North Korea

Ending North Korea Fear. Ian Welsh, Aug. 9, 2017.

So, Trump and Korea have everyone in a tizzy about the possibility of nuclear war. The international community has another set of sanctions going forward, which look like they will close off much of the remaining N. Korean trade, and North Korea is saying nasty things and testing nasty weapons.

Perhaps it’s time to regularize relationships?

It seems to be forgotten that no peace treaty ever ended the Korean war. The North Koreans are scared spitless of West, and let us be frank, not without reason. The fates of Libya and Iraq bear heavy on their mind, to mention two recent events.

People without nukes, whom the West/US doesn’t like, tend to do badly.

The North Koreans have long said that they want a peace treaty. Perhaps one could be arranged for serious agreements to scrap or limit long range nuclear weapons. Scrapping would be a hard sell, because after Qaddafi scrapped his, he got invaded, but some serious limits ought to be possible.

I know this flies against the current mood, but sanctions have been tried now for 60 years and haven’t worked, and the threat keeps getting worse and worse.

Perhaps try something else?




Stop The Bluster - North Korea Is A Nuclear Weapon State. Moon of Alabama. Aug. 9, 2017.

The Washington Post headlined today: Trump threatens ‘fire and fury’ in response to North Korean threats

Just another Trump bluster, I thought. Such are no longer a reason to read a story. But what are those "North Korean threats" he "responded" to? I had not seen any of those. Diving into the story I found :
President Trump used his harshest language yet to warn North Korea on Tuesday that it will be “met with fire and fury and frankly power, the likes of which this world has never seen before,” if it does not stop threatening the United States.

It was not immediately clear what Trump was responding to.

The Washington Post needs to fire its headline writer. Why assert that Trump responded to "threats" when there were none? Why assert a reason when you have no fucking clue why he did what he did?

A different shabby site claims that the base for Trump's played-up nonsense was a WaPo piece published the day before:

The president was responding to a report in the Washington Post that, according to a confidential U.S. intelligence assessment presented late last month, the North Korean regime has “successfully produced a miniaturized nuclear warhead that can fit inside its missiles.”

That report was again just bluster. The DPRK (North Korea) had announced a miniaturized nuclear device in March 2016. It even published pictures of it.

On July 4th the DPRK launched its first Intercontinental Ballistic Missile. A second test was successfully launched on July 29 under realistic operational conditions. The DPRK successfully tested nuclear devices at least five times - including a hydrogen device with potentially megatons of explosive power. It has enough nuclear material for some 40-60 weapons. All DPRK claims about progress in its missile and nuke programs have, sooner or later, been proven as truthful. There was and is no reason to doubt its March 2016 assertion.

North Korea is for all practical purposes a nuclear weapon state with the ability to deliver nukes onto the continental United States.

This is not news. Talk about "fire and fury" or an ultimatum to North Korea or of preemptive strikes is all nonsense. Nothing the U.S. can do to North Korea can prevent a response that would nuke and destroy Washington DC or some other U.S. city.

North Korea has good reasons to want nukes and the U.S. missed all chances to remove those reasons. It is way too late to lament about that.




Why North Korea Needs Nukes - And How To End That. Moon of Alabama. Apr. 14, 2017.

Media say,
the U.S. may
or may not
kill a number of North Koreans
for this or that
or no reason
but call North Korea
'the volatile and unpredictable regime'

Now consider what the U.S. media don't tell you about Korea:

BEIJING, March 8 (Xinhua) -- China proposed "double suspension" to defuse the looming crisis on the Korean Peninsula, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said Wednesday.

"As a first step, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) may suspend its nuclear and missile activities in exchange for the suspension of large-scale U.S.-Republic of Korea (ROK) military exercises," Wang told a press conference on the sidelines of the annual session of the National People's Congress.
...
Wang said the nuclear issue on the Korean Peninsula is mainly between the DPRK and the United States, but China, as a next-door neighbor with a lips-and-teeth relationship with the Peninsula, is indispensable to the resolution of the issue.

FM Wang, 'the lips', undoubtedly transmitted an authorized message from North Korea: "The offer is (still) on the table and China supports it."

North Korea has made the very same offer in January 2015. The Obama administration rejected it. North Korea repeated the offer in April 2016 and the Obama administration rejected it again. This March the Chinese government conveyed and supported the long-standing North Korean offer. The U.S. government, now under the Trump administration, immediately rejected it again. The offer, made and rejected three years in a row, is sensible. Its rejection only led to a bigger nuclear arsenal and to more missiles with longer reach that will eventually be able to reach the United States.

North Korea is understandably nervous each and every time the U.S. and South Korea launch their very large yearly maneuvers and openly train for invading North Korea and for killing its government and people. The maneuvers have large negative impacts on North Korea's economy.

North Korea justifies its nuclear program as the economically optimal way to respond to these maneuvers.

Each time the U.S. and South Korea launch their very large maneuvers, the North Korean conscription army (1.2 million strong) has to go into a high state of defense readiness. Large maneuvers are a classic starting point for military attacks. The U.S.-South Korean maneuvers are (intentionally) held during the planting (April/May) or harvesting (August) season for rice when North Korea needs each and every hand in its few arable areas. Only 17% of the northern landmass is usable for agriculture and the climate in not favorable. The cropping season is short. Seeding and harvesting days require peak labor.

The southern maneuvers directly threaten the nutritional self-sufficiency of North Korea. In the later 1990s they were one of the reasons behind a severe famine. (Lack of hydrocarbons and fertilizer due to sanctions as well as a too rigid economic system were other main reasons.)

Its nuclear deterrent allows North Korea to reduce its conventional military readiness especially during the all important agricultural seasons. Labor withheld from the fields and elsewhere out of military necessity can go back to work. This is now the official North Korean policy known as 'byungjin'. (Byungjin started informally in the mid 2000nds after U.S. President Bush tuned up his hostile policy towards North Korea - Chronology of U.S.-North Korean Nuclear and Missile Diplomacy)

A guaranteed end of the yearly U.S. maneuvers would allow North Korea to lower its conventional defenses without relying on nukes. The link between the U.S. maneuvers and the nuclear deterrent North Korea is making in its repeated offer is a direct and logical connection.

The North Korean head of state Kim Jong-un has officially announced a no-first-use policy for its nuclear capabilities:

"As a responsible nuclear weapons state, our republic will not use a nuclear weapon unless its sovereignty is encroached upon by any aggressive hostile forces with nukes," Kim told the Workers' Party of Korea congress in Pyongyang. Kim added that the North "will faithfully fulfill its obligation for non-proliferation and strive for the global denuclearization."

During the congress, as elsewhere, Kim Jong Un also emphasized (transcript, pdf, v. slow) the above described connection between nuclear armament and economic development. Summarized:
After decades of emphasizing military strength under his father, Korea is moving toward Kim's “byongjin” — a two-pronged approach aimed at enhancing nuclear might while improving living conditions.

The byongjin strategy, despised by the Obama administration, has been successful:
What are the sources of [North Korea's economic] growth? One explanation might be that less is now spent on the conventional military sector, while nuclear development at this stage is cheaper—it may only cost 2 to 3 percent of GNP, according to some estimates. Theoretically, byungjin is more “economy friendly” than the previous “songun” or military-first policy which supposedly concentrated resources on the military.

To understand why North Korea fears U.S. aggressiveness consider the utter devastation caused mostly by the U.S. during the Korea War:

via Jeffrey Kaye.

Imperial Japan occupied Korea from 1905 to 1945 and tried to assimilate it. A nominal communist resistance under Kim Il-sung and others fought against the Japanese occupation. After the Japanese WWII surrender in 1945 the U.S. controlled and occupied the mostly agricultural parts of Korea below the arbitrarily chosen 38th parallel line. The allied Soviet Union controlled the industrialized part above the line. They had agreed on a short trusteeship of a united and independent country. In the upcoming cold war the U.S. retracted on the agreement and in 1948 installed a South Korean proxy dictatorship under Syngman Rhee. This manifested an artificial border the Koreans had not asked for and did not want. The communists still commanded a strong and seasoned resistance movement in the south and hoped to reunite the country. The Korea War ensued. It utterly destroyed the country. All of Korea was severely effected but especially the industrialized north which lost about a third of its population and all of its reasonably well developed infrastructure - roads, factories and nearly all of its cities.

Every Korean family was affected. Ancestor worship is deeply embedded in the Korean psyche and its collectivist culture. No one has forgotten the near genocide and no one in Korea, north or south, wants to repeat the experience.

The country would reunite if China and the U.S. (and Russia) could agree upon its neutrality. That will not happen anytime soon. But the continued danger of an "accidental" war in Korea would be much diminished if the U.S. would accept the North Korean offer - an end to aggressive behavior like threatening maneuvers against the north, in exchange for a verified stop of the northern nuclear and missile programs. North Korea has to insist on this condition out of sheer economic necessity.

The U.S. government and the "western" media hide the rationality of the northern offer behind the propaganda phantasm of "the volatile and unpredictable regime".

But it is not Korea, neither north nor south, that is the "volatile and unpredictable" entity here.

Update:

Yesterday's Day of the Sun / Juche 105 (the 105th birth anniversary of Kim Il-sung) parade in Pyongyang went along without a hitch and without interference from the U.S. side.

Several new types of missile carrying Transporter-Erector-Launcher vehicles (TELs) were shown. The three hour TV transmission is available here. The military equipment display starts around 2h14m; the nuclear capable carriers are seen from 2h20m onward.

An early-impression remark from The Diplomat: North Korea's 2017 Military Parade Was a Big Deal. Here Are the Major Takeaways

Even though Pyongyang withheld from testing this weekend amid rumors of possible retaliation by the United States, North Korea is still looking to improve its missile know-how. Moreover, the long-dreaded ICBM flight test also might not be too far off now. Given the ever-growing number of TELs — both wheeled and tracked — North Korea may soon field nuclear forces amply large that a conventional U.S.-South Korea first strike may find it impossible to fully disarm Pyongyang of a nuclear retaliatory capability. That would give the North Korean regime what it’s always sought with its nuclear and ballistic missile program: an absolute guarantee against coercive removal.

The "absolute guarantee against coercive removal" would, in consequence, allow for much smaller conventional forces and less resources spend on the military. This again will enable faster economic development for the people in North Korea. The byongjin strategy will have reached its aim.

How Bio-Weapons Led To Torture ... And North Korean Nukes. MoA. Apr. 27, 2017.

In Why North Korea Needs Nukes - And How To End That we pointed to the utter destruction the U.S. and its allies waged in the war on Korea on all parts of the country. That North Korea seeks "weapons of mass destruction" is quite understandable when one takes into account the hundreds of thousands tons of napalm used against it. But even Napalm and the criminal destruction of North Korean dams were not the worst depravation the U.S. applied. Biological warfare agents, primarily anthrax, were dropped over North Korea and China and killed civilians. The U.S./UN command denied such use and covered it up. One consequence of that cover up was the development of torture methods in the U.S. SERE pilot training programs and their later proliferation into criminal abuses in Guantanamo, Abu Graibh and elsewhere. An important piece of evidence of this trail was recently and for the first time re-published on the web

In the 1950s war on Korea heavy air to air fights were waged near the Chinese border which led to significant losses of airplane on both sides especially along the MiG Alley:
USAF pilots nicknamed April 12, 1951 "Black Thursday", after 30 MiG-15s attacked three squadrons of B-29 bombers (36 planes) escorted by approximately 100 F-80s and F-84s. The MiGs were fast enough to engage the B-29s and extend away from their escorts. Three B-29s were shot down and seven more were damaged, with no casualties on the communist side.

On "Black Thursday" and other occasions U.S. bomber pilots were captured. Some of them admitted to have dropped biological weapons over China and northern Korea. Their confessions were published in writing and publicized on Korean, Chinese and Russian radio.

The U.S. (UN) command under U.S. General MacArthur denied any use of biological warfare agents. It claimed that the downed pilots were tortured to give false confessions.

Since World War II the U.S. Airforce and Navy had established training courses in Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape (SERE) for pilots that might be captured by enemies. During these courses interrogations were staged to provide realistic training. After the Korea War anti-torture training was added. Torture of "prisoners" was "simulated" with the trainees. Decades later, during the war of terror and on Iraq, the CIA hired two psychologists as "behavioral science consultants" from the SERE training staff to teach its agents how to use torture on prisoners. The absolutely inhuman and dangerous methods those SERE "experts" devised proliferated to the U.S. military which, together with the CIA, used them on alleged enemy combatants in Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo and other places.

According to the Senate Armed Services Committee Report (pdf) on U.S. torturing of prisoners at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo and CIA black sites, SERE techniques originated in Chinese Communist methods in the Korean War employed to extract false confessions from captured U.S. personal.

(During the 1960s the CIA itself developed additional "scientific" torture methods and published them in the KUBARK Counterintelligence Interrogation and Human Resource Exploitation Training Manual. U.S. personal as well as several south American militia were trained in and used these abusive and illegal methods.)

The torture training at the SERE schools and the abuses were all based on a big lie.

The U.S. had used biological weapons in the Korea war. It also used chemical weapons and suppressed investigations into it. Its pilots dropped bombs with biological warfare agents over China and Korea. Theirs were not false confessions extracted by Chinese Communist methods. The captured U.S. pilots were telling the truth.

The SERE torture resistance training and its abuse are based on the bigger lie about the non-use of biological agents in the war on Korea.

(The Geneva Protocol of 1925 generally prohibited the use of biological agents but the specific Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention was only developed and signed in 1972.)

The U.S. and UK developed extensive biological warfare programs during World War II but those weapons were not put to use in the European theater. The Japanese used biological weapons, with mixed success, in China and elsewhere. At the end of World War II the Japanese biological warfare Unit 731 was taken over by the U.S. military:

[General] MacArthur struck a deal with Japanese informants—he secretly granted immunity to the physicians of Unit 731, including their leader, in exchange for providing America, but not the other wartime allies, with their research on biological warfare and data from human experimentation. American occupation authorities monitored the activities of former unit members, including reading and censoring their mail. The U.S. believed that the research data was valuable.

During and after the war on Korea the Chinese government alleged the use of biological weapons on Korean and Chinese civilians by the U.S. The U.S. denied. A commission was called upon to investigate:

To convince the world of the truth of their claims, the North Koreans and Chinese, sponsored a purported independent commission, using the auspices of the World Peace Council, gathering together a number of leftist scientists from around the world. Most surprisingly, this commission, which came to be known as the International Scientific Commission, or ISC, was headed by one of the foremost British scientists of his time, Sir Joseph Needham. The ISC travelled to China and North Korea in the summer of 1952 and by the end of the year produced a report that corroborated the Chinese and North Korean claims that the U.S. had used biological weapons in an experimental fashion on civilian populations.

For a long time the commission's report and its appendices with the witness statements were suppressed and not available online. Jefferey Kay, a psychologist and author living in northern California, dug them up and recently published them (recommended) on the web for the first time. You can read them here:

Report of the International Scientific Commission for the Investigation of the Facts Concerning Bacterial Warfare in Korea and China. - pdf

Appendixes AA and BB concerning claims of air attacks against various villages in Northeastern China in the Spring of 1952. - pdf


Sir Joseph Needham was blacklisted by the U.S. during the McCarthy anti-communist campaign.

Needham's investigations have since been confirmed by other scholars investigating the general case:
It is the purpose of this article to consider the validity of these [U.S. military denials] in light of the research which we conducted in preparing our recent book, The United States and Biological Warfare: secrets of the Early Cold War and Korea. In that book we conclude that the United States engaged in large-scale field tests of biological weapons against the Asian countries and with some additional evidence we continue to believe that is the case.

General MacArthur, one of the foremost war criminals ever, covered up the war crimes of the Japanese and especially of Unit 731. He took care to integrate the Japanese biological weapon experience into the U.S. military resources. Under his command biological agents were then used against Korean and and Chinese civilians and military units. When his pilots confessed, he denied all such reports and alleged "brainwashing" through torture by the Chinese. This again led to torture "simulations" in U.S. SERE training from which recent U.S. torture in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere derived.

U.S. media and the public have a general amnesia whenever it comes to U.S. war crimes - no matter how recent. The Senate report on CIA torture in Iraq and elsewhere is still suppressed. But U.S. war crimes do not end. Whenever "threatened" with compromise, the U.S. tends to seeks the belligerent way. As Noam Chomsky reiterates in relation to the current campaign for another war on Korea:

[V]ery strikingly [..] there’s one lesson that you discover when you carefully look at the historical record. What I just described about North Korea is pretty typical. Over and over again, there are possibilities of diplomacy and negotiation, which might not succeed—you can’t be sure if you don’t try them—but which look pretty promising, which are abandoned, dismissed, literally without comment, in favor of increased force and violence.

For an example see this influential sitting U.S. Senator who argues for "preemptive" strikes against North Korea's missile program without any regard for the people who's life would be destroyed by them:

“It would be bad for the Korean Peninsula. It would be bad for China. It would be bad for Japan, be bad for South Korea. It would be the end of North Korea. But what it would not do is hit America and the only way it could ever come to America is with a missile.”

Considering the historical record of the United States of committing and covering up war-crimes as well as its general belligerence, North Korea and other nations are probably well advised to stick to their nuclear and missile programs.




Foreign Policy Blindness And North Korea. MoA. Apr. 15, 2009.

Matt Dupuis blogs at FP Watch and currently also at World Politics Review.

About North Korea's decision to kick out IAEA inspectors and to restart its nuclear programs he asks:

What is Motivating Pyongyang This Week?:

I'm speculating, but maybe North Korea knew its launch would prompt the US to turn to the UNSC for retaliatory action, which it could then use as a pretext to jettison the Six-Party Talks and related accords it was no longer interested in adhering to. If that's the case, it raises larger questions about Pyongyang's motivations, specifically why they have periodically agreed to cap or halt illicit weapons programs (as it did under the 1994 Agreed Framework, the moratorium on ballistic missiles in the late 1990s, and the more recent accords under the Six-Party Talks) but later reversed course so defiantly.(bold added)

Simple questions, deserve simple answers: North Korea believe in Pacta sunt servanda, the U.S. does not.

North Korea needs primary energy, i.e. oil, and is willing to make deals to get some. It sticks to such deals but only as long as the other party adheres to those too.

In all three examples given in Dupuis question it was NOT North Korea that "later reversed course so defiantly" but the U.S. that broke spirit and letter of the deals it had made.

1. Agreed framework:

The objective of the agreement was the freezing and replacement of North Korea's indigenous nuclear power plant program with more nuclear proliferation resistant light water reactor power plants, North Korea promised to included oil shipments from the U.S.

The oil shipments were late, the replacement reactor the U.S. had promised was never build and trade sanctions that should have been lifted were kept in place. As the U.S. showed no intention to seriously stick to the deal, North Korea walked away from it.

2. Moratorium on ballistic missiles:

• Sept. 13, 1999: North pledges to freeze long-range missile tests.
• Sept. 17, 1999: President Bill Clinton agrees to first major easing of economic sanctions against North Korea since Korean War's end in 1953.
• June 2001: North Korea warns it will reconsider missile test moratorium if Washington doesn't resume contacts aimed at normalizing relations.
• July 2001: U.S. State Department reports North Korea is developing long-range missile.

Again a. North Korea made a deal with the U.S., b. the U.S. did not stick to that deal, c. North Korea stopped doing its part.

3. Six Party Talks:

Five rounds of talks from 2003 to 2007 produced little net progress until the third phase of the fifth round of talks, when North Korea agreed to shut down its nuclear facilities in exchange for fuel aid and steps towards the normalization of relations with the United States and Japan.

Steps towards normalization by the U.S. were not taken. The fuel aid was stopped in December 2008 as 'response' by the U.S. to North Korea not accepting additional conditions the U.S. tried to add unilaterally:

North Korea has complained that the United States has not made good on its promise to remove North Korea from a list of state sponsors of terrorism, as President Bush announced in June that he was prepared to do, and instead has made new demands. One of those would require North Korea to accept a strict and intrusive verification system before the United States would carry out reciprocal steps.

As many other countries North Korea had hoped for that a new Democratic U.S. president and congress would take a different course than the ever deal-breaking Republicans. The recent legally unjustified issue of a U.S. instigated letter by the UN Security Council president on a NoKo 'satellite launch' has made it clear to them that there is no change in U.S. policies. Unless those change there is then obviously no point for it to continue talks over deals the U.S. obviously does not intend to follow through.

Dupuis' question is quite typical for general U.S. public views of foreign policy issues: very one-sided and blind towards its own faults.

But there is a serious defect in U.S. foreign policy when people who work in that field believe their own side's propaganda instead of obtaining a realistic reading which necessarily must include facts and some understanding of the viewpoint of the other side.

North Korea – Killer Sanctions Imposed by the Foremost Institution of Peace and Justice – the UN Security Council

by Peter Koenig, the Vineyard of the Saker, 9 August, 2017

As reported by CNN,

“The United Nations Security Council on Saturday [5 August 2017] passed a resolution imposing new sanctions on North Korea for its continued intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) testing and violations of UN resolutions.
With 15 votes in favor, Resolution 2371 was passed unanimously.
The resolution targets North Korea’s primary exports, including coal, iron, iron ore, lead, lead ore and seafood. The sanctions also target other revenue streams, such as banks and joint ventures with foreign companies.”

Resolution 2371 was imposed – by whom else? – the United States of America, the chief aggressor of the universe; the exceptional rogue nation that is never punished, never sanctioned by the very Peace Body, the UN Security Council (UNSC), for the millions of war deaths and drone murders caused by illicit and hegemonic wars, by proxies or by its own killing machine around the globe within the last 70 years – or more.

This anti-DPRK Resolution was unanimously approved by all 15 members of the UNSC, including North Korea’s only allies, China and Russia. They may have had their own strategic and selfish reasons for their lack of solidarity, for not vetoing the Resolution and instead proposing diplomatic measures – or else. Diplomatic measures which might have called to reason Washington and the Pentagon hawks, as well as stopped Trump’s monstrous warmongering, shouting nuclear threats from his golf club in Bedminster, N.J., “They will be met with fire and fury like the world has never seen.” Russia and China could have proposed a counter Resolution seeking dialogue and forcing Washington to stop its belligerence. – They didn’t. And that’s sad.

It is an outright shame to what extent literally the entire world is bending over backwards to please Washington – and, as always, its dark and deep state handlers that pull the strings on the White House puppets. Have we become a world of vassals to a dying empire?

The same military aggressors led by Washington, more than 60 years ago have destroyed North Korea to rubble, decimating its then population of 10 million by a third. The US has never allowed the signing of a Peace Agreement. Instead the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) under a shaky armistice pact was and is permanently threatened by Washington’s huge military bases in South Korea and Japan with fleets of war planes and vessels. The DPRK’s airspace is frequently invaded by US bombers; military maneuvers by the US armed forces with Japan and South Korea are repeated intimidations on the peaceful lives of the North Korean people. A 250 km long strictly enforced Military Demarcation Line at the 38th parallel north is keeping Korean families separated for more than three generation.

What the Kim-Jong-un regime is showing the world is nothing more than its readiness to defend the DPRK’s achievements of a marvelously rebuilt country with full social benefits of free education and health services for more than 25 million people. The nuclear deterrent is no danger to anyone, not Japan, not its Southern brother, and least the United States. And Trump knows damn well. His ‘fire and fury’boasting is nothing more than sabre rattling, showmanship, as it pertains to a golfing multi-billionaire psychopath, who is dreaming of running a thanks-goodness faltering empire. He wouldn’t dare touching North Korea, because then, he would face the fire and fury of DPRK’s allies, Russia and China, despite their unfortunate UNSC vote.

The UN sanctions, if observed, would reduce North Korea’s annual export earnings by a third, i.e. by an estimated US$ 1 billion. It might plunge the country, already isolated by the west’s previous sanctions into extreme hardship and famine. Although it is unlikely that China, with whom North Korea deals for 90% of its external trade, would adhere to such sanctions, it is nevertheless an unfair threat.

—–

Let’s look for a moment at the legality of the UN Sanctions Resolution in a broader context – in a context that the world’s populace has either never known or easily forgets.

Chapter VII of the United Nations Charter addresses Actions with Respect to Threats to the Peace, Breaches of the Peace, and Acts of Aggression.

These actions are governed by specifically Articles 39, 40, 41 and 42 of Chapter VII:

Article 39

The Security Council shall determine the existence of any threat to the peace, breach of the peace, or act of aggression and shall make recommendations, or decide what measures shall be taken in accordance with Articles 41 and 42, to maintain or restore international peace and security.

Article 40

In order to prevent an aggravation of the situation, the Security Council may, before making the recommendations or deciding upon the measures provided for in Article 39, call upon the parties concerned to comply with such provisional measures as it deems necessary or desirable. Such provisional measures shall be without prejudice to the rights, claims, or position of the parties concerned. The Security Council shall duly take account of failure to comply with such provisional measures.

Article 41

The Security Council may decide what measures not involving the use of armed force are to be employed to give effect to its decisions, and it may call upon the Members of the United Nations to apply such measures. These may include complete or partial interruption of economic relations and of rail, sea, air, postal, telegraphic, radio, and other means of communication, and the severance of diplomatic relations.

Article 42

Should the Security Council consider that measures provided for in Article 41 would be inadequate or have proved to be inadequate, it may take such action by air, sea, or land forces as may be necessary to maintain or restore international peace and security. Such action may include demonstrations, blockade, and other operations by air, sea, or land forces of Members of the United Nations.

Bilaterally imposed economic sanctions, the main staple of the United States slapped around the globe at will and at any nation that doesn’t lick her boots, are totally illegal and in breach of any international law.

The legality of UN imposed economic sanctions is highly questionable in most cases, and particularly in the case of North Korea, as they may affect Human Rights, or more specifically the civilian’s economic, social and cultural rights (ESCR), as adverse collateral effects may lead to a humanitarian emergency, i.e. the shortage of certain goods and services essential for the guarantee of basic standards of living(Gebs, Robin. “Humanitarian Safeguards in Economic Sanctions Regimes: A Call for Automatic Suspension Clauses, Periodic Monitoring, and Follow-Up Assessment of Long-Term Effects”. The Harvard Human Rights Journal 18 (2005), p. 173).

In the case of North Korea, such sanctions are outright farcical, if not illegal, since the main aggressor is not and has never been the DPRK, but the United States.

It would, however, never occur to any nation on this lovely planet to introduce a sanctions regime on the US of A through the foremost Peace and Security body of the United Nations. – And why not? – Because they are all afraid of US retaliations. Though, Russia and China and the block of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) that already comprises half of the world’s population and controls one third of the globes economic output – and is clearly in the process of fully detaching themselves from the US-dollar hegemony – they should no longer fear retaliations – should they?

It is mind-boggling, how the world, the league of nation as it were, has been brainwashed to the core accepting almost without exceptions and questions Washington’s atrocities, crimes on humanity, indiscriminate killings of tens of millions of people around the world, the most vicious human rights abuse recent history has ever known, without blinking an eye. At the same time, this ‘solidary’ league of nations is ready to strangle a small brave nation, North Korea, that is merely testing its capacity of self-defense facing constant illegal threats from the world’s aggressor in-chief, the United States of America.

Peter Koenig is an economist and geopolitical analyst. He is also a former World Bank staff and worked extensively around the world in the fields of environment and water resources. He lectures at universities in the US, Europe and South America. He writes regularly for Global Research, ICH, RT, Sputnik, PressTV, The 4th Media (China), TeleSUR, The Vineyard of The Saker Blog, and other internet sites. He is the author of Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed – fiction based on facts and on 30 years of World Bank experience around the globe. He is also a co-author of The World Order and Revolution! – Essays from the Resistance.

North Korea health care system. Prof. Michael Chossudovsky. Global Research.

North Korean government, according to the Western media is said to be oppressing and impoverishing its population.

Here in the USA we have medicare, all our kids are educated, we are all literate, and “we want to live in America”.

And in the DPRK, the health system sucks, they don’t have schools and hospital beds, they are all a bunch of illiterates,

You would not want to live there!

Beneath the mountain of media disinformation, there is more than meets the eye. Despite sanctions and military threats, not to mention the failed intent of “respectable” human rights organizations (including Amnesty International) to distort the facts, North Korea’s “health system is the envy of the developing world” according to the Director General of the World Health Organization:

“WHO director-general Margaret Chan said the country had “no lack of doctors and nurses”.

North Korea nuclear crisis: Putin warns of planetary catastrophe. Justin McCurry and Tom Phillips, The Guardian. Sep. 5, 2017.

As Kim Jong-un reportedly prepares further missile launch, Russian president says further sanctions would be ‘useless’

The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, has warned that the escalating North Korean crisis could cause a “planetary catastrophe” and huge loss of life, and described US proposals for further sanctions on Pyongyang as “useless”.

“Ramping up military hysteria in such conditions is senseless; it’s a dead end,” he told reporters in China. “It could lead to a global, planetary catastrophe and a huge loss of human life. There is no other way to solve the North Korean nuclear issue, save that of peaceful dialogue.”

On Sunday, North Korea carried out its sixth and by far its most powerful nuclear test to date. The underground blast triggered a magnitude-6.3 earthquake and was more powerful than the bombs dropped by the US on Hiroshima and Nagasaki during the second world war. 

Putin was attending the Brics summit, bringing together the leaders of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. Speaking on Tuesday, the final day of the summit in Xiamen, China, he said Russia condemned North Korea’s provocations but said further sanctions would be useless and ineffective, describing the measures as a “road to nowhere”.

Foreign interventions in Iraq and Libya had convinced the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, that he needed nuclear weapons to survive, Putin said.

“We all remember what happened with Iraq and Saddam Hussein. His children were killed, I think his grandson was shot, the whole country was destroyed and Saddam Hussein was hanged ... We all know how this happened and people in North Korea remember well what happened in Iraq.

“They will eat grass but will not stop their [nuclear] programme as long as they do not feel safe.”

A US bid for the United Nations security council to vote on 11 September on new sanctions is “a little premature,” Vassily Nebenzia, Russia’s UN ambassador, said on Tuesday. Russia is a permanent member of the security council and has veto power.

The US’s top diplomat acknowledged that more sanctions on North Korea are unlikely to change its behaviour, but insisted that they would cut off funding for its ballistic missile and nuclear programmes. 

“Do we think more sanctions are going to work on North Korea? Not necessarily,” Nikki Haley, the US ambassador to the UN, told a thinktank in Washington. “But what does it do? It cuts off the revenue that allows them to build ballistic missiles.”

Diplomats have said the security council could consider banning North Korean textile exports, banishing its national airline and stopping supplies of oil to the government and military. Other measures could include preventing North Koreans from working abroad and adding top officials to a blacklist aiming at imposing asset freezes and travel bans.

China accounted for 92% of North Korea’s trade in 2016, according to South Korea’s government. China’s foreign ministry said on Tuesday it would take part in security council discussions in “a responsible and constructive manner”.

But China is likely to block any measure that could cause instability and topple the regime of Kim Jong-un, sparking a refugee crisis and potentially allowing tens of thousands of South Korean and US troops to move north as far as the Chinese border.

German chancellor Angela Merkel and Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe spoke by telephone on Tuesday and agreed that sanctions against Pyongyang should be stepped up.

The row over further sanctions came as South Korea refused to rule out redeploying US tactical nuclear weapons on its territory – a move that could seriously harm efforts to ease tensions as signs emerged that Pyongyang was preparing to launch another intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) on or around 9 September, when it celebrates its founding day. 

Seoul has routinely dismissed the option of basing US nuclear weapons on South Korean soil for the first time since the 1990s, but the country’s defence minister, Song Young-moo, said “all available military options” were being considered to address the growing threat from North Korean missiles. 

Kim Hyun-wook, a professor at the Korea National Diplomatic Academy in Seoul, said: “No one in South Korea is seriously proposing that the US reintroduce strategic assets [such as nuclear weapons]. That’s something they might discuss further down the line, but there are no plans for that to happen right now.” 

But calls have also been growing in South Korea for the country to develop a nuclear deterrent independent of the US. 

On Tuesday, South Korean warships conducted live-fire drills, with further exercises planned this week. “If the enemy launches a provocation above water or under water, we will immediately hit back to bury them at sea,” said Capt Choi Young-chan, commander of the 13th Maritime Battle Group. 

The drills came hours after Donald Trump and his South Korean counterpart, Moon Jae-in, agreed “in principle” to remove restrictions on the size of Seoul’s missile warheads and approved a deal to sell it “many billions of dollars’” worth of US military weapons and equipment.

Washington appears to have moved to ease South Korean doubts about US commitment to its security after Trump openly accused its east Asian ally of “appeasing” Pyongyang by holding out for a negotiated solution to its nuclear and ballistic missile programmes.

Speaking to a nuclear disarmament conference on Tuesday, North Korea’s ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva, described Pyongyang’s nuclear test as a “gift package” for the US. 

“The recent self-defence measures by my country, DPRK, are a gift package addressed to none other than the US,” said Han Tae Song. “The US will receive more ‘gift packages’ from my country as long as its relies on reckless provocations and futile attempts to put pressure on the DPRK,” he added without elaborating.
North Korea has been observed moving what appeared to be a long-range missile towards its west coast, according to South Korea’s Asia Business Daily. The newspaper claimed the missile had been transported towards the launch site overnight on Monday to avoid surveillance.

South Korea’s defence ministry said it was unable to confirm the report, although ministry officials told parliament on Monday the Pyongyang regime was preparing to launch more missiles. 

On Monday, the US ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley, accused North Korea of “begging for war”, adding that the time had come for the security council to impose “the strongest possible” sanctions after Sunday’s test of what Pyongyang claimed was a hydrogen bomb that could be loaded on to an ICBM.

Green Beret Warns: “Skepticism Will Vanish When The Power Suddenly Fails Across the United States”. Jeremiah Johnson, SHTFplan.com. Sep. 4, 2017.

The news-twisters and politicos still only begrudgingly admit what recognized experts have been jumping up and down to warn the public about for years, namely this:

1. That North Korea does indeed possess nuclear weapons
2. North Korea does have ICBM’s capable of delivering a nuclear warhead
3. North Korea possesses the technology and the ability to deploy an EMP (Electromagnetic Pulse) weapon
4. Submarine-Launched Ballistic Missiles (SLBM’s) are in North Korea’s arsenal
5. Two satellites (Kwangmyongsang-3 and Kwangmyongsang-4) are currently orbiting the earth, and each satellite passes over the United States several times per day
6. The possibility exists that the satellites are carrying/have been fitted with an EMP weapon
7. The central focus of North Korea’s strategic doctrine regarding nuclear war is geared toward an EMP strike

A Murderous History of Korea. Bruce Cumings, London Review of Books. May 18, 2017.

In the West, treatment of North Korea is one-sided and ahistorical. No one even gets the names straight. During Abe’s Florida visit, Trump referred to him as ‘Prime Minister Shinzo’. On 29 April, Ana Navarro, a prominent commentator on CNN, said: ‘Little boy Un is a maniac.’ The demonisation of North Korea transcends party lines, drawing on a host of subliminal racist and Orientalist imagery; no one is willing to accept that North Koreans may have valid reasons for not accepting the American definition of reality. Their rejection of the American worldview – generally perceived as indifference, even insolence in the face of overwhelming US power – makes North Korea appear irrational, impossible to control, and therefore fundamentally dangerous. 

But if American commentators and politicians are ignorant of Korea’s history, they ought at least to be aware of their own. US involvement in Korea began towards the end of the Second World War, when State Department planners feared that Soviet soldiers, who were entering the northern part of the peninsula, would bring with them as many as thirty thousand Korean guerrillas who had been fighting the Japanese in north-east China. They began to consider a full military occupation that would assure America had the strongest voice in postwar Korean affairs. It might be a short occupation or, as a briefing paper put it, it might be one of ‘considerable duration’; the main point was that no other power should have a role in Korea such that ‘the proportionate strength of the US’ would be reduced to ‘a point where its effectiveness would be weakened’. Congress and the American people knew nothing about this. Several of the planners were Japanophiles who had never challenged Japan’s colonial claims in Korea and now hoped to reconstruct a peaceable and amenable postwar Japan. They worried that a Soviet occupation of Korea would thwart that goal and harm the postwar security of the Pacific. Following this logic, on the day after Nagasaki was obliterated, John J. McCloy of the War Department asked Dean Rusk and a colleague to go into a spare office and think about how to divide Korea. They chose the 38th parallel, and three weeks later 25,000 American combat troops entered southern Korea to establish a military government.

...

In short, the Republic of Korea [i.e. South Korea] was one of the bloodiest dictatorships of the early Cold War period. 

... 

South Korea’s stable democracy and vibrant economy from 1988 onwards seem to have overridden any need to acknowledge the previous forty years of history, during which the North could reasonably claim that its own autocracy was necessary to counter military rule in Seoul. It’s only in the present context that the North looks at best like a walking anachronism, at worst like a vicious tyranny. For 25 years now the world has been treated to scaremongering about North Korean nuclear weapons, but hardly anyone points out that it was the US that introduced nuclear weapons into the Korean peninsula, in 1958; hundreds were kept there until a worldwide pullback of tactical nukes occurred under George H.W. Bush. But every US administration since 1991 has challenged North Korea with frequent flights of nuclear-capable bombers in South Korean airspace, and any day of the week an Ohio-class submarine could demolish the North in a few hours. Today there are 28,000 US troops stationed in Korea, perpetuating an unwinnable stand-off with the nuclear-capable North. The occupation did indeed turn out to be one of ‘considerable duration’, but it’s also the result of a colossal strategic failure, now entering its eighth decade.

... 

It isn’t clear that North Korea can actually fit a nuclear warhead to any of its missiles – but if it happened, and if it was fired in anger, the country would immediately be turned into what Colin Powell memorably called ‘a charcoal briquette’. 

But then, as General Powell well knew, we had already turned North Korea into a charcoal briquette. The filmmaker Chris Marker visited the country in 1957, four years after US carpet-bombing ended, and wrote: ‘Extermination passed over this land. Who could count what burned with the houses? … When a country is split in two by an artificial border and irreconcilable propaganda is exercised on each side, it’s naive to ask where the war comes from: the border is the war.’ Having recognised the primary truth of that war, one still alien to the American telling of it (even though Americans drew the border)

UNDERCOVER IN NORTH KOREA: “ALL PATHS LEAD TO CATASTROPHE”. Jon Schwarz, The Intercept. Sep. 4, 2017.

Without You, There Is No Us: My Time with the Sons of North Korea's Elite. by Suki Kim. 

Videos

The impossible hamster.

You can't have infinite growth on a finite planet. Paul Gilding, via youtube. 2012.

Arithmetic population and energy.

Hello humanity it's me, technology. We need to talk.

World population.

Energy Revolution? More like a crawl. lecture by Vaclav Smil. via youtube. Sep 19, 2015.

Countdown to extinction. Ken Avidor. vimeo.

Tribal Identity - Paradigm for the Next Generation

Paradigm for the Next Generation.

This is a socioeconomic experiment. You can be an observer, or an active participant. One way or another the venue is the real world.

As a species we are approaching a window of danger and opportunity; a time of upheaval which will shatter nations and superstates along fault-lines of geography, language, and group identity.

A socioeconomic reset is in order and in the works. The stakes are high. Positive outcomes are possible, but are by no means guaranteed.

We have a very limited time table to influence the outcome. We cannot afford to squander our efforts and resources on ethical anesthetics (artificial solutions).

We don’t control the system and we need to stop pretending that we do. It is counterproductive to debate over how to use power and resources that we do not have.

Voting the bums out doesn’t work. This is not just a question of a few bad apples, or a broken system. We have a paradigm problem. Those who haven’t come to terms with these realities, are behind the curve.

This is not the time to start fighting over what the ideal civilization might look like. Perfection is not on the table. The question is this: Can we do better? If so, we must try.

Take a deep breath. No seriously. Science tells us that the mere act of slowing down our breathing calms the mind measurably. The mind works better when calm, and we’re going to need the extra bandwidth, so take a deep breath and reset for a moment. Press pause if you need more time.

Alright, feeling better? Let’s take this to the next level.




THE MODULARITY PRINCIPLE

Systems are more stable, and easier to repair and update when they are built using simple, compact and minimally bundled components. In systems design this principle is referred to as modularity.

Richard Dawkins coined the term “meme” to represent these minimal clusters in the realm of ideas. Ideas replicate with greater fidelity when they are simple, compact and minimally bundled. A meme is a modular component.

For an idea to survive it must be adapted to its environment. Ideological habitat dictates selective pressures. Modularity facilitates hybrid systems, and rapid adaptation. Applied to culture, it facilitates choice, and peaceful evolution.

Small clusters of ideas can bypass ideological gatekeepers (and avoid triggering cognitive dissonance) in ways that monolithic belief systems cannot. Once in the mind, new memes combine with existing memes and emotions transforming the overall system. This process can be positive, like an awakening, or it can be poisonous, like the metastasis race nationalism within a previously diverse group.

A virus of perception can begin with one person. However to spread, the meme has a replication imperative.




LOCAL RESILIENCE

Modern humans are completely dependent on the flow of goods and resources from afar. Transport, manufacturing, agriculture, and medicine are all tied to fossil fuels. Cities and highways are designed with automobiles in mind. Food production, industry and office complexes moved farther and farther away from suburban sprawl. And all of it at the mercy of a debt based monetary system whose ebbs and flows we do not control, a system predicated on infinite growth on a finite planet.

Rebuilding local resilience is imperative.

We must transition NOW towards local systems of production, exchange, and decision making. We must maximize efficiency, reduce inputs, waste and distance traveled. We must start with small, testable solutions that can be implemented right now without the sanction or assistance of those in power.

Local Resilience is a modular component (meme). It resonates. It is compatible with most world views. It is simple, self evident yet fundamentally transformative if applied.

But how would it be applied? How would we get from point A to point B?




ADAPTIVE ACTION

When attempting to design, or redesign a complex system, humans have the tendency to start by formulating a detailed master plan, convincing a majority of the stakeholders to sign on to the plan, then implementing (or attempting to implement), the whole product in a linear fashion, like a car being assembled on the factory floor, leaving as a finished product, ready to be driven off the lot.

This approach is sometimes referred to as the “Waterfall Model”. It was termed “waterfall” because the design process was linear, it only moved in one direction. Teams would complete one phase, fully, before moving on to the next. The product wasn’t testable until the final phase. There was no provision for a fundamental redesign once implementation had begun. Water doesn’t flow uphill.

The waterfall model is well adapted to projects where all the variables are clearly defined and unlikely to change (such as the manufacture of a car, or the construction of a simple house), but is has a high failure rate on large, dynamic projects with changing requirements, limited resources, and unforeseen obstacles.

In the early 1990s the software industry faced what is often referred to as “the application development crisis” or the “application delivery lag”. On average it took three years to deliver a usable app. In some industries the process took decades. Within that time frame, requirements, systems, and entire business models had usually evolved. This caused many projects to be cancelled before they were finished, and since the linear model put off testing until the final product was ready, in the end the client was not often not happy with the result, even if it delivered precisely what had been requested.

Software developers attempted to protect themselves in this situation through comprehensive contracts. But projects were chronically behind schedule, over budget and buggy. Contracts provided legal protection, but not a happy customer.

Disillusioned by the status quo, a contingent of the development community gathered in 2001. They decided to radically adjust, and they put their intent into a manifesto.Though the ideas that they drew together had existed in other forms for some time, no one had yet unified those ideas with a sense purpose and mission. They did.

The ideas were simple: Rather than try to build according to a master plan that accounts for everything in the beginning, they would take an adaptive approach (aka iterative or non-linear).

They would first establish their abstract goal: describe what the product needed to accomplish in the broadest sense. They would then prioritize functionality, and build a minimal, stable, and USEFUL first version quickly. Test. Get stakeholder feedback. Reprioritize and adjust immediately. The process was non-linear.

Because of the focus on adapting quickly, the contingent decided to name the sense of purpose that they were bringing to existing adaptive, iterative non-linear processes “Agile”.

Their sense of purpose gave that word an identity. That identity caught on and was copied because it resonated. It was logical. It was an idea worth spreading. Their vision persisted because it worked: it provided tangible and immediate benefits.

This approach to project management improves outcomes in a wide variety of fields. For example, adaptive logic applied to food production, when the abstract goals are to increase efficiency, reduce inputs, waste, and distance traveled is Permaculture.




THE DIVERSITY PRINCIPLE

Any idea worth holding must be worth testing. Unproven models must be tested at the smallest possible scale. Some will merit replication. Others will serve as cautionary tales.

More than one model can and will succeed. This should be embraced. At a macro-systemic level, diversity is inherently more stable than monoculture. This principle holds true in ecology, agriculture, economics and geopolitics.




THE TRIBAL IDENTITY

In the early 1970s social psychologist Henri Tajfel set out to study the minimal conditions required for discrimination to occur between groups of humans. In his tests he discovered that group identity could be easily formed in a very short time using trivial criteria (such as one’s musical preferences or the results of a coin toss), and that groups divided by such trivia would immediately display prejudice against those on the other side,and favor those in the same arbitrary category. He referred to this principle as The Minimal Group Paradigm. It’s the psychological root of tribal identity.

Homo Sapiens Sapiens is a social animal. Tribe the human analogue of a pack.

This instinct pre-dates humanity, and will persist. Failure to account for it, invites tragedy.

The pack instinct is a survival adaptation. It is triggered by physical insecurity. Those who are able to coordinate their efforts with those around them are able to accomplish exponentially more than those who attempt to go it alone.

Groups which define and maintain a strong shared identity are more stable than those which do not. This provides a selective pressure which will always come into play during times of upheaval.

The sense of belonging is a vital need, and modern civilization is in in throes of an identity crisis. This is the window of danger and opportunity.

Where there is opportunity there are always opportunists. Those willing to tell an angry crowd exactly what they want to hear, weaving stories that gives meaning to their pain redefining in-group against an out-group to be saddled with the blame.

When national identity becomes too weak to provide that sense of tribe, new group identities emerge to fill the void.

Identity vacuums cannot be ignored, or rationalized away. They will be filled, the only question is by who, and with what.

Either we fill that void with a positive vision, or demagogues, and prophets of hate will slice and dice, pitting us against each other over trivia.




PARADIGM FOR THE NEXT GENERATION

The next generation needs paradigm and code of identity that bind with a sense of purpose, community, and mission: An idea and a feeling that transcend superficial characteristics (like skin color, gender and orientation).

This vision must resonate, and inspire action; action towards concrete goals, minimal starting points that provide immediate and tangible benefits.

The code must be synchronized with reality. It must adapt to logic and evidence (the scientific method applied to the way humans learn, organize and live).

The code must be open source. It must be simple, modular (meme level), and compatible with a broad spectrum of existing ideologies. It must work with (rather than against) our instinctual psychology. It must be adapted to human biochemistry.

We don’t have time to reinvent the wheel.

We must learn from the lessons of history, and the innovations of the modern age. Take the best of the old and the new. Integrate what works and discard what doesn’t.

You’re never going to get every culture and subculture on this planet to agree on every aspect of the proper way to live, as such we will never eliminate in-group and out-group, or erase all borders of us and them. This understanding precludes one-size-fits-all, global solutions.

Grand socioeconomic designs defined in detail, to be imposed on all by the barrel of a gun, end in war and atrocities committed for the common good.




PEACEFUL CONTINUITY

The ability to maintain peace and security within a group, and in relation to neighboring groups is vital. This duty is, and has always been our responsibility. However for generations we have outsourced these functions to other groups of humans, often thousands of miles away, who claim the monopoly on violence, money and truth within a given region. As the current system weakens, this responsibility must be picked up again on a community level. The transition must be guided by principle.

Most would agree that it’s “not right” to punch the neighborhood kid in the face and take his toy. But where does that feeling of “NOT RIGHT!” or “That’s NOT OK!” come from?

Some frame the concept of non-aggression as a moral principle, but moral principles could also be described as expressions of the tribal instinct. Such principles resonate deeply in the human psyche, and are easily reawakened because for eons they have facilitated the stability (and therefore survival) of groups which hold to them.

This assertion can be tested. Game theory has established that the most successful strategy in experiments modeled around conflict, is tit for tat: never attack, retaliate in kind.

Tit for tat was a mathematically consistent selective pressure. Instincts are adapted to that pressure. This is why every human culture has some concept of the right to self defense. It’s also why most societies condemn aggression, and why states always claim to be attacked when they want to start a war.

The retaliation instinct is counter balanced by empathy. Conflict resolution and consensus building improve outcomes by preventing long cycles of retaliation, and averting escalations before they start.




THE LINES OF INCLUSION

Diversity and pluralism within a strong code of identity is a sign of strength, not weakness. However an inclusive identity can only be maintained if it is protected. For example: a single member attacking another tribe puts everyone in danger. As such, lines of inclusion must be clearly defined, and violators held to account.

Social validation is a biochemical incentive. If you incentivize something, you typically get more of it.

A code of identity which values conflict resolution, and consensus building, honors those who master those skills, and condemns those who initiate of violence, or call for wars of aggression, gives cultures which hold to it a much better chance of peaceful continuity.




CONNECT THE DOTS

We’ve collected the dots. Let’s connect them.

We can do better. It is imperative that we try.

The time is now. The next generation needs the path to be cleared, pragmatic examples to emulate, and an idea to spread like a virus of perception.

Local resilience, non-aggression, conflict resolution, consensus building, and adaptive action are logical starting points. These are modular components. They are simple, self evident, useful at the smallest possible scale. They are compatible with any sane ideology, yet fundamentally transformative if applied.

Local Resilience implies converging, forming coalitions, and teams, getting our local community involved. Non-aggression, conflict resolution, and consensus building will make the transition more peaceful. The adaptive approach will make us more effective.

Identity can form around any idea (humans can divide themselves on any characteristic they focus their attention on), but what holds it together is a feeling. The feeling of belonging. The tribal identity. This we can cultivate, reawaken. The code is written in our DNA.

Start small, work with what you have, set realistic goals, and take steps to achieve them. The evolution might begin with a gathering of friends, or garden in your front yard.




THE NEXT LEVEL

The following message is for those who get it. You see the stakes. You’ve connected the dots. You’re motivated to take action. You’re looking for some minimal starting points.

The key is to start with the right questions: Press pause and go get a pen and paper.

Ready. Write the following at the top of your page: “What can I do”

Each of you have different skills, assets, liabilities, time and geographic constraints.

Press pause and make a list.

Now write the next question: “What am I willing to do?” How much time and energy are you willing to invest into changing the world? What are you willing to sacrifice?

Press pause and write an honest answer.

As you are writing that answer, consider this: If you aren’t willing to make radical changes in your own way of life, how can you expect others to?

When you’re done write the next question: “Who do I know locally or online who would might resonate with the local resilience meme?”

Press pause and make a list. Next to each name take notes on when and how to initiate contact. You’ll find tools for working with contacts in our activism section.

Now let’s formulate some concrete goals. The specific variables will change, but the abstracts will apply across the board.

To make a difference, we must build local and online networks guided by principle. This is an abstract goal. The concrete goals will be adapted to the context.




ASSESS YOUR RADIUS

We can define local as the maximum distance that humans in a particular region can coordinate and meet physically without the use of fossil fuels. Geography will influence this distance significantly.

To establish your concrete goals you must to assess your radius.

Food, water, community and security dynamics must be accounted for.

If such resources and networks are few or non-existent in your area, it is up to you to either plant the seeds, make them grow, or migrate to a point of convergence that you resonate with.

For local resilience kits, visit our local activism section.

Some of you have technical skills (translators, programmers, graphic designers, animators/video editors ), and or time to contribute. To volunteer online or onsite visit our volunteer section.




THE CURVE

The next generation will need radically different skill sets. They will need new strains of intelligence. They will need to adapt and innovate in ways that most can’t even imagine.

Those who want to get ahead of the curve and help others do the same; those who really want to change the world, have their homework cut out for them.

There’s a lot to absorb. Some of what you need to learn isn’t taught in school. Some realities are impossible to fully integrate just by reading a book. Study cannot replace experience.




THE PONGOVI EXPERIMENT

To apply the scientific method to the way humans learn, organize and live will require the socioeconomic equivalent of laboratories; physical testing grounds where theories stand, or are buried by results (Tribal R & D).

To impact the world beyond our local sphere, results must be open sourced to public domain. We must use the internet to disseminate these ideas while we still can.

It’s an extreme proposition, so to get the ball rolling we’re launching a prototype; a socioeconomic experiment. You can be an observer, or an active participant.

The experiment has a physical base of operations: a piece of land. You could also think of it as a laboratory.

Working with, and transmitting alternative approaches to production, exchange and social dynamics (while transitioning off of fossil fuels, debt based money, and vertical collectivism), are abstract goals. Each of these must broken down into sub-modules to be addressed in concrete terms onsite and online.

In the first iteration we built a shared kitchen, living area, bathroom and campground. Mountains had to be terraced, swamps transformed into ponds, permaculture everywhere.

This was our minimal starting point, the first deliverable: an off-grid adaptive learning center to host visitors, volunteers, and resident teachers.

We’ve beta tested. Participants are onsite. We’re going live.

Whether this project serves as an example to replicate, or a cautionary tale, is yet to be seen. What we can guarantee, is that it’s going to be interesting.

For more information, or to participate in the next iteration, look up the pongovi experiment.

All of the content produced by this project are creative commons. You have permission to download and distribute by any and all means.

You can download components used to make this film (and films to come) for use in compatible projects in our modules section.

Climate Links 8/8/2017

Telling the Climate Truth. Gaius Publius, nakedcapitalism. July 21, 2017.

We need new Cassandras to warn us of new disasters, even though they’ll never be believed.
—Richard Clarke (paraphrased) 

We aren’t doomed — we are choosing to be doomed by failing to respond adequately to the emergency.
—Margaret Klein Salamon

excerpt from M.K. Salmon (also at Common Dreams): 

While I think both Mann and Holthaus are brilliant scientists who identified some factual problems in the article, I strongly disagree with their statements about the role of emotions — namely, fear — in climate communications and politics. I am also skeptical of whether climate scientists should be treated as national arbiters of psychological or political questions, in general. I would like to offer my thoughts as a clinical psychologist, and as the founder and director of The Climate Mobilization. 

Affect tolerance — the ability to tolerate a wide range of feelings in oneself and others — is a critical psychological skill. On the other hand, affect phobia — the fear of certain feelings in oneself or others — is a major psychological problem, as it causes people to rely heavily on psychological defenses. 

Much of the climate movement seems to suffer from affect phobia, which is probably not surprising given that scientific culture aspires to be purely rational, free of emotional influence. Further, the feelings involved in processing the climate crisis—fear, grief, anger, guilt, and helplessness — can be overwhelming. But that doesn’t mean we should try to avoid “making” people feel such things! Experiencing them is a normal, healthy, necessary part of coming to terms with the climate crisis. 

I agree with David Roberts that it is OK, indeed imperative, to tell the whole, frightening story. As I argue in The Transformative Power of Climate Truth, it’s the job of those of us trying to protect humanity and restore a safe climate to tell the truth about the climate crisis and help people process and channel their own feelings — not to preemptively try to manage and constrain those feelings. 

Holthaus writes of people feeling deep anxiety, losing sleep, re-considering their lives due to the article… but this is actually a good thing. Those people are coming out of the trance of denial and starting to confront the reality of our existential emergency. I hope that every single American, every single human experiences such a crisis of conscience. It is the first step to taking substantial action. Our job is not to protect people from the truth or the feelings that accompany it — it’s to protect them from the climate crisis!
I know many of you have been losing sleep and reconsidering your lives in light of the climate crisis for years. We at The Climate Mobilization sure have. TCM exists to make it possible for people to turn that fear into intense dedication and focused action towards a restoring a safe climate.

...

Columnist Joe Romm noted that we aren’t doomed — we are choosing to be doomed by failing to respond adequately to the emergency, which would of course entail initiating a WWII-scale response to the climate emergency. Our Victory Plan lays out what policies would look like that, if implemented, would actually protect billions of people and millions of species from decimation. They include: 

1) An immediate ban on new fossil fuel infrastructure and a scheduled shut down of all fossil fuels in 10 years;
2) Massive government investment in renewables;
3) Overhauling our agricultural system to make it a huge carbon sink;
4) Fair-shares rationing to reduce demand;
5) A federally-financed job guarantee to eliminate unemployment;
6) A 100% marginal tax on income above $500,000.from

Gaius Publius: 

Why must we do this now? Because the climate crisis is starting now. Mass migration, in part due to climate change, is starting now. Deaths by weather extremes are increasing as we watch them. The three hottest years on record are the three immediately behind us. We’re so close to +2 degrees warming already, we can almost taste it. 

So what’s in the way? The answer is simple — we have ceded control of climate policy to the greedy and pathological, to climate sexagenarians and octogenarians like Charles and David Koch, who, through the politicians they control (looking at you, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump), are marching to their own graves in triumph, leaving a wrack behind.

'Dodgy' greenhouse gas data threatens Paris accord. Matt McGrath, BBC. Aug. 8, 2017.

Potent, climate-warming gases are being emitted into the atmosphere but are not being recorded in official inventories, a BBC investigation has found.

Air monitors in Switzerland have detected large quantities of one gas coming from a location in Italy.

However, the Italian submission to the UN records just a tiny amount of the substance being emitted.

Levels of some emissions from India and China are so uncertain that experts say their records are plus or minus 100%.

These flaws posed a bigger threat to the Paris climate agreement than US President Donald Trump's intention to withdraw, researchers told BBC Radio 4's Counting Carbon programme.

Bottom-up records

Among the key provisions of the Paris climate deal, signed by 195 countries in December 2015, is the requirement that every country, rich or poor, has to submit an inventory of its greenhouse-gas emissions every two years.

Under UN rules, most countries produce "bottom-up" records, based on how many car journeys are made or how much energy is used for heating homes and offices.

...

Another rare warming gas, carbon tetrachloride, once popular as a refrigerant and a solvent but very damaging to the ozone layer, has been banned in Europe since 2002.

But Dr Reimann told Counting Carbon: "We still see 10,000-20,000 tonnes coming out of China every year."

"That is something that shouldn't be there.

"There is actually no Chinese inventory for these gases, as they are banned and industry shouldn't be releasing them anymore."

China's approach to reporting its overall output of warming gases to the UN is also subject to constant and significant revisions.

Its last submission ran to about 30 pages - the UK's, by contrast, runs to several hundred.

Back in 2007, China simply refused to accept, in official documents, that it had become the largest emitter of CO2.

"I was working in China in 2007," said Dr Angel Hsu, from Yale University.

"I would include a citation and statistics that made this claim of China's position as the number one emitter - these were just stricken out, and I was told the Chinese government doesn't yet recognise this particular statistic so we are not going to include it."

A report in 2015 suggested one error in China's statistics amounted to 10% of global emissions in 2013.

The BBC investigation also discovered vast uncertainties in carbon emissions inventories, particularly in developing countries.

Methane, the second most abundant greenhouse gas after CO2, is produced by microbe activity in marshlands, in rice cultivation, from landfill, from agriculture and in the production of fossil fuels.

Global levels have been rising in recent years, and scientists are unsure why.

For a country such as India, home to 15% of the world's livestock, methane is a very important gas in their inventory - but the amount produced is subject to a high degree of uncertainty.

"What they note is that methane emissions are about 50% uncertain for categories like ruminants, so what this means is that the emissions they submit could be plus or minus 50% of what's been submitted," said Dr Anita Ganesan, from the University of Bristol, who has overseen air monitoring research in the country.

"For nitrous oxide, that's 100%."

There are similar uncertainties with methane emissions in Russia, of between 30-40%, according to scientists who work there.

"What we're worried about is what the planet experiences, never mind what the statistics are," said Prof Euan Nisbet, from Royal Holloway, University of London.

"In the air, we see methane going up. The warming impact from that methane is enough to derail Paris."

The rules covering how countries report their emissions are currently being negotiated.

But Prof Glen Peters, from the Centre for International Climate Research, in Oslo, said: "The core part of Paris [is] the global stock-takes which are going to happen every five years, and after the stock-takes countries are meant to raise their ambition, but if you can't track progress sufficiently, which is the whole point of these stock-takes, you basically can't do anything.

"So, without good data as a basis, Paris essentially collapses. It just becomes a talkfest without much progress."




Burning fossil fuels almost ended all life on Earth. Peter Brannen, Atlantic.com. July 11, 2017.

A road trip through the geological ruins of our planet's worst mass extinction.

Indonesian Borneo is Finished: They Also Sell Orangutans into Sex Slavery. Andre Vltchek, Counterpunch. June 2, 2017.

How destructive can man get, how ruthless, in his quest to secure maximum profit, even as he endangers the very survival of our planet? 

The tropical forests of Kalimantan (known as Borneo in Malaysia), the third largest island in the world, have almost totally disappeared. Coalmines are savagely scarring the hills; the rivers are polluted, and countless species are endangered or already extinct.

Flashbacks: NYT circa 1932, 1947, 1969

NYT 1932

NYT 1947

NYT 1969

Mike Lewis

Living the questions.

As one contemplates 2014, the wondrous, unique, tiny blue dot we dwell upon is in deep trouble. It is no news to anyone who knows me that I live between despair and hope. There are plenty of reasons for both. Alas, uncertainty is the only constant.

The personal question that continuously emerges from accepting this tension is where to put ones tiny repository of time and talent. If one is committed to making hope more concrete rather than despair more convincing, how do I concentrate my little bit? At the age of 61, this is the question I cannot seem to shake.

The fact that I am a Canadian exacerbates the restlessness this question provokes. I like to think I am a reasonable Canadian that has been shaped by the reasonableness of the country I grew up in. My problem is I am feeling more and more unreasonable. Is this because I am becoming a grumpy old man? Or, might it be my country is becoming more and more unreasonable?

As the gloomy evidence related to the catastrophic impact of human generated carbon becomes more and more unassailable our Federal government is doing all it can to accelerate the expansion of the Alberta tar sands, a province which if it were a nation, would be the highest per capita carbon emitter in the world.

As much of the world is cutting back on burning carbon rich coal (good news), American industry and various governmental agencies in Canada are doing all they can to facilitate more and more thermal coal (the dirtier grades) to be transported from south of the border by longer and longer trains, in order to find a temporary home at a new port installation smack dab in the middle of the Fraser River delta. Why? In order to so it can be loaded onto bigger and bigger ships destined for Asian markets, where it can be burned to produce more and more carbon spewing electricity to further clog our overloaded atmosphere; that is why!

Continuous claims that all this activity is being managed by a ‘reasonable’ approach to balancing interests is buttressed by advertising campaigns designed to soothe us with a promise of renewal and prosperity and protection of our natural environment. Those with a contrary perspective are seen as unreasonable, unwilling dreamers with their heads up their back ends who do not seem to comprehend the reality that the world needs our oil, and quick. Those with a contrary perspective that dare to publically challenge government and industry elites pushing the fossil fuel agenda are labeled somewhat more harshly; they are the foreign financed radicals deemed to be bordering on terrorist activity.

So much for democracy; deception, lying, threats, self-dealing, denial and deflection of evidence – is this our lot, the new Canada, a managed citizenry controlled by a combination of threats and a constricting but economically grandiose vision of being the prosperous new energy super-power?

So, back to the question; here I am. I live on the only earth we will ever know. I am a Canadian. I live in westernmost province; the proverbial gateway to Asia. I am 61. I have six grandchildren. I am of a generation that is the biggest, though mainly unwitting beneficiary of fossil fuel induced economic growth. I want us to radically but systematically reduce our dependence on fossil fuels, a goal that is premised on the best evidence available. Unfortunately, I am living in a country where a small cabal of powerful, ideologically bound, self-interested leadership are eschewing their responsibility to help Canadians make a positive transition to a low carbon economy.

Given such a miserable set of circumstance, what then are the options then for an aging lotus-land WASP to responsibly share his time, talents and spirit?

Is my consideration of heading for the front lines of civil disobedience ‘responsible’, or not? Would it be a relevant witness to all I care for and love or would I merely be a sop to my momentary lapses into despair and a yearning for more timely relevance? It is a good question; after all, I have been a primary beneficiary of the age of fossil fuels and economic growth, so now that I know better, do I not have a primary responsibility to add my weight to the growing numbers of young and old actively taking the risks necessary to change the course being set to accelerate the rush for the spoils we seem bent on in this country? Is this not reasonable thing to ask of myself?

Or, should I stay on my path of writing, researching, consulting, speaking and spreading ideas and innovations that represent resilient pathways to meeting our basic needs into the future? But is this a ‘reasonable’ approach? After all, I have been doing this for 40 years and have a good idea of how long it takes to advance innovations that have proven themselves. Might confining my attention to this domain be akin to hiding my head in the sand? After all, alternatives, no matter how successful, are not invulnerable to the gathering onslaughts of ever more volatile climate ‘events’. Would not focus on reducing the risks of carbon be a wiser choice for the use of limited time, talent and resources?

Or, perhaps, I should just stop all of it and just live day to day. Many good and wonderful people I know are on this path; love those you are with and have faith that hardened hearts will be softened through acceptance and active caring. After all, without a ‘change of heart’ we will not prevail in the bigger issues. But is this attractive variation on the Zen thematic not merely a somewhat convenient way of just hiding out from the rather inconvenient truth that out challenges are systemic, not merely matters of the heart or even individual behaviour. Change in both are necessary.

My problem, or perhaps better put, my challenge is that I want it all. I want to help stop the madness, be an active participant putting in place the practical and hopeful alternatives than pressing the ‘pedal to the metal’ on the path to the precipice, and, I want to be imbued with a spirit satisfied with loving and nourishing what is right in front of me day by day.

Hmmmmmm….. I did confess at the beginning of this missive that reflection seems a chore at times, “a sure indication it is time to stop long enough to see what bubbles up.” Well, at this point, my search for the ‘new found land’ (now January 2nd) is yielding a strange aroma. My “want it all” conclusion feels like a lot of work and would take some serious attitude adjustments on my part, God forbid.

But might this just be what constitutes a generative pathway forward? Resisting what is wrong-headed and damaging, spreading alternatives that make‘common’ sense, and daily loving the people and the processes one is connected to; is this not a gracefully militant and practical way to live?

Thus ends my serious but light hearted rambling reflection on the state of…….well, whatever. As you might surmise my next communication of this sort could just as likely emanate from a prison, a ribbon-cutting ceremony for a successful innovation transplanted or from my pen while on a silent retreat where I will no doubt be personally bent on getting focused and experiencing stillness, an outcome which could be an inordinately long process. Or????....

I believe it is time for a rum and the dregs of the egg nog. Sometimes such arduous bouts of contemplation and the clarity of action that falls out of such deep thinking can be helped along by such intoxicating aids.

Anything is possible. May each of you have a wonder full and meaning full 2014 and may you and yours be showered with blessings as we all live the questions and challenges of our time on this earth. Keep posted. Maybe I will yet make some progress bringing resistance, building alternatives and living gracefully together into a nice neat and tidy whole.

Joanna Macy

It looks bleak. Big deal; it looks bleak.

Ecobuddhism: How do you feel about the Sixth Mass Extinction?

Joanna Macy: It’s happening. It’s combined with so much else that promises wholesale collapse. How do we begin to deal with the plastic in the ocean that covers areas the size of countries? What are cell phones and microwaves doing to our biological rhythms? What exactly is in our food? How do we address genetic modification of crops? We are so hooked on all of this, on every level. How do we begin to contain it?

The most immediate level of crisis concerns the Earth’s carrying capacity. Many civilizations prior to ours, starting with Mesopotamia, could no longer support themselves because they exhausted their natural resources. Carrying capacity is the level most people talk about. It’s a defining aspect of the climate crisis. How will we grow the food we need given huge variations and extremities of weather? How will we handle the natural disasters and famines that will result from a chaotic climate?

The second and deeper level is that consequences will extend far beyond the collapse of this civilization. We are creating a lack of possibility for future generations and civilizations, because we are using up mineral and petroleum resources without a thought for them. When this civilization collapses, the future will have largely Stone Age possibilities.

The third level of crisis is the enormous increase in the rate of extinctions—shredding the fabric of life, creating a loss of biodiversity so extreme that we can glimpse the doom of complex life forms. It takes highly differentiated and integrated and diverse systems to produce life forms complex enough for consciousness.

The fourth level of crisis would be the destruction of everything more complex than anaeorobic life forms, because of the loss of our oxygen production in the oceans and on land.

At any rate, I take all of these crises seriously and don’t argue with them. At the same time, I spend my life and breath to open our minds, and to change our heart-minds.


Sunsets are beautiful too, not just sunrises

EB: From where do you derive the psychic resources to bear witness to all this, while keeping in touch with joy?

JM: There’s a lot of joy in it. I find myself very buoyed by the work I do. I call it the work that re-connects. It involves speaking the truth about what we are facing. I think it’s very hard for people to do that alone, so this work thrives and requires groups.

It needs to be done in groups so we can hear it from each other. Then you realize that it gives a lie to the isolation we have been conditioned to experience in recent centuries, and especially by this hyper-individualist consumer society. People can graduate from their sense of isolation, into a realization of their inter-existence with all.

Yes, it looks bleak. But you are still alive now. You are alive with all the others, in this present moment. And because the truth is speaking in the work, it unlocks the heart. And there’s such a feeling and experience of adventure. It’s like a trumpet call to a great adventure. In all great adventures there comes a time when the little band of heroes feels totally outnumbered and bleak, like Frodo in Lord of the Rings or Pilgrim in Pilgrim’s Progress. You learn to say “It looks bleak. Big deal, it looks bleak.”

Our little minds think it must be over, but the very fact that we are seeing it is enlivening. And we know we can’t possibly see the whole thing, because we are just one part of a vast interdependent whole–one cell in a larger body. So we don’t take our own perceptions as the ultimate. My world view has been so interwoven between the Buddhist teachings and living systems theory. They inform each other so powerfully.

“Beings are numberless, I vow to liberate them all”. This may be the last gasp of life on Earth, and what a great last gasp, if we realize we have fallen in love with each other. If you are really in the moment of experiencing our reality, you don’t say “Oh I won’t experience this because it’s not going to last forever!” You’ve got this moment. It’s true for now. We can have a reasoned concern about what is down the track, without necessarily getting hooked on something having to endure.

EB: Even in Buddhism, where impermanence is a matter of course, there are no obvious concepts to deal with super-impermanence, in the sense that humans are now bringing an end to the Cenozoic era. In the best case, there may be an Ecozoic era to follow it. Continuing on our “business-as-usual” trajectory will acidify the oceans and trigger runaway global heating, epic mass extinction and a completely new cycle of geological time. A few climate scientists consider we may have already entered into runaway climate change.

JM: I suspect that they are right. Logically they are right: we don’t have a snowball’s chance in hell. At my last workshop, people were saying “It’s too late” in the Truth Mandala that we do. And then they went out and got arrested at the White House, chained to the fence to protest the wars. So our acting with passionate dedication to life doesn’t seem to be affected. I would just as soon live that way. What keeps you going? Are you not fed by your work?

EB: Yes, it’s a powerful personal evolutionary demand that has to be lived. There is no choice.

JM: How lucky we are to be alive now—that we can measure up in this way.

EB: In the film about Jung’s life, A Matter of Heart, Marie-Louise van Franz reveals some visions he had towards the end of his life, where a large part of the planet was destroyed, but a small part endured.

JM: Certain Tibetan predictions and prophecies also indicate there will not be a total extinction of humans.

EB: James Lovelock asserts that America and China will continue to use fossil fuels and compete for the last resources till it is too late. Civilization and most of the great ecosystems will collapse. A human population of a few million might survive around the Arctic Circle.

JM: These are what the Buddha would call “views”. They are based on a lot of scientific evidence, so I take them very seriously. But what it comes down to is that we are here now. So the choice is how to live now. With the little time left, we could wake up more. We could allow this whole experience of the planet, which is intrinsically rewarding, to manifest through our heart-minds—so that the planet may see itself, so that life may see itself. And we can bless it in some way. So there is some source of blessing on us, even as we die. I think of a Korean monk who said “Sunsets are beautiful too, not just sunrises.” We can do it beautifully. If we are going to go out, then we can do it with some nobility, generosity and beauty, so we do not fall into shock and fear.

The work that I do we call The Work that Reconnects. I sensed from the time that I started it a little over 30 years ago, that on one level it was to help people be better activists – more resilient, more creative, more responsible, more effective. And on a more ultimate level, I recognized I was doing it so that when things fall apart, we won’t turn on each other.

EB: Lovelock considers humanity could become a disorganized rabble led by competing war lords.

JM: That is already happening! Look at America. We are at each other’s throat. We are steeped in delusion and lies.

EB: And that could well be a strategy of Disaster Capitalism. Perhaps a transpersonal movement in the collective unconscious could bring about a social tipping point.

JM: Or even in the collective consciousness. We can never say from our little point of view that it’s too late for that.


The Privatization of Practice

EB: In The Corporation, Joel Bakan asked a leading psychiatrist to examine corporate behaviour (externalizing all costs onto society) using standard diagnostic criteria. The doctor found he was looking at the profile of a psychopath. The dominant institution of our time has been created in the image of a psychopath, and it is legally mandated to behave as such.

JM: That’s right, they are required to! And no system where you try to maximize just one variable can avoid runaway. Indeed the bad news has gotten overwhelmingly bad since a majority of the U.S. Supreme Court gave corporations the right to make unlimited, secret political donations in Citizens United vs the FEC.

EB: We have a conjunction of “corporate psychopathy” with the immense power of fossil fuels–the most profitable business in human history. And though it’s potentially fatal for our species, it’s so difficult to hear the story. The American broadcast media is thoroughly controlled by corporate ownership or advertising revenue.

JM: They have reduced the population to a state of such stupidity. I don’t even watch TV. I suppose I should, if only to see what is happening to my country. It’s a terrible degeneration, a cultural nausea. Even listener-supported radio, which provides some oxygen, is under assault. In America now we live in a “national security state” with a debilitating element of mental servitude or mind control.

And as far as Buddhism is concerned, I find that Western Buddhists tend to privatize their practice, and look for what I call premature equanimity. They go for peace of mind and that is such an inadequate response.

EB: Spiritual practice as anaesthetic? If we can put a name to certain things, there’s a possibility of opening new space up for spiritual creativity. Just as the Australian Zen teacher Susan Murphy named something important when she wrote about The Untellable Non-story of Global Warming. Every week Australian farmers commit suicide because their land and their lives have been completely ruined by drought, while large mining corporations corrupt its politics and export its coal to heat China's blast furnaces.


Uncertainty, Despair & Positive Disintegration

JM: I find a lot of what I am drawn to in the teaching I do, the experiential work, is to help people make friends with uncertainty, and reframe it as a way of coming alive. Because there are never any guarantees at any point in life. Perhaps it’s more engrained in the American citizen that we feel we ought to know, we ought to be certain, we ought to be in control, we ought to be upbeat, we ought to be smiling, we ought to be sociable. That cultural cast has tremendous power to keep us benumbed and becalmed. So it’s been central to my life and my work to make friends with our despair, to make friends with our pain for the world. And thereby to dignify it and honour it. That is very freeing for people.

EB: I suppose it is to embrace the shadow as well.

JM: Yes, and it’s a big shadow. I find certain science fiction, the imagination, very helpful here. I like to be stretched. Olaf Stapledon wrote in the 1930s, before the nuclear age, with an incredible imagination that was also profoundly spiritual. In The Star Maker, the human mind of Earth in the head of a particular man starts to voyage through space/time and sees the drama that we are involved in here, recognizing our mutual belonging before we kill each other. He sees this basic drama in many different forms, and it’s so rich. Of course, there are planets where consciousness came that just failed. But the adventure as a whole is so big.

Living systems theory has been so helpful to me. I think there is a drive within living systems to complexify, to wake up—there is an evolutionary movement. I speak out of the love and excitement generated by my little work, which many people are doing with me. It does require being able to experience pain. It does require tears and outrage. It does require positive disintegration. Our whole culture needs positive disintegration. It has to die to itself. So my Christian upbringing is relevant there: Good Friday and Easter, the necessity for death and rebirth. We are going to die as a culture, and it’s better for us to do it consciously, so we don’t inflict it on everyone else.


The Death Wish & the Fourth Gem

EB: Are we going to die as a species too? Would the ego-death of our species precede or modify an extinction of our species?

JM: Well, I suppose one could make a deep ecology/activist case for a species-specific poison to be put into the system, to get rid of the humans for the sake of non-humans. But it’s too late for that because we have poisoned the planet with our radioactive materials and all our other toxins. Only we can know what they are, so we need to stay around to keep them out of the biosphere to the extent that we can. We don’t have the luxury of committing suicide as a species.

EB: Yet the famous evolutionary biologist Edward Wilson wrote that remarkable article, Is Humanity Suicidal?

JM: Well we are acting that way. We are acting as if we had a colossal death wish.

EB: Your workshops are obviously coming from the experiential side. If we look at Eco-psychology, all that Rozsak and colleagues have done, I wonder if there is a case to develop a certified practical training. Would that be useful?

JM: Oh my goodness, yes. But the academic institutions are not friendly to something that eludes the control of narrowly-defined disciplines. So there are probably some other places you can go.

Wherever I go with workshops, I find the readiness to experience a collective awakening. I’m astonished by how explicit this is. It’s a sense of wanting to belong to the Earth, aching for reverence for the Earth. Again and again, I believe that people would be ready to die for our world, to save the life process. There is something pressing within the heart-mind that is just huge. It’s happening very fast.

That’s one nice thing about being as old as I am. I am 81 and I’ve been watching the mindset of people through the 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s and the first decade of this century. I was doing doctoral work as late as the 70s. The changes since then are staggering.

A major change is the relevance people are now finding in native American teachings. There’s a deep respect for the wisdom that is there, and for the nobility of character that it fostered. I think that it is a precious addition to our triple gem—this fourth gem of our time—that the native peoples are speaking out.

Eco-philosopher Joanna Macy (b 1929) is a scholar of Buddhism, general systems theory & deep ecology. A respected voice in movements for peace, justice, and ecology, she interweaves her scholarship with four decades of activism. She has created a ground-breaking theoretical framework for personal & social change, as well as a powerful workshop methodology for its application. Her wide-ranging work addresses psychological and spiritual issues of the nuclear age, the cultivation of ecological awareness & the fruitful resonance between Buddhist thought and contemporary science. The many dimensions of this work are explored in her 10 books. Many thousands of people around the world have participated in her workshops, which help people transform despair and apathy, in the face of overwhelming social and ecological crises, into constructive and collaborative action. They elicit a new way of seeing the world as our larger living body, that frees us from the assumptions and attitudes that now threaten the continuity of life on Earth. Joanna travels widely giving lectures, workshops & trainings in the Americas, Europe, Asia, and Australia. She lives in Berkeley, California, near her children and grandchildren.