SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
During the cold war, there was a clear narrative: an ideological opposition between the US and the Soviet Union. Moments of great tension were understood as episodes within that narrative. The closest we came to nuclear confrontation was the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, when the two countries seemed on the edge of war. But the crisis itself was finished inside a fortnight, and there was a wider framework to fall back on. The 1963 Partial Test Ban Treaty calmed the waters.
Then, in the early 1980s the tough-talking but critically derided , Ronald Reagan was elected US president. He reignited the cold war rhetoric and began escalating the arms race, and there was an assumption – particularly in Europe – that nuclear destruction was creeping closer. But it was still within a recognisable context. That ended with the collapse of communism, and the fall of the Berlin Wall. For a while the world felt a much safer place than it had been.
But the cold war was replaced by uncertainty. And now the uncertainty is combined with the unpredictability of Donald Trump. The recent bombing raids in Syria and Afghanistan were isolated moments, without any sense of programme or continuity. Nor does there seem any logic to why North Korea should have suddenly become a pressing issue. Incidents that seem to arrive out of the blue can be much more frightening. We're probably not on the verge of nuclear war, but it's destabilising if we can't make sense of events.
Is the world more dangerous now than during the cold war?
[Related]: Nuclear war will ignite in May 2017, mystic Horacio Villegas says
What do you think ?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 23 2017, @12:48PM (2 children)
I feel like that day cause a kind of mass amnesia everybody forgot the previous several decades it was clear right after the fall of the soviet union that the world was getting more dangerous despite all the talk of peace dividends and disarmament, none of that happened.
As has always been we are more likely to be blown up by accident that deliberately with nukes but war in general is more prevalent and it does not seem to be decreasing.
blaming Trump is foolish, he is just the latest expression of a violent and devolving empire that is desperate to maintain power for the very few by murdering the many, we noticed the genocide in Rwanda but many worse mass murders have happened since with barely a blip on peoples radar, 9/11 made seems to have made people numb, like the whole idea of peace is an unachievable fiction so even trying to achieve it is pointless, so the result is war, war and more war, terrorism without political purpose, we used to have people like the IRA and the Red Army Faction that kidnapped, bombed and murdered but it was always directed with purpose, now we have people that shoot up nightclubs and run over crowds with no clear intent for change or revolution just because reasons.
People have given up and when you don't think things can get better any form of violence is just whatever.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Sunday April 23 2017, @07:17PM (1 child)
The reaction to 9/11 was no accident, it was carefully scripted. Possibly down to the mailing of Anthrax to a Senator (which eventually turned out to come from a US military lab).
This doesn't say that the government plotted for 9/11 to happen, or even knew in detail what was coming down. But, unless you believe that they are totally incompetent, they knew that SOMETHING was coming down, and they had plans to take full advantage of it. This doesn't mean I think they used agent provocateurs this time, even though they have in the past. I know of no convincing evidence either way. And the anthrax was done by SOMEBODY with connections to the US military.
Note that they had the bill to take advantage of the event on the floor of congress within a couple of days. It *has* to have been written ahead of time.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 24 2017, @09:18AM
http://www.thestar.com.my/news/nation/2017/04/23/facing-down-terror-the-man-who-leads-a-bukit-aman-division-in-fighting-terrorism-has-many-tales-to-s/ [thestar.com.my]
We passed all information, including passport and flight details and photographs to an American intelligence agency. Unfortunately, that agency did not share the information with other US law enforcement agencies such as the FBI. If the agency had shared the information, pre-emptive measures could have been taken by US authorities to arrest the suspects as they entered the United States. This lack of coordination was highlighted in the “9/11 Commission Report” published by the US Government after the attack.
Lack of coordination or part of the plan? ;)