1/24/23: SECONDS COMING W/ KARL GROSSMAN

I must tell you that we live in the most confusing world a world that may be flat or not with a moon that we may have visited or not that is filled with males and females or not.

There exists a whole bunch of fear about things we probably don’t need to be afraid of but are. And a whole bunch of things we need to be afraid of but aren’t.

That is sadly the funny part. The trick to life is knowing the difference.

Most people just listen to their herd at break to find out what they need to think and then go back to whatever it is they do. Some watch the news as they always have every night—the old reliable talking heads of the legacy media they’ve always known and expect to trust. Or some just catch the headlines they doom scroll through on Twitter or Facebook.

Problem is, we don’t have the damn time do we? Who has the time these days to find out what it is we’re supposed to be afraid of? There are just SO many things to worry about and aren’t most of us of the common folk just trying to survive such tumultuous times with some of us barely hanging on by our toenails?

There are very few numbers on the clock and every day the seconds coming are ticking away closer to our last breath.

Today was the day that the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists moved the Doomsday Clock. This ceremony is like a nightmarish copy of Groundhog Day only that if the Groundhog appeared he would see his shadow burned into the ground by a Nuclear explosion.

Top scientists and security experts moved the “Doomsday Clock” forward to just 90 seconds to midnight -– signaling an increased risk to humanity’s survival from the nuclear shadow over the Ukraine conflict and they also included the threat of climate change.

The new timing of the clock set by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists are closer to midnight than ever before.

The hands of the clock, which the Bulletin describes as a “metaphor for how close humanity is to self-annihilation,” had been at 100 seconds to midnight since January 2020 — the closest to midnight it had been in its history.

A decision to reset the hands of the symbolic timepiece is taken each year by the Bulletin’s science and security board and its board of sponsors, which includes 10 Nobel laureates.

In a statement, the Bulletin said it was advancing the hands of the clock by 10 seconds this year “due largely but not exclusively to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the increased risk of nuclear escalation.”

“Russia’s thinly veiled threats to use nuclear weapons remind the world that escalation of the conflict by accident, intention, or miscalculation — is a terrible risk,” it said. “The possibility that the conflict could spin out of anyone’s control remains high.”

The Bulletin said the new clock time “was also influenced by continuing threats posed by the climate crisis and the breakdown of global norms and institutions needed to mitigate risks associated with advancing technologies and biological threats such as Covid-19.”

Former UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon also called for world leaders to take action in a world that has become more dangerous because of Covid-19, extreme weather events and “Russia’s outrageous war on Ukraine.”

What is most disconcerting is that they can sit in their offices in New York and decry the war and show us a scary 90 seconds to midnight – but they are also encouraging the conflict by supporting sanctions, the shipping of weapons to Ukraine and the encroachment of NATO in Europe.

It is like hitting the snooze alarm hoping that things will change in 90 seconds – but we all know that it won’t – because the very scientists, some who are still alive after being part of the Manhattan Project are now encouraging a Nuclear confrontation with Russia.

The head of the Russian Orthodox Church has warned that any attempt to “destroy Russia” by “madmen” trying to impose their values will lead to “the end of the world.”

According to Patriarch Krill “madmen” are stupid enough to believe that Russia, which “has powerful weapons and is populated by extremely strong people,” can be defeated despite the fact that it has “never given in to an enemy and had always emerged victorious.”

The church leader also decried how such “madmen” were trying to “impose on them certain values that cannot even be called values so that they would be like everyone else and obey those who have the power to control most of the world.”

“We pray to the Lord so that he enlightens those madmen and helps them understand that any desire to destroy Russia will mean the end of the world,” said Patriarch Kirill.

Former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev made similar remarks when he asserted that Russia had “never lost a major conflict on which their fate depended” and that the result of defeat in a conventional war would be the triggering of nuclear war.

We’re not so much as reached one full month into 2023, and the United States’ top-ranking general is already predicting the war in Ukraine will surely not end this year.

US Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Mark Milley issued a broad view assessment on the state of the battlefield while attending a US-hosted meeting in Germany at Ramstein airbase among allied defense ministers, which had as its focus sending more arms to Ukraine. Gen. Milley said: “From a military standpoint I still maintain that for this year it would be very, very difficult to militarily eject the Russian forces from all, every inch of… Russian-occupied Ukraine.”

Despite officials at the meeting pledging more weapons to Ukraine, no significant decisions were made on the controversial question of sending Western-made heavy tanks.

Instead, the Biden administration says it’s sticking by the decision to not send M1 Abrams tanks to Ukrainian forces. At the same time, this may translate into Ukrainian forces holding back on any major attempt to push Russian forces back from the current frontlines, particularly the now raging Bakhmut fighting.

The idea that the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has moved its clock to 90 seconds is being generous –and again it is a hollow statement considering that all involved have somehow become pro-nuclear war with Russia which again is confusing considering the clock was created to encourage peace.

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists emerged after World War II as a voice for peace by some of the scientists who developed the then-ultimate weapon of mass destruction. Now, its mission has drifted into being an echo chamber for the US imperial project urging President Biden to take even more destabilizing actions against Russia.

For some odd reason, they were encouraging Joe Biden to escalate the war against Russia.

This doesn’t make sense since the risk of nuclear annihilation, not to mention their warning about global warming and other threats, pushed the clock to 100 seconds to midnight last year.

This of course indicates that this gesture of fear-mongering was a political one  because they claimed that the danger of Nuclear war was greater with Trump in power and remained a reminder that he was out of control, even though I met with the nuclear powers that directly threatened us.

They wanted you to think that his attempts at keeping the peace were all an illusion. Now we are beginning to see the cracks in the effectiveness of using this metaphoric tool to get people to wake up.

Now after the meeting at Rammstein Airforce base, we are learning that the United States has warmed up to the idea of invading Russia.

It was something that we easily knew was going to be discussed the only question was what or how it would happen.

The West seems set to flood Ukraine with heavier and more advanced weapons. And the past week, according to The New York Times, was the “pivotal week of diplomacy involving [Ukraine’s] American and European allies” that will decide it.

The Biden administration is considering the argument that Kyiv needs the power to strike at the Ukrainian peninsula annexed by Russia in 2014.

For years, the United States has insisted that Crimea is still part of Ukraine. Yet the Biden administration has held to a hard line since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, refusing to provide Kyiv with the weapons it needs to target the Crimean Peninsula, which Russia has been using as a base for launching devastating strikes.

Now that line is starting to soften.

After months of discussions with Ukrainian officials, the Biden administration is finally starting to concede that Kyiv may need the power to strike the Russian sanctuary, even if such a move increases the risk of escalation, according to several U.S. officials who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive debate. Crimea, between the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov, is home to tens of thousands of dug-in Russian troops and numerous Russian military bases.

The moderation in position has come about as the Biden administration has come to believe that if the Ukrainian military can show Russia that its control of Crimea can be threatened, that would strengthen Kyiv’s position in any future negotiations. In addition, fears that the Kremlin would retaliate using a tactical nuclear weapon have dimmed, U.S. officials and experts said — though they cautioned that the risk remained.

The new thinking on Crimea shows how far Biden administration officials have come from the start of the war when they were wary of even acknowledging publicly that the United States was providing Stinger anti-aircraft missiles for Ukrainian troops.

But over the course of the conflict, the United States and its NATO allies have been steadily loosening the handcuffs they put on themselves, moving from providing Javelins and Stingers to advanced missile systems, Patriot air defense systems, armored fighting vehicles and even some Western tanks to give Ukraine the capacity to strike against Russia’s onslaught.

Now, the Biden administration is considering what would be one of its boldest moves yet, helping Ukraine to attack the peninsula that President Vladimir V. Putin views as an integral part of his quest to restore past Russian glory.

American officials are discussing with their Ukrainian counterparts the use of American-supplied weapons, from HIMARS rocket systems to Bradley fighting vehicles, to possibly target Mr. Putin’s hard-fought control over a land bridge that functions as a critical supply route connecting Crimea to Russia via the Russian-occupied cities of Melitopol and Mariupol.

However, President Biden is not yet ready to give Ukraine the long-range missile systems that Kyiv would need to attack Russian installations on the peninsula.

Ukrainian officials have long insisted that Crimea is an important target for their attacks and that continuing military pressure on Russian bases there is a significant part of their strategy. Ukrainian military officials have also discussed with American officials the importance of increasing pressure on Russia’s rear echelon in Crimea, which supports military operations elsewhere in Ukraine.

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg says, “The main message” of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group is “more support, more advanced support, heavier weapons and more modern weapons.”

However, from the beginning, the Citing the Atlantic Council, the US-based think tank for NATO, Bulletin of Atomic Scientists explained that they advocated sanctions and whatever would force the Russian economy to “experience significant chaos.” These sanctions that the Bulletin called for are a form of warfare just as deadly as dropping bombs. Sanctions kill! Instead of supporting peaceful measures to reduce tensions in Ukraine, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has become a cheerleader for the Warhawks in Washington.

It should be time to realize that perhaps the Doomsday Clock is as arbitrary as the color-coded warnings that we were subjected to after 9/11.

The Doomsday Clock is the groundhog amongst the lemmings.

What a brilliant idea to keep us in the know as far as our terror quotient is concerned.

The trouble is with all the hype it is given every year — it officially tells us nothing.

It doesn’t tell us what to do but just to be afraid, be afraid, very afraid or absolutely terrified.

There is no direction on when we should go to the fallout shelters or buy guns or head for the bunkers or run screaming into the night with our hair on fire and our flesh peeling off of our bodies.

Any action required is a stray thought now and then about the weird stuff reportedly going on behind-the-scenes at Davos, or Rammstein Air force base or NATO headquarters as governments and scientists and engineers and banksters plot their next move that pushes us to Armageddon.

Meanwhile, John Kerry and others tease us with all those assorted thoughts associated with the United States long being over and how it is too late.

By the time the show is over the diehards are speaking like Potheads at a party with topics like the CERN particle accelerator, the second coming of Christ and space aliens.

As we have learned the sons of Elohim were a topic of discussion as to how they will return.

Action required is reading beyond headlines and some light internet research beyond legacy news. Begin thinking about stockpiling food, water, weapons, iodine pills, bug-out bags, gas, alternative sources of heat, hand-cranked grain mills, medicine and Reese’s Pieces. Lock and Load and protect God and country at all odds.

The year has already been marked by heightened activity by aforesaid entities and may include the fomentation of hostility with rival nations and name-calling of fellow citizens for reading beyond headlines. Censorship begins. Governments explain why we need to be afraid of things like viruses, UFOs, rightwing terrorists and friends and family.

They may issue a document where you can anonymously turn in your friends and family to the authorities if they decide they don’t want to vaccinate or play by the rules of science.

Future generations, may well look back on this time and wonder whether humanity was deranged to continue on a course of business-as-usual without the thought of consequence. In fact, many people alive today already think so. It has become abundantly clear that governments largely pay only lip service to the urgent need to address starvation, scarcity, health and the removal of pain and suffering.

And so while political ‘leaders’ refuse to change course to avoid disaster, bankers and financial speculators continue to risk humanity’s future for the sake of making money on weapons of war and whatever blackmail is happening with the U.S. and Ukraine.

I mean the Doomsday clock can be moved to 1 second to midnight or half past a farewell kiss of our ass -and business as usual will continue.

It will be politics, industry, financial trading and the corporate news media feeding us propaganda.

The Doomsday Clock has been sitting for the past year at 100 seconds to midnight, the closest it has ever been to a civilization-ending apocalypse.

And yet with that in mind, there is this never-ending threat of escalating the war and Russia has been threatening the world with a scorched earth policy.. that should be enough to set the clocks back to the era of the Cold War and even then the clock was not even that close.

The countries that strive for offensive military superiority ignore the wisdom and warning of the pacifist scientist Albert Einstein: “You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war. The very prevention of war requires more faith, courage and resolution than are needed to prepare for war. We must all do our share, that we may be equal to the task of peace.”

It was also Einstein that said, “I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones”.

It always feels that no matter how close we are to Armageddon Gentleman’s Agreements of peace have been replaced by iron-clad legal contracts, backed by the full force of organised terror.

When Ukraine reached its apex on the battlefield in November, the West reached a fork in the road. They could exert pressure on Ukraine to negotiate and end the war. They had attained their long-stated goal of helping Ukraine on the battlefield so that it was strong at the negotiating table. And they possessed the leverage to exert that pressure: Ukraine could only go on fighting a war with Western weapons if they kept getting Western weapons. Or the West could resolve the problem of Ukraine getting as far as they could with the weapons they had by providing them more weapons, and heavier more advanced weapons, like tanks and Patriot missile batteries.

The West seems to have chosen the latter. Rather than seizing the window for “the optimal time for Ukraine to start talking” and “resolve this thing . . . the sooner the better,” the West seems to be closing the window and choosing to escalate the war by providing Ukraine with more weapons in hopes that it can push Ukraine up the hill passed its apex.

The window may have been missed. And the US may now be aiming for a war with boots on the ground.

Could this guarantee a Nuclear winter this spring?  Again, there is a groundhog metaphor in there somewhere. It is all in the shadow of a mushroom cloud that is looming over all of us.