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Better Earth

Best of the Web: Paleoclimate reconstructions show significant cold periods coincided with pandemics & plagues in ancient Rome

plague
© Painting at the Walters Art Museum, Public Domain, Wikimedia CommonsSt Sebastian pleading for the life of a gravedigger afflicted with plague during the 7th-century Plague of Pavia.
High-resolution paleoclimate reconstructions from southern Italy, dating to between around 200 BCE and 600 CE, provide a clearer picture of how climate and disease intersected in ancient Rome.

Reconstructions showed that temperature and precipitation became increasingly unstable after ~130 CE, with several cold periods tied to historic pandemic outbreaks such as the Justinian Plague.

Paleoclimate proxies can offer insights into how past climate change may have influenced human societies, such as when warm or cool intervals coincided with periods of social development or pandemics.

Comment: It's probably no wonder that the establishment would have us believe we're in an era of 'global boiling', rather than on the precipice of a similar (or worse) cooling that correlates with famine, an uptick in cometary activity, and great dyings caused by (real) pandemics:


Bizarro Earth

Best of the Web: Slaying the dragon: The world stands on the brink of global war

crowd silhouette
© unknownSunrise Sunset
Alexander Dugin delves into the intricate dynamics of a rapidly evolving multipolar world as we step into 2024, highlighting the pivotal shifts and conflicts reshaping global geopolitics.

The main issue in 2024 remains the same fundamental problem as before: the confrontation between two waves — the waning wave of a unipolar world order with US hegemony and the collective West, and the rising wave of a multipolar world, embodied in BRICS-10.

This problem did not arise now, but as the West, having gained at one historical moment the appearance of sole planetary domination (after the collapse of the USSR), proved incapable of implementing its leadership in practice, new sovereign poles began to assert themselves — Russia and China. Other poles are on the approach — India, the Islamic civilisation, Africa, and Latin America. In total, seven power centres, including the West. Six of them have united in BRICS, beginning to build a multipolar order.

The West continues to cling to its hegemony and attacks the most dangerous opponents to its domination — Russia, China, and the Islamic world. This did not start today but at the very beginning of the 2000s. But the current contrast of the political world map was finally acquired in recent years — especially after the beginning of the Special Military Operation in Ukraine. The operation became the first hot war of the multipolar world against the unipolar one. Until then — especially during President Trump's first term and due to the rise of populism in Europe — it seemed that a direct clash could be avoided, that the West would peacefully accept multipolarity, trying to fight for a worthy place in the post-globalist world order. This is what Trump meant by calling to drain the globalist swamp in the US itself. But so far, the swamp managed to drain Trump himself and, during the most swampy administration under President Biden, to unleash a bloody conflict in Ukraine, throwing all the forces of the collective West against Russia, the most important pole of the multipolar world.

Comment: The global/anti-global rumble is underway...choosing sides, taking bets.


Attention

Best of the Web: Is Kim Jong Un preparing for war?

KimJ
© abnews.go.comNorth Korean leader Kim Jong Un
The situation on the Korean Peninsula is more dangerous than it has been at any time since early June 1950. That may sound overly dramatic, but we believe that, like his grandfather in 1950, Kim Jong Un has made a strategic decision to go to war. We do not know when or how Kim plans to pull the trigger, but the danger is already far beyond the routine warnings in Washington, Seoul and Tokyo about Pyongyang's "provocations." In other words, we do not see the war preparation themes in North Korean media appearing since the beginning of last year as typical bluster from the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK or North Korea).

Raising the specter of Pyongyang's decision to go to a military solution — in effect, to give warning of war — in the absence of "hard" evidence is fraught. Typically, it will be met with the by-now routine argument that Kim Jong Un would not dare take such a step because he "knows" Washington and Seoul would destroy his regime if he does so. If this is what policymakers are thinking, it is the result of a fundamental misreading of Kim's view of history and a grievous failure of imagination that could be leading (on both Kim's and Washington's parts) to a disaster.

Comment: The authors are well-qualified to put forth these assessments.

See also:




Vader

Best of the Web: War on Yemen? The US better not expect a cakewalk

demonstration support gaza houthis
© Azzat Alsalem/X
On Wednesday, the Biden administration labeled the Houthis a "Specially Designated Global Terrorist group," opening the door to the imposition of sweeping sanctions. Aid groups immediately responded with warnings that the designation threatens to greatly intensify Yemen's humanitarian crisis. As a result of the almost decade-long war the Saudi regime has waged on Yemen with US arms and logistical support, more than half of the country's population — over 18 million people — need food and other assistance..."US Imperialism Setting Middle East Ablaze", World Socialist Web Site
The Biden administration is in the process of reimposing the 7 year-long embargo on Yemen that cut off food, water and essential medical supplies to the civilian population. This is how Washington weaponizes the "terrorist" designation in order to use famine as an instrument of foreign policy. The clear intention is to starve the population into submission so the US can advance its geopolitical agenda in the region. In this case, Washington's strategic objectives remain largely concealed from the general public, so we will list them here:

The United States has three main goals in Yemen:
  1. To eliminate an ally of Iran. (The Houthis)
  2. To control critical shipping lanes in the Red Sea.
  3. To construct an oil pipeline across Yemen in the event that the US launches a war on Iran and shipping in the Strait of Hormuz is disrupted. Now that Israel is moving ahead with its ethnic cleansing operation, we can add a forth objective to the list:
  4. To militarily engage any army or militia in the region that tries to derail Tel Aviv's territorial ambitions.

Light Sabers

Best of the Web: US Navy Seals 'missing' in Red Sea declared dead, Yemen's Ansarallah imply their strike against warship was responsible

yemen houthi red sea
© GettyA member of Yemen's Ansarallah resistance movement previously implied the group's involvement in the incident
US Central Command (CENTCOM) announced on 22 January that the two navy seals who went missing earlier this month have been declared dead.


"The search and rescue operation for the two Navy SEALs reported missing during the boarding of an illicit dhow carrying Iranian advanced conventional weapons on 11 January have concluded and we are now conducting recovery operations," CENTCOM went on to say.

Comment: It remains to be seen just what impact the West's attacks against Yemen will have, but if the failed years-long US-Saudi war on Yemen is anything to go by, it's likely that the Houthis have got some fight left in them yet.

While the US allegedly announced the initial attacks against the Houthis - almost as if they didn't want to escalate the situation too far (too soon) - amidst those, and since then, there have been a number of attacks by Israel against Syria and Lebanon (killing Iranian military staff), alongside seemingly retaliatory responses by Iran against US-Israel targets in Iraq and the surrounding regions; taken together, the West-Israel's aggression in the Middle East is certainly escalating the situation, and fast.

Note also the escalating US casualties: Several US troops wounded after heavy missile attack on Iraq airbase

And that, still, neither the US nor the UK have sought permission through their respective 'democratic', governmental channels to declare war against Yemen.






Attention

Best of the Web: How the West was Defeated

US & NATO Flags
© AFP 2023
Emmanuel Todd, historian, demographer, anthropologist, sociologist and political analyst, is part of a dying breed: one of the very few remaining exponents of old school French intelligentzia - a heir to those like Braudel, Sartre, Deleuze and Foucault who dazzled successive young Cold War generations from the West down to the East.

The first nugget concerning his latest book, La Défaite de L'Occident ("The Defeat of the West") is the minor miracle of actually being published last week in France, right within the NATO sphere: a hand grenade of a book, by an independent thinker, based on facts and verified data, blowing up the whole Russophobia edifice erected around the "aggression" by "Tsar" Putin.
At least some sectors of strictly oligarch-controlled corporate media in France simply could not ignore Todd this time around for several reasons. Most of all because he was the first Western intellectual, already in 1976, to have predicted the fall of the USSR in his book La Chute Finale, with his research based on Soviet infant mortality rates.
Another key reason was his 2002 book Apres L'Empire, a sort of preview of the Empire's Decline and Fall published a few months before Shock & Awe in Iraq.

Now Todd, in what he has defined as his last book ("I closed the circle") allows himself to go for broke and meticulously depict the defeat not only of the US but of the West as a whole - with his research focusing in and around the war in Ukraine.

Considering the toxic NATOstan environment where Russophobia and cancel culture reign supreme, and every deviation is punishable, Todd has been very careful not to frame the current process as a Russian victory in Ukraine (although that's implied in everything he describes, ranging from several indicators of social peace to the overall stability of the "Putin system", which is "a product of the history of Russia, and not the work of one man").

Rather, he focuses on the key reasons that have led to the West's downfall. Among them: the end of the nation-state; de-industrialization (which explains NATO's deficit in producing weapons for Ukraine); the "degree zero" of the West's religious matrix, Protestantism; the sharp increase of mortality rates in the US (much higher than in Russia), along with suicides and homicides; and the supremacy of an imperial nihilism expressed by the obsession with Forever Wars.

Broom

Best of the Web: How America is destroying itself and the old world order

iran america
© AP Photo / Ebrahim NorooziSatirized painting of the Statue of Liberty painted on the wall of the former U.S. Embassy, in Tehran, Iran
Even as NATO's proxy war on Russia is flailing, the US has mired itself in numerous crises around the world.
A potentially catastrophic Middle East war to defend the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, while preparing for a delusional conflict against industrial powerhouse China, and borrowing $3 trillion every year.

All to prop up an American economy plagued by record homelessness, highest suicide rate since the Great Depression, massive asset bubbles, and a brewing civil war.

The confluence of late-stage capitalism and late-stage imperialism is pushing the US - and its vassals in Europe - into an abyss of self-destructive behavior.

Eye 1

Best of the Web: 'Is the TRUTH only what those with the most money say it is?' Neil Oliver lambasts psychos-in-power

Neil Oliver
Neil Oliver
Neil Oliver expresses his concerns for the levels of power held by the wealthy at Davos and the impact this might have on 'the value of human life.'


Snowflake Cold

Best of the Web: The snow is up to 7 meters (23 FEET) high in Hakkari, Turkey (UPDATE)

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In the Semdinli district in Hakkari, Turkey, the height of the snow cover reaches five meters in some places.

Crews on the ground worked to clear the snow to allow access to villages in the area, which they eventually succeeded in doing.

The locals were happy because the roads were passable, so they could go and buy the necessities of life.

Teams continue work on widening roads where the snow reaches up to five meters, AA writes.


Comment: Update January 22

Bianet.org reports:
Snow thickness reaches seven meters in Hakkari

Efforts are being made by snow removal teams to open the roads providing access to villages and hamlets; however, progress is challenging due to the thickness of the snow.

The heavy snow in the Yüksekova district of Hakkâri has adversely affected daily life.

Snow removal teams are making efforts to open the roads providing access to villages and hamlets in the Dağlıca region, where the snow thickness reaches up to 7 meters in some places.



Despite the ongoing efforts by the District Special Provincial Administration Directorate's construction site teams to clear the blocked roads, the thickness of the snow is making their work challenging.

According to a report in Anadolu Agency, the teams are using construction equipment to create a "snow tunnel" and aim to quickly open the road for access to villages and hamlets.



Hourglass

Best of the Web: Here's why the new British-Ukrainian defense agreement is great news for Russia

Zelensky Sunak
© Daniel LEAL / AFPUkraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky (R) shakes hands with Britain's Prime Minister Rishi Sunak. The deal, which is supposedly intended to strengthen Kiev in its fight with Moscow, actually does nothing to bolster its chances.
The Ukrainian elite have been obsessed with obtaining security guarantees from the West since the early 1990s. Over the years, as Kiev has increasingly sought conflict with Russia, it has also tried to hide behind the US-led bloc's back, hoping to one day join NATO and the European Union.

This carry-on eventually led to the start of Russia's military operation, almost two years ago. Its first stage ended with negotiations in Istanbul in March-April 2022. Under the agreements, Kiev was supposed to receive security guarantees as long as it complied with the terms. France, the UK, and the US were supposed to become the guarantors.