Tag Archives: world war

Dangers for a New American Empire

Posted on by
Reply

Trump’s Imperialist Ambitions destroys the PostWar Order

We Americans do not need to expand the borders of our nation. Donald Trump has forgotten, if he ever did know it, the maxim of the super rich: “Control, don’t own. Control everything, own nothing.” Besides, he’s talking about trodding over some of our closest military allies and trading partners and adding them all to his fantasy map of a new empire.

NATO would rupture into a most unnecessary schism at the worst possible time. If NATO self-destruct, it will damage the United States and empower Russian and Chinese efforts to keep taking over their neighbors. Trump will unwittingly or maybe deliberately turn lose wannabe conquerors everywhere. The Orange Man who would be a dictator probably doesn’t care. His MAGA cultists and allied Alt-Right mafias won’t care. These actions, however, will impoverish us Americans. To return to empire building in this 21st Century will tank our economy, deplete our treasury, overextend our quiet, de facto pretend-we-really-aren’t-empire-altho-we-are, turn powerful allies against us, turn comparatively weak dictators into allies. These consequences may well cost us unimaginable lives. We Americans will end up broke and shooting at each other if we keep going on like this.

The incoming President of the United States of America wants to conquer, buy, or otherwise annex several North American countries to a new American Empire. The old empire hasn’t ever gone away, but Americans like to pretend they’re anti-imperialists, genuinely dislike empires, and generally are uncomfortable reigning as overtly racist, colonial overlords. After all, the USA was birthed in a long, chaotic revolutionary war that saw a chain of British colonies along the eastern North American seaboard win their independence from a king. The American Revolution was itself part of a protracted 127 years long world war between multiple empires and kingdoms called the Second Hundred Years War (1688-1815).

So of course Americans, championing their constitutional democratic republic, want to keep their empire hidden. They prefer a network of vested commercial interests, financial control, and economic influence secured by hundreds of military bases and intelligence webs. Trump doesn’t care. He just powers in, bursting down doors and yanking open the curtains so he can see and to show off to the world what he finds. For he is a master finders keeper transactionalist. He doesn’t rob. That’s too stealthy. He takes. National security is usually the excuse. It’s often is the truth, ironically, but he doesn’t hide or deny such things. No discretion or backchannel negotiations. Continue reading →

Ukraine/Taiwan: Be Ready Already for a New World War

Posted on by
Reply

Escalation towards major regional war and possible world war is in motion

Ignore the doom porn flooding the media

Be aware. Stay alert.

Ignore both blathering soothsayers and smirking pundits who all declare it’s illogical and impossible for such a little bitty border war to blow up across the world because they’re stupid enough to ignore the reality of our human minds

Tit for tat and tat for tit reactions in and over the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian War is threatening to turn a local conflict brewing with violence since late 2013 into a global conflagration. These tit for tat moves escalated today between Putin’s Russia and the Western Alliance in a rapidly developing crescendo of anger, distrust, fear, hate, ignorance, greed, and even sadness amidst conflicting interpretations of history and culture.

Remember the last four world wars: the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, the Great War alongside and followed by revolutions and civil wars around the globe, the Second World War, and, finally, the Cold War, a planet-wide conflict in which millions died. As one recalls these massive conflicts, keep in mind none of them began as world wars. Each one of them began as local wars that grew into regional wars. Multiple regional wars merged into a world war. Even World War II was a hodgepodge of interconnected local and regional conflicts with different timelines for each one. Each global conflict spawned a range of insurrections, revolutions, and civil wars as well.

The same will likely occur with Putin’s escalation of the Ukrainian border war into a global conflict. Only in today’s 21st Century the speed of our interwoven global communications and economies will rapidly accelerate the blossoming of such dark, bloody flowers. Cyberattacks and the reluctance to engage in massive kinetic combat may compel major enemy forces to use tactical battlefield nukes in combat. Such may quickly escalate to widespread EMP detonations and worldwide exchanges of strategic nuclear weapons between the primary adversaries.

There are significant local and regional conflicts that could easily spiral out of control and merge with others into a planet-wide war. These include the wars in and around Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Somalia, the fighting in Kashmir with India and Pakistan on nuclear hair triggers, Indo-China border conflicts, spreading violence in Venezuela and Colombia, the interrelated wars across the Middle East, Africa, and Central Asia, and a raft of others. Two of the most serious “others” are the Chinese-Taiwan conflict and the problem with North Korea as it keeps firing rockets and missiles to provoke attention. In the midst of these conflicts we face global climate change, a still-raging COVID pandemic, political instability, and economic turbulence. What to do?

Continue reading →

MLK Jr Blues on a Cloudy Day

Posted on by
Reply

We see you. And we’re not messin’ around.

Today is the official federal holy day honoring the late, murdered Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Junior. I’m in Seattle with my Sweetie Sweetchickens. Both of us are FV & Boostered, we don’t feel well, and she feels worse than me. We’re waiting for the results of her test for COVID-19. Got tested Saturday. So with all due respect to MLK we avoided marches, rallies, and social gatherings indoors. We chose to go for a meandering ramble up in Shoreline at Richmond Beach Saltwater Park. We need wide open spaces with healing views of big sky, open water, and a breeze. Temperatures were in the low to mid 40s. Fahrenheit.

Contemplation of stillness amidst vast spaces…and those waves of energy rippling out thru air and water.

We contemplated the winter sun, the sea, and overcast skies. To our surprise one lone boat was way out there crossing the Sound. Then it dawned upon me the Salish Sea appeared so bereft of boats because of the threat of tsunamis from earlier in the morning. Hunga-Tonga-Hunga-Ha’apai, a submarine volcanic mountain in the South Pacific, had exploded in spectacular and deadly fashion. Tsunamis shot across the Pacific in all directions, battering other islands including Hawaii, Fiji, and New Zealand. These walls of water reached from Japan and Australia to the entire western coasts of the Americas all the way from Alaska to Chile. I wondered if any waves crashed up on Kamchatka in the Russian Far East.

In the Vast

Ahhh, yet another dreadful yet mesmerizing apocalypse. Fell into a funk as I considered the current state of voting rights in my country, the creeping and creepy push towards an American dictatorship, the clamor over civil war, multiple pandemics and not just COVID, the economy, asteroids, comets, Earth slowing down and cooling off, the paralytic crises in governments, the weather, the climate, murders and robberies…aye, twas a deep funk. So I opened wide into the mystery, the majesty, and the terror of it all.

Continue reading →