Not since 1956 when Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev threatened the West with the infamous words, “We will bury you” have world leaders heard the head of a nuclear state brandish its atomic weapons to intimidate the world.

Almost 60 years after Khrushchev said these words at a reception in Moscow while addressing Western ambassadors, the Islamic State of Pakistan was back at the centre of the world’s attention as its prime minister raised the spectre of a nuclear war engulfing the globe.

Last Friday, Imran Khan rose to address a poorly attended hall of the UN General Assembly and in a not-so-disguised threat said, if the world did not pay attention to his penchant for a jihad against neighbouring India over the Indian state of Kashmir, a nuclear war would ensue and engulf the rest of the world:

“If a conventional war starts between the two countries … anything could happen. But supposing a country [Pakistan] seven times smaller than its neighbour [India] is faced with the choice either you surrender, or you fight for your freedom till death? “What will we do? I ask myself this question … and we will fight. … and when a nuclear-armed country fights to the end, it will have consequences far beyond the borders.”

Khan warned of a “blood bath” in Kashmir, where New Delhi has taken steps to fully integrate the territory with the rest of the country by amending the country’s constitution that hitherto had granted greater autonomy to the region than that given to the other 29 Indian states.

Catastrophic events that send the world into turmoil happen on ‘just another day’. The atom bomb that exploded over Hiroshima took place while thousands of ordinary folk were just going about their everyday business on ‘just another day’. 

A missile attack on a neighbourhood in Gaza or a drone attack on unsuspecting civilians in Afghanistan: death and destruction come like a bolt from the blue as people shop at the local market or take their kids to school on ‘just another day’.

Will it be ‘just another day’ when the next nuclear bomb is exploded in anger, an ordinary day when people are just going about their daily business? By then it might be too late to do anything, too late to act to try to prevent an unfolding global catastrophe on a scale never before witnessed by humans.

Yet so many appear too apathetic and wrapped up in a world of gadgets, technology, shopping malls, millionaire sports players and big-time sports events to think that such a thing could be imminent.

Are they so preoccupied with the machinations of their own lives in cotton-wool cocooned societies to think that what is happening in Syria or Iraq is just too boring to follow or that it doesn’t really concern them or it is ‘not my problem’? 

Do they think they are untouchable, that only death, war and violence happens in faraway places?

Could any of us even contemplate that on some not-too-distant day a series of European cities could be laid waste within a matter of minutes? It isn’t worth thinking about. Or is it.

The US (and the West’s) foreign policy is being driven on the basis of fake morality and duplicity. Millions lie dead in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria and Libya as a result of US-led imperialism, and nuclear-armed Russia is constantly demonised simply because it will not acquiesce to Washington and serve as a vassal state.

And now, as the US continues to stir up tensions with Iran and as China warns neighbouring countries about allowing US nuclear missiles aimed at it on their territories, much of the Western public and media remain oblivious to the dangers of conflict escalation and the biggest immediate threat to all life on Earth: nuclear war.

Some fell to the ground and their stomachs already expanded full, burst and organs fell out. Others had skin falling off them and others still were carrying limbs. And one in particular was carrying their eyeballs in their hand.”

The above extract comes from an account by a Hiroshima survivor talking about the fate of her schoolmates. In 2016, it was read out in the British parliament by Scottish National Party MP Chris Law during a debate about Britain’s nuclear arsenal.

In response to a question from MP George Kereven, the then British PM Theresa May said without hesitation that, if necessary, she would authorise the use of a nuclear weapon that would kill hundreds of thousands of innocent men, women and children. May also implied that those wishing to scrap Britain’s nuclear weapons are siding with the nation’s enemies.

Politicians like May read from a script devised by elite interests. This transnational capitalist class dictates global economic policies and decides on who lives and who dies and which wars are fought and inflicted on which people.

The mainstream narrative tends to depict individuals who belong to this class as ‘wealth creators’. In reality, however, these ‘high flyers’ have stolen ordinary people’s wealth, stashed it away in tax havens, bankrupted economies and have imposed a form of globalisation that results in devastating destruction and war for those who attempt to remain independent or structurally adjusted violence via privatisation and economic neo-liberalism for millions in countries that have acquiesced.

While ordinary folk across the world have been subjected to policies that have resulted in oppression, poverty and conflict, this is all passed off by politicians and the mainstream media as the way things must be.

The agritech sector poisons our food and agriculture. Madelaine Albright says it was worth it to have killed half a million kids in Iraq to secure energy resources for rich corporations and extend the wider geopolitical goals of ‘corporate America’. The welfare state is dismantled and austerity is imposed on millions. The rich increase their already enormous wealth.

Powerful corporations corrupt government machinery and colonise every aspect of life for profit. Environmental destruction and ecological devastation continue apace.

And nuclear weapons hang over humanity like the sword of Damocles.

The public is supposed to back this status quo in support of what? Austerity, powerlessness, imperialism, propping up the US dollar and a moribund system. For whom? Occidental Petroleum, Soros, Murdoch, Rothschild, BP, JP Morgan, Boeing and the rest of the elite and their corporations whose policies are devised in think tanks and handed to politicians to sell to a largely ignorant public: those who swallow the lie about some ‘war on terror’ or Washington as the world’s policeman, protecting life and liberty.

Many believe nuclear weapons are a necessary evil and fall into line with hegemonic thinking about humanity being inherently conflictual, competitive and war-like. 

Such tendencies do of course exist, but they do not exist in a vacuum. They are fuelled by capitalism and imperialism and played upon by politicians, the media and elite interests who seek to scare the population into accepting a ‘necessary’ status quo.

Co-operation and equality are as much a part of any arbitrary aspect of ‘human nature’ as any other defined characteristic. These values are, however, sidelined by a system of capitalism that is inherently conflict-ridden and expansionist.

Much of humanity has been convinced to accept the potential for instant nuclear Armageddon hanging over its collective head as a given, as a ‘deterrent’. However, the reality is that these weapons exist to protect elite, imperialist interests or to pressure others to cave into their demands. 

If the 20th century has shown us anything, it is these interests are adept at gathering the masses under notions of flag, god and country to justify their slaughter.

To prevent us all shuddering with the fear of the threat of instant nuclear destruction on a daily basis, it’s a case of don’t worry, be happy, forget about it and watch TV.

It was the late academic Rick Roderick who highlighted that modern society trivialises issues that are of ultimate importance: they eventually become banal or ‘matter of fact’ to the population.

People are spun the notion that nuclear-backed militarism and neoliberalism and its structural violence are necessary for securing peace, defeating terror, creating prosperity or promoting ‘growth’. The ultimate banality is to accept this pack of lies and to believe there is no alternative, to acquiesce or just switch off to it all.

Instead of acquiescing and accepting it as ‘normal’, we should listen to writer and campaigner Robert J Burrowes:

Many people evade responsibility, of course, simply by believing and acting as if someone else, perhaps even ‘the government’, is ‘properly’ responsible. Undoubtedly, however, the most widespread ways of evading responsibility are to deny any responsibility for military violence while paying the taxes to finance it, denying any responsibility for adverse environmental and climate impacts while making no effort to reduce consumption, denying any responsibility for the exploitation of other people while buying the cheap products produced by their exploited (and sometimes slave) labour, denying any responsibility for the exploitation of animals despite eating and/or otherwise consuming a range of animal products, and denying any part in inflicting violence, especially on children, without understanding the many forms this violence can take.”

Burrowes concludes by saying that ultimately, we evade responsibility by ignoring the existence of a problem. The evasion of responsibility, acquiescence and acceptance are, of course, part of the conditioning process.

The ‘problem’ encompasses not only ongoing militarism, but the structural violence of neoliberal capitalism, aided and abetted by the World Bank, IMF and the WTO. It’s a type of violence that is steady, lingering and a daily fact of life under globalised capitalism.

Of course, oppression and conflict have been a feature throughout history and have taken place under various economic and political systems. Indeed, in his various articles, Burrowes goes deep into the psychology and causes of violence.

But there is potentially a different path for humanity.

In 1990, the late British MP Tony Benn gave a speech in parliament (above) that indicated the kind of values that such a route might look like.

Benn spoke about having been on a crowded train, where people had been tapping away on calculators and not interacting or making eye contact with one another. It represented what Britain had apparently become under Thatcherism: excessively individualistic, materialistic, narcissistic and atomised.

The train broke down. As time went by, people began to talk with one another, offer snacks and share stories. Benn said it wasn’t too long before that train had been turned into a socialist train of self-help, communality and comradeship. 

Despite the damaging policies and ideology of Thatcherism, these features had survived her tenure, were deeply embedded and never too far from the surface.

For Tony Benn, what had been witnessed aboard that train was an aspect of ‘human nature’ that is too often suppressed, devalued and, when used as a basis for political change, regarded as a threat to ruling interests. 

It is an aspect that draws on notions of unity, solidarity, common purpose, self-help and finds its ultimate expression in the vibrancy of community, the collective ownership of productive resources and co-operation. 

The type of values far removed from the destructive, divisive ones of imperialism and capitalism which key politicians and the corporate media protect and promote.

The writer Tara Isabella Burton is one of the most interesting people you could ever hope to meet in New York City. In this essay, she writes about how she threw herself into the occult in a Romantic effort to escape meaninglessness … but ended up, in the end, becoming a Christian. Excerpt(s):

I am not saying that magic is real. Who knows if magic is real? I am saying, only, that for most of my life I had two options: a world that was enchanted, and one that was not, and the one that was enchanted was the only one I could bear to live in. I was—as it happens—in graduate school for theology, and would have called myself some kind of anodyne Episcopalian, but at my core I was thoroughly pagan. I believed in forces that had no names. I bargained with them and expected to win.

I wanted magic. I didn’t think too much about meaning. Or at least, as long as everything meant something, the specifics didn’t seem to matter. Basil could mean love. Thursdays could mean power. The full moon purity. Why not?

The alternative was that nothing meant anything at all.

Blah blah blah….

Why did she open herself to these mad spirits?

I wanted to outrun the Nothing. There was nothing I would not have sacrificed—friendships, relationships, the blood from the heel of my foot—to get it.

Read it all, and to learn about Tara Isabella Burton becoming a Christian.

Much of this resonates with my experience. I never flirted with the occult, but I understood, and understand, why a soft version of it appeals to people. Like TIB, I couldn’t bear to live in a world of metaphysical meaninglessness. I don’t know if I can speak for her here, but I also believed that there really was meaning there, behind the veil of matter. That is, I believed (and do believe) that transcendent meaning exists, whether or not individuals believe it does. Our task in life is both to perceive that meaning, insofar as we can in our mortal states, and to integrate ourselves harmoniously with it. Like Tara Isabella Burton now and in her pagan years, I cannot find stability in a religion that seeks to anesthetize. To set boundaries around the wildness, and to order it rightly, yes, absolutely; but to deny its spiritual power by turning the living God (and the demons who oppose him) into a denatured form of ethics or therapy — no. Never. 

Rod Dreher tells us:

A reader sent this story from Sojourners magazine, the stalwart journal of progressive Christianity, saying that they appear to have left Christianity behind. Why? Because they published this cockamamie piece by Claudio Carvalhaes, the Union Seminary professor who led a class to confess their sins to a synod of houseplants. Carvalhaes explains himself thus:

Last week our chapel service was called Temple of Confessions.

As we gathered in the narthex of James Chapel, I gave an introduction that included these words:

Many of us have a disconnected relationship with nature and relate to nature as outside things, as “it.” Today we will try to create new connections by talking to the plants, soil, and rocks and confess how we have related with them. Confessions are also forms of mending relations, healing, and changing our ways. We are all manifestations of the sacredness of life and the “we” of God’s love is way beyond the human, so let us confess to “each other” including plants, soil, rocks, rivers, forests.

We processed into the chapel carrying plants and placed them on soil. Immediately people started to come to the plants, to confess their forms of relation or non-relation. One student said something that stuck with me: “I don’t know how to relate to you in this subjective way. I am afraid that if I do I might discover a level of pain that I don’t know whether I can bear.”

Hoo boy. Sounds like As The Orchid Turns up in that hysterical hothouse.

Read more:

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/bless-me-ficus-for-i-have...

It sounds better to confess of a sin to a pot plant. At least the greenery won't pass judgement on your recurring debilitation. Meanwhile, the priest to whom you confess your out-of-control passion for sponge cakes and cream, might be one of those who have been molesting kids...

--------------

Around 1,700 priests and clergy members that the Catholic Church considers “credibly accused” of child sexual abuse are living in the US with “no oversight,” an AP report published Friday finds.

In its review of more than 5,100 clergy members, AP found that out of 2,000 living priests and other church employees “named as credibly accused abusers,” almost 1,700 were “living without much supervision” and working in various roles. Only a few hundred such clergy members were being supervised by the church or by law enforcement.

AP also found that hundreds of “credibly accused abusers” remained in close contact with children. 

“More than 160 continued working or volunteering in churches, including dozens in Catholic dioceses overseas and some in other denominations. Roughly 190 obtained professional licenses to work in education, medicine, social work and counseling — including 76 who, as of August, still had valid credentials in those fields,” the AP report explains.

AP also cites several examples of clergy members who were accused of abusing children on more than one occasion. For example, Roger Sinclair was removed by the Diocese of Greensburg in Pennsylvania back in 2002 on accusations that he had abused a teenage boy years before. In 2017, he was arrested for molesting a “young developmentally disabled man,” according to AP. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported in August 2018 that Sinclair reportedly did not pose as a priest when he committed the abuse.

In fact, the majority of people considered “credibly accused” were never criminally prosecuted, the report states, noting that the “lack of criminal history has revealed a sizable gray area that state licensing boards and background check services are not designed to handle as former priests seek new employment, apply to be foster parents and live in communities unaware of their presence and their pasts.”

“Defrocked or not, we’ve long argued that bishops can’t recruit, hire, ordain, supervise, shield, transfer and protect predator priests, then suddenly oust them and claim to be powerless over their whereabouts and activities,” David Clohessy, the former executive director of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, is quoted as saying by AP.

Read more:

https://sputniknews.com/society/201910041076966709-nearly-1700-us-priest...

Atheism is the only way to go in this insane place... 

Rod Dreher goes more and more into fantasyland in order to justified his employment as a devout writer. This short bespectacled-man [my imagination goes wild] cannot see beyond his religiously freckled nose.

Okay. What caca has Rod placed his saintly shoes in this time? He mentions to us without blinking once, how Professor Nathan Lents, "who is not a religious believer", explains why Joshua Swamidass, who is an Evangelical Christian believes in evolution. And so Lents tells us:

If memory serves, this was the Catholic writer and physician Walker Percy’s supposition: that at some point, a man and a woman who had developed normally, according to evolution, became ensouled by the action of God. Thus, Adam and Eve.

This is not going to satisfy Biblical literalists, but it is still fascinating stuff. Many of us Christians read Genesis as a “true myth,” one that tells a fundamental truth about something that happened in the spiritual history of mankind, but that is not literally true. In other words, there may not have been a literal garden of Eden, but at some point there was a metaphysical and spiritual event called the Fall. The Fall happened because of the exercise of human agency. It was not a symbolic event, the Fall: it represents the aboriginal catastrophe for humanity, and indeed for the Cosmos. It is not necessary to believe that there was actually a physical Garden of Eden to believe that Genesis tells the truth about Creation and Fall.

Read from top.

Rod Dreher still mumbles to himself:

‘Memba how we all laughed last week at the liberal Presbyterian divine who led his seminary class to confess their sins to houseplants?

Well, here’s news from the Catholic Church’s Amazon Synod:

Catholics should admit their crimes against nature in confession, according to one prelate at the Vatican’s ongoing summit for the Amazon region.

“The ecological situation today is a motive for division, but people cannot but take into consideration the importance the environment has for us,” said Archbishop Pedro Brito Guimarães, of Palmas, Brazil, on Friday. “Ecological sins. It’s a new word for us, also for the Church, but people don’t confess the sins we commit against nature.”

Guimarães’s words came during the daily press conference for the Oct. 6-27 Synod of Bishops on the Amazon.

Everybody done lost they damn minds. That’s my considered conclusion.

UPDATE: OK, let me clarify, and maybe even back down a bit. I do believe that we humans have a divinely mandated responsibility to treat Creation with care. I believe that we badly fail at that all the time, and yes, we should repent of that and make reparation. We are sinning not against nature, but against the God who is the Creator of that nature. If that’s all the Archbishop is saying, then I’m with him. I read his comment in context of the whole Amazon Synod, which is, to my eyes, going off-track with syncretism. If this is not some cloaked form of Gaia-worship, then I apologize for mischaracterizing him.

Read more:

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/sinners-in-the-hands-of-a...

Read from top.

No Rod. We are not "sinning"... against the God who is the Creator of that nature ... It is not a sin to destroy the planet — just bad manners and unfortunate. It is an ethical choice which affect the survival of other creatures and eventually us.

I repeat: it is not a sin...