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posted by martyb on Sunday April 23 2017, @05:42AM   Printer-friendly
from the reality-and-perception dept.

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 ?


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  • (Score: 1) by corey on Monday April 24 2017, @02:16AM

    by corey (2202) on Monday April 24 2017, @02:16AM (#498625)

    [Related]: Nuclear war will ignite in May 2017, mystic Horacio Villegas says

    Wow, I was stupid enough to click this Murdoch clickbait. There are numerous spelling mistakes, which indicates it was lifted from somewhere.

    The biggest indicator of it either being crap or fake news is the quantity of 'reportedly' words. No citations.

    The ABC TV show, Media Watch shows almost every week examples of this sort of thing in the newspapers. They start out some made up post on Facebook, a blog blogs it, it gets shared and a small local no name newspaper picks it up. Then it gets lifted into big newspapers by lazy journalists on slow news days.

    Here's news I'm a mystic. And I say Horacio is talking shit after too much weed. And he is after media coverage to boost clientele to his mystic abilities.