Given the penchant we have for war, combined with our appetite for natural resources and total disdain of our environment, it bodes ill for the future of the human species.
There is an interesting theory about mass extinctions that goes something like this:
In order to ensure survival of the species, all species bear more progeny than needed for parental replacement.
As a result, the population of the dominant species, which has no predators, will expand until it consumes all available resources and lays waste to the environment making it uninhabitable - at which point it will perish along with many other species that were dependent on that environment.
In the movie "Matrix", while interrogating Morpheus, Agent Smith said, " I'd like to share a revelation that I've had during my time here. It came to me when I tried to classify your species and I realized that you're not actually mammals. Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment but you humans do not. You move to an area and you multiply and multiply until every natural resource is consumed and the only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet."
While it's not quite true that mammals instinctively develop a natural equilibrium, it is true that an equilibrium is normally established for most species in the absence of humans. And while humans are not quite like viruses, they are busy consuming all natural resources and laying waste to the environment; and the pace at which they are doing so is ever accelerating.
Given that the high percentage of our species don't understand this and/or don't care about it - especially those in power - the future looks bleak.
Human History shows when major powers accrue debt that is impossible to pay back as US debt is now, WAR is inevitable to destroy everything to start over. This Material World is at that precipice TODAY.
Good comment, but I would add that were humans to suddenly disappear, over time another species would gain intelligence and do exactly as we are doing. The enabling thing is technology which provides unlimited ability to take with no requirement to give back. The only difference between our fate and the fate of any animal or plant species is that the time frame for us is far longer. Deer overgraze and in a year or two the herd is severely reduced. For us, technology extends this to centuries (starting with the industrial revolution - the first practical steam engine 1712).
It's fun to think of what species might be our successor...chimps? This is a good way to pass the time instead of worrying about our inevitable comeuppance.
Jonathan Cook takes apart the response by Jake Sullivan, U.S. national security adviser, to the savage Israel-U.S. military operation at the Nuseirat refugee camp on Saturday that massacred more than 270 Palestinians.
Western politicians and journalists have hurried to dismiss the murder and maiming of hundreds of Palestinian civilians in the Nuseirat refugee camp on Saturday in a savage joint Israeli-U.S. military operation to free four Israeli captives.
Not just that, they have suggested that the bloodshed was inevitable and justified given that the hostages were being held in a residential neighbourhood of Gaza.
For example, Jake Sullivan, Biden’s national security advisor, observed of the massacre that was actively assisted by the U.S.:
“The Palestinian people are going through sheer hell in this conflict because Hamas is operating in a way that puts them in the crossfire, that holds hostages right in the heart of crowded civilian areas.”
Apparently, Israel’s decades of belligerent military occupation of the Palestinian territories, its 17-year blockade of Gaza denying its population the essentials of life, its intermittent destruction of the enclave by “mowing the lawn” and now its carrying out of what the International Court of Justice has called a “plausible genocide” have nothing to do with the “sheer hell” the people of Gaza are suffering.
Those trying to win our consent to mass murder and the planned starvation of the people of Gaza by arguing that Hamas is using Palestinians in Gaza as human shields are engaged in the worst kind of bad-faith argument.
Let’s put back the context they are so keen to obscure:
Israel has been besieging the enclave of Gaza for decades. The tiny strip of land’s population comprises mostly Palestinian refugees who were long ago ethnically cleansed from their homes in what is now Israel and confined to Gaza. Their numbers have grown hugely since, to more than 2.3 million, within tightly-delimited “borders” policed — and blockaded — by Israel. Gaza is, in a true sense of the term, a giant concentration camp.
Gaza doesn’t have woods, mountains, caves in which Hamas fighters can hide or in which they can conceal their captives. It is not Afghanistan or Russia.
Gaza is almost entirely built-up — or it was until Israel destroyed most of its buildings over the past eight months. Small areas are open agricultural land or scrubland Israel will not allow Palestinians to develop — much of that has now been destroyed too. Watching over this tiny space 24/7 are armed Israeli drones. Move outside a building and you are being surveilled. You become a potential target for an assassination by Israel.
Hamas has two non-suicidal options for hiding the captives it seized in Israel on Oct. 7. Either in a building, or underground in its tunnels, which were built precisely so parts of Gaza would be out of view of a hostile Israeli military. They are the nearest Hamas has to military bases. (Let us note here another hypocrisy: Israel’s military bases are often embedded in civilian communities inside Israel. Its Defence Ministry’s headquarters, the, is in the middle of built-up Tel Aviv.)
Hiding the captives above ground is the obviously more humanitarian option, as is clear from the images of those freed at the weekend. Given many months of captivity, they are reported to be in reasonable health.
After Israel’s massacre of more than 270 Palestinians at the weekend in Nuseirat camp, Hamas will now take all the hostages underground. That will be far worse for them, and it will make no difference to Israel’s wanton destruction of the buildings above. The overwhelming majority of the 70 percent of Gaza’s housing stock destroyed by Israel did not contain Israeli captives or Hamas fighters. It was targeted nonetheless because Israel’s military rampage has never been about getting the hostages back, or even about defeating Hamas, an impossible goal. It is about eradicating Gaza................
To hear some of the nonsense about HAMAS, you would think that 1) the Gazans would have joyfully welcomed the IDF as their liberator from HAMAS and 2) the IDF, knowing that HAMAS was the sole source of Gazan misery, would take care to identify each and every Palestinian knowing that every non-HAMAS person would happily join with the IDF to finger HAMAS members.
The US has sustained itself through wars ever since the end of WWII. I think that a primary reason aside from the economic boost and hegemonic lust for other people's resources is that it lets the government convince corporate-owned-news, congress creeps and the public that there is an ongoing crisis, and therefore everyone needs to be onboard. Either you are with "us", or you are with "them". Korea, Viet Nam/Cambodia/Laos, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria and Ukraine only being the big ones, with many smaller wars, violent coups and leftist slaughters by right-wing mercenaries scattered about over the last 70 years. As long as so many people turn to the corporate-owned-news for their information, things are not going to change. Most people I know insist that Russia's invasion in Ukraine was "unprovoked".
Isaiah, the MAJOR Jewish Prophet, covers it describing Israel TODAY in the 1st Chapter of his Book in the Book of Books. Naturally TODAY'S generation of Israelis do not see it.
The vision of Isaiah the son of Amoz, which he saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem, in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, [and] Hezekiah, kings of Judah.
Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth, for the Lord has spoken; Children I have raised and exalted, yet they have rebelled against Me.
An ox knows his owner and a donkey his master's crib; Israel does not know, my people does not consider.
Woe to a sinful nation, a people heavy with iniquity, evildoing seed, corrupt children. They forsook the Lord; they provoked the Holy One of Israel; they drew backwards.
Why are you beaten when you still continue to rebel? Every head is [afflicted] with illness and every heart with malaise.
From the sole of the foot until the head there is no soundness-wounds and contusions and lacerated sores; they have not sprinkled, neither have they been bandaged, nor was it softened with oil...........................................................................................................
I wonder who in the Ukraine government will be signing for this new "security agreement". Presumably not Zelenski, since his term ended on May 21. Since he cancelled elections he is now the illegitimate ruler (dictator) of Ukraine. Will we see what is in this agreement? Probably not - it will be classified SECRET of even (gads!) TOP SECRET. And since it will be a treaty will it be submitted to the Senate as the Constitution requires. Probably not. Biden is like a bull in a china shop.
I can't visualize Biden as a bull. How about a sleepwalker in a china shop, with a crowd of handlers trying to turn him this way or that before he slowly walks directly into something.
Americans already forgot the US insisted Elections be held during the 20 year, $2 TRILLION US WAR in Afghanistan to spread Democracy.
Zelensky is the ILLEGITIMATE President of Ukraine. His legitimate term ended on May 21.
Not that there is a Real Democracy anywhere in this World. This World is run by Oligarchic Plutocratic Pyramid Systems if the Truth and Reality be recognized.
Given the penchant we have for war, combined with our appetite for natural resources and total disdain of our environment, it bodes ill for the future of the human species.
There is an interesting theory about mass extinctions that goes something like this:
In order to ensure survival of the species, all species bear more progeny than needed for parental replacement.
As a result, the population of the dominant species, which has no predators, will expand until it consumes all available resources and lays waste to the environment making it uninhabitable - at which point it will perish along with many other species that were dependent on that environment.
In the movie "Matrix", while interrogating Morpheus, Agent Smith said, " I'd like to share a revelation that I've had during my time here. It came to me when I tried to classify your species and I realized that you're not actually mammals. Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment but you humans do not. You move to an area and you multiply and multiply until every natural resource is consumed and the only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet."
While it's not quite true that mammals instinctively develop a natural equilibrium, it is true that an equilibrium is normally established for most species in the absence of humans. And while humans are not quite like viruses, they are busy consuming all natural resources and laying waste to the environment; and the pace at which they are doing so is ever accelerating.
Given that the high percentage of our species don't understand this and/or don't care about it - especially those in power - the future looks bleak.
Don't worry: we'll all go to Mars with Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos. :-)
Right! And I'm your fairy godmother.
Human History shows when major powers accrue debt that is impossible to pay back as US debt is now, WAR is inevitable to destroy everything to start over. This Material World is at that precipice TODAY.
Good comment, but I would add that were humans to suddenly disappear, over time another species would gain intelligence and do exactly as we are doing. The enabling thing is technology which provides unlimited ability to take with no requirement to give back. The only difference between our fate and the fate of any animal or plant species is that the time frame for us is far longer. Deer overgraze and in a year or two the herd is severely reduced. For us, technology extends this to centuries (starting with the industrial revolution - the first practical steam engine 1712).
It's fun to think of what species might be our successor...chimps? This is a good way to pass the time instead of worrying about our inevitable comeuppance.
Props for the Matrix quotation. Spot on!
'Hamas & ‘Human Shields’
Jonathan Cook takes apart the response by Jake Sullivan, U.S. national security adviser, to the savage Israel-U.S. military operation at the Nuseirat refugee camp on Saturday that massacred more than 270 Palestinians.
Western politicians and journalists have hurried to dismiss the murder and maiming of hundreds of Palestinian civilians in the Nuseirat refugee camp on Saturday in a savage joint Israeli-U.S. military operation to free four Israeli captives.
Not just that, they have suggested that the bloodshed was inevitable and justified given that the hostages were being held in a residential neighbourhood of Gaza.
For example, Jake Sullivan, Biden’s national security advisor, observed of the massacre that was actively assisted by the U.S.:
“The Palestinian people are going through sheer hell in this conflict because Hamas is operating in a way that puts them in the crossfire, that holds hostages right in the heart of crowded civilian areas.”
Apparently, Israel’s decades of belligerent military occupation of the Palestinian territories, its 17-year blockade of Gaza denying its population the essentials of life, its intermittent destruction of the enclave by “mowing the lawn” and now its carrying out of what the International Court of Justice has called a “plausible genocide” have nothing to do with the “sheer hell” the people of Gaza are suffering.
Those trying to win our consent to mass murder and the planned starvation of the people of Gaza by arguing that Hamas is using Palestinians in Gaza as human shields are engaged in the worst kind of bad-faith argument.
Let’s put back the context they are so keen to obscure:
Israel has been besieging the enclave of Gaza for decades. The tiny strip of land’s population comprises mostly Palestinian refugees who were long ago ethnically cleansed from their homes in what is now Israel and confined to Gaza. Their numbers have grown hugely since, to more than 2.3 million, within tightly-delimited “borders” policed — and blockaded — by Israel. Gaza is, in a true sense of the term, a giant concentration camp.
Gaza doesn’t have woods, mountains, caves in which Hamas fighters can hide or in which they can conceal their captives. It is not Afghanistan or Russia.
Gaza is almost entirely built-up — or it was until Israel destroyed most of its buildings over the past eight months. Small areas are open agricultural land or scrubland Israel will not allow Palestinians to develop — much of that has now been destroyed too. Watching over this tiny space 24/7 are armed Israeli drones. Move outside a building and you are being surveilled. You become a potential target for an assassination by Israel.
Hamas has two non-suicidal options for hiding the captives it seized in Israel on Oct. 7. Either in a building, or underground in its tunnels, which were built precisely so parts of Gaza would be out of view of a hostile Israeli military. They are the nearest Hamas has to military bases. (Let us note here another hypocrisy: Israel’s military bases are often embedded in civilian communities inside Israel. Its Defence Ministry’s headquarters, the, is in the middle of built-up Tel Aviv.)
Hiding the captives above ground is the obviously more humanitarian option, as is clear from the images of those freed at the weekend. Given many months of captivity, they are reported to be in reasonable health.
After Israel’s massacre of more than 270 Palestinians at the weekend in Nuseirat camp, Hamas will now take all the hostages underground. That will be far worse for them, and it will make no difference to Israel’s wanton destruction of the buildings above. The overwhelming majority of the 70 percent of Gaza’s housing stock destroyed by Israel did not contain Israeli captives or Hamas fighters. It was targeted nonetheless because Israel’s military rampage has never been about getting the hostages back, or even about defeating Hamas, an impossible goal. It is about eradicating Gaza................
https://consortiumnews.com/2024/06/12/hamas-human-shields
To hear some of the nonsense about HAMAS, you would think that 1) the Gazans would have joyfully welcomed the IDF as their liberator from HAMAS and 2) the IDF, knowing that HAMAS was the sole source of Gazan misery, would take care to identify each and every Palestinian knowing that every non-HAMAS person would happily join with the IDF to finger HAMAS members.
IDF using Gestapo “kill ten for one”.
Everyday IDF does hundreds of No Gun Ri assaults on civilian, even though U.S. hid No Gun Ri immediately
In the latest Israeli atrocity, the ratio was killing 68 Palestinians for each of the 4 Jews extracted from Gaza.
The US has sustained itself through wars ever since the end of WWII. I think that a primary reason aside from the economic boost and hegemonic lust for other people's resources is that it lets the government convince corporate-owned-news, congress creeps and the public that there is an ongoing crisis, and therefore everyone needs to be onboard. Either you are with "us", or you are with "them". Korea, Viet Nam/Cambodia/Laos, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria and Ukraine only being the big ones, with many smaller wars, violent coups and leftist slaughters by right-wing mercenaries scattered about over the last 70 years. As long as so many people turn to the corporate-owned-news for their information, things are not going to change. Most people I know insist that Russia's invasion in Ukraine was "unprovoked".
Yes. It can't be us and us (common humanity), or even us and them. It must be us versus them, a perpetual conflict.
Us versus them has the virtue (sic) of encouraging the people to identify with their government no matter how incompetent or corrupt it is.
Yes.
Very depressing up date. Thanks for the news; sad it's so f'ing aweful
Why We Fight (apologies to Frank Capra): https://geopoliticaleconomy.substack.com/p/ukraine-12-trillion-minerals-west-china-russia
Isaiah 2:4 …..”and study war no more”.
USA increments of headline weapons with no strategy, and nihil quantity suggests that profit not war is the study inside the beltway.
Isaiah, the MAJOR Jewish Prophet, covers it describing Israel TODAY in the 1st Chapter of his Book in the Book of Books. Naturally TODAY'S generation of Israelis do not see it.
The vision of Isaiah the son of Amoz, which he saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem, in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, [and] Hezekiah, kings of Judah.
Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth, for the Lord has spoken; Children I have raised and exalted, yet they have rebelled against Me.
An ox knows his owner and a donkey his master's crib; Israel does not know, my people does not consider.
Woe to a sinful nation, a people heavy with iniquity, evildoing seed, corrupt children. They forsook the Lord; they provoked the Holy One of Israel; they drew backwards.
Why are you beaten when you still continue to rebel? Every head is [afflicted] with illness and every heart with malaise.
From the sole of the foot until the head there is no soundness-wounds and contusions and lacerated sores; they have not sprinkled, neither have they been bandaged, nor was it softened with oil...........................................................................................................
https://www.chabad.org/library/bible_cdo/aid/15932
I wonder who in the Ukraine government will be signing for this new "security agreement". Presumably not Zelenski, since his term ended on May 21. Since he cancelled elections he is now the illegitimate ruler (dictator) of Ukraine. Will we see what is in this agreement? Probably not - it will be classified SECRET of even (gads!) TOP SECRET. And since it will be a treaty will it be submitted to the Senate as the Constitution requires. Probably not. Biden is like a bull in a china shop.
I can't visualize Biden as a bull. How about a sleepwalker in a china shop, with a crowd of handlers trying to turn him this way or that before he slowly walks directly into something.
Lest we forget!
Americans already forgot the US insisted Elections be held during the 20 year, $2 TRILLION US WAR in Afghanistan to spread Democracy.
Zelensky is the ILLEGITIMATE President of Ukraine. His legitimate term ended on May 21.
Not that there is a Real Democracy anywhere in this World. This World is run by Oligarchic Plutocratic Pyramid Systems if the Truth and Reality be recognized.
Zelensky never was legitimate nor were any others following the Maidan Revolution.