by the thousands of demonstrators who gathered to protest gun violence in America.

On March 24, 2018, more than 200,000 young people took the time to march on Washington DC and other cities across the country to demand that their concerns about gun violence be heard.

More power to them.

I’m all for activism, especially if it motivates people who have been sitting silently on the sidelines for too long to get up and try to reclaim control over a runaway government.

Curiously, however, although these young activists were vocal in calling for gun control legislation that requires stricter background checks and limits the kinds of weapons being bought and sold by members of the public, they were remarkably silent about the gun violence perpetrated by their own government.

Why is no one taking aim at the U.S. government as the greatest purveyor of violence in American society and around the world?

As journalist Celisa Calacal recognizes, “It is often the case that police shootings, incidents where law enforcement officers pull the trigger on civilians, are left out of the conversation on gun violence. But a police officer shooting a civilian counts as gun violence. Every time an officer uses a gun against an innocent or an unarmed person contributes to the culture of gun violence in this country.”

Enough is enough.

The systemic violence being perpetrated by agents of the government has done more collective harm to the American people and our liberties than any single act of terror or mass shooting.

Violence has become our government’s calling card, from the more than 80,000 SWAT team raids carried out every year on unsuspecting Americans to the military’s endless wars abroad.

Indeed, the day before thousands of demonstrators descended on Washington DC to protest mass shootings such as the one that took place at Stoneman Douglas High School, President Trump signed into law a colossal $1.3 trillion spending bill that gives the military the biggest boost in spending in more than a decade.

With more than $700 billion earmarked for the military, including $144.3 billion for new military equipment, you can be sure this financial windfall for America’s military empire will be used to expand the police state here at home.

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

The Exponent Problem

February 26, 2018

The Exponent Problem

2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, 1024, 2048, 4096, 8192…

Most people find managing their own affairs sufficiently challenging. Earning a living, establishing a family, rearing children, saving for college and retirement, and dealing with illness and aging fill the days and leave little time, attention, or energy to manage someone else’s affairs.

A hypothesis: the effort required to run other people’s lives is an exponential function. If X is the sum total of everything required to run your life; running two lives is X squared; three lives is X cubed, and so on. Call it the exponent problem. For partial verification, try running someone else’s life for a day or two. See it how it works out for you and the other person.

Why do governments fail? Government is someone imposing rules on someone else, and backing them up with repression, fraud, and violence when necessary. The governed always outnumber those governing, which means the latter face the exponent problem. In the US, there are around 22 million employed by the government, and let’s add in another million who actively influence it. The US population is around 323 million, so there are 23 million rulers to 300 million ruled, or about 13 ruled per ruler. How fitting, like the 13 original colonies!

Whatever amount X of time, energy, money, attention, and other resources the rulers expend on their own lives, they must expend that X to the thirteenth power to “govern” the ruled. If X could actually be quantified and it was only 2, it would still take 8192 times the effort to rule the US as it does for the rulers to govern their own lives. Those are just illustrative numbers, but you get the picture.

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

SELCO: The Brutal Truth About Violence When the SHTF

February 11, 2018

SELCO: The Brutal Truth About Violence When the SHTF

Are you prepared for the extreme violence that is likely to come your way if the SHTF? No matter what your plan is, it’s entirely probable that at some point, you’ll be the victim of violence or have to perpetrate violence to survive. As always, Selco is our go-to guy on SHTF reality checks and this thought-provoking interview will shake you to your core.

If you don’t know Selco, he’s from Bosnia and he lived through a year in a city that was blockaded with no utilities, no deliveries of supplies, and no services. In his interviews, he shares what the scenarios the rest of us theorize about were REALLY like. He mentioned to me recently that most folks aren’t prepared for the violence that is part and parcel of a collapse, which brings us to today’s interview.

How prevalent was violence when the SHTF in Bosnia?

It was wartime and chaos, from all conflicts in those years in the Balkan region Bosnian conflict was most brutal because of multiple reasons, historical, political and other.

To simplify the explanation why violence was common and very brutal, you need to picture a situation where you are “bombarded” with huge amount of information (propaganda) which instills in you very strong feelings of fear and hate.

Out of fear and hate, violence grows easy and fast, and over the very short period of time you see how people around you (including you) do things that you could not imagine before.

I can say that violence was almost an everyday thing in the whole spectrum of different activities because it was a fight for survival.

Again, whenever (and wherever) you put people in a region without enough resources, you can expect violence.

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

Military Deployed As Jamaica Officials Declare State Of Emergency

January 20, 2018

Military Deployed As Jamaica Officials Declare State Of Emergency

Foreigners are being asked by their respective governments to exercise extreme caution and stay within the perimeter of their resorts in Montego Bay, Jamaica, after a wave of out of control violence has overpowered local authorities. On Thursday, the country’s prime minister, Andrew Holness, declared the state of emergency in the St. James parish to “restore public safety,” and also thwart a mass exodus of international investment and tourism.

In response, the government deployed the Jamaica Defense Forces onto the city streets in what is described as a “major military operation.”

Maj. Gen. Antony Anderson, Jamaica’s national security advisor, told CTV News Channel on Friday that authorities imposed a military lockdown of the area, following 335 homicides in 2017, and as reported by CTV that is “twice the tally of any other parish” in the country.

Anderson noted that the number of shootings and homicides have been growing for some period of time, but last year, the surge in deaths could not be ignored rolling into 2018. He said much of the problem resides on the outskirts of Montego Bay and that “Jamaica is still open for business.”

State of Jamaica@JamaicaState

Life in a state of emergency. #MontegoBay #JLPGovernment

11:08 AM – Jan 20, 2018

The recent crime surge in Jamaica has been driven by conflicts between criminal gangs over the control of the lottery trade, drug wars, and even turf wars.

Maj. Gen. Anderson describes the state of emergency which gives military troops “more freedom of action.”

“For instance, they can do searches without a warrant, so if they get information that something is occurring somewhere, they can respond rapidly to it. They can respond to a series of intelligence-driven operations to target and capture the people who are doing these things and generally disrupt the gangs in their activities,” he added.

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

The Greek Fraud Reads Like a Crime Novel

December 16, 2017

The Greek Fraud Reads Like a Crime Novel

Tamara de Lempicka The refugees 1937Note: I feel kind of sorry this has become such a long essay. But I still left out so much. You know by now I care a lot about Greece, and it’s high time for another look, and another update, and another chance for people to understand what is happening to the country, and why. To understand that hardly any of it is because the Greeks had so much debt and all of that narrative.

The truth is, Greece was set up to be a patsy for the failure of Europe’s financial system, and is now being groomed simultaneously as a tourist attraction to benefit foreign investors who buy Greek assets for pennies on the dollar, and as an internment camp for refugees and migrants that Europe’s ‘leaders’ view as a threat to their political careers more than anything else.

I would almost say: here we go again, but in reality we never stopped going. It’s just that Greece’s 15 minutes of fame may be long gone, but its ordeal is far from over. If you read through this, you will understand why that is. The EU is deliberately, and without any economic justification, destroying one of its own member states, destroying its entire economy.

A short article in Greek paper Kathimerini last week detailed the latest new cuts in pensions the Troika has imposed on Greece, and it’s now getting beyond absurd. For an economy to function, you need people spending money. That is what keeps jobs alive, jobs which pay people the money they need to spend on their basic necessities. If you don’t do at least that, there’ll be ever fewer jobs, and/or ever less money to spend. It’s a vicious cycle.

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

Is Free Speech in the US Doomed?

November 9, 2017

Is Free Speech in the US Doomed?

To understand why an idea should be rejected first requires that the idea be understood.

Crowds of students gathered at the University of California-Berkeley in September armed with protest signs and chanting, “Speech is violence! We will not be silent!” Who were these students so passionately protesting against? Surely it would have to be someone as vile as neo-Nazi Richard Spencer or at least as controversial as alt-right darling Milo Yiannopoulos.

Who decides what speech constitutes violence?

In reality, it was conservative commentator Ben Shapiro – a far cry from a literal neo-Nazi – who inspired protesters to gather on campus with a rallying cry that equates speech with violence. That sentiment is a dangerous one and it is quickly gaining popularity.

When You Call Speech Violence

The problem with conflating “hate” speech with violence is manifold. For one, hate speech is subjective. Who decides what speech constitutes violence? If the answer is the government, then civil liberties will be in immediate danger, as it stands to reason that the government will crackdown on any speech is deems violent or dangerous. Consider how the government responded to the civil rights movement in the ‘50s and ‘60s.

“If utterances of speech are truly violence, then government can ban them as criminal conduct, just as we prohibit other forms of private violence,” Josh Craddock, the editor-in-chief of the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy argued in an August op-ed for the National Review.

Another problem with equating words with violence is that it inspires physical violence to counteract it. Force is often justified when the threat of physical harm is imminent, so it stands to reason that force can be used to prevent hateful speech in a world where violence and speech are one and the same.

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

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