by Jean Toschi Marazzani Visconti
This article was presented at the Alexander Zinoviev Foundation Conference, that yes
is held in Moscow on 29 October 2019, and published in the book with extracts from the Conference.
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Centuries ago, an old Chinese sage had made a wish, if not a curse, to one of the first travelers from the West: May you live in an interesting time.
In this period the world is experiencing a time interesting. We are witnessing helpless a whirlwind technical acceleration, energy, military that seems to drag us towards a terrifying black hole.
Albert Einstein was not wrong when he feared: I fear the day when technology will go beyond our humanity, the world will then be populated by a generation of idiots. All this happened in less than seventy years since the tragedy of the Second World War.
Several reasons are a cause of concern for terrestrial populations. They are agitated by a generalized dissatisfaction, for historical regurgitation, sovereign instances, financial unrest. They tear apart like rats in a cramped container, because they feel the living space and the chances of survival diminish. They do not reflect on the extinction risk that should unite, instead, in the common search for a solution.
The dizzying increase in the earth's population is one of the causes of the malaise. In April 2019 we have become seven billion and seven hundred thousand and it is expected that in 2100 we will be eleven billion and two hundred thousand. We are consuming land and water to the extreme of possibility.
In many African areas, desertification and wars cause thousands of people to flee to Europe, causing racist excesses and political extremism. This humanity can be prevented from seeking what they believe is a better life?
In the 14th century, the Black Death had decimated the European population. This terrible epidemic would have inspired some levers of international powers, because special laboratories would be studying viruses manipulated in order to target a specific ethnic group and not others. Maybe a democratic virus that affects everyone. Only those who have been previously vaccinated will be saved, these will be few and appropriately chosen. It is a horror movie? No, a reality that unfortunately materializes in the laboratories of the major powers.
An interesting article by Karl Grossman said that Newsweek was out in July 2019 with the title the Pentagon may have released war-manipulated ticks that contributed to the spread of Lyme disease: An investigation has been ordered.
(https//www.counterpunch.org/2019/08/14/lymedesease-and-iowarfare)
The US House of Representatives would have asked the Inspector General of the Department of Defense, an investigation to find out if the Pentagon had ordered experiments on ticks and other blood-sucking insects as biological weapons among the 1950 and 1975.
The experiments would be held in a laboratory on Plum Island, an island close to Long Island (New York) and ten miles from the town of Old Lyme (Connecticut) from which, curiously, the disease got its name. The disease spread quickly on Long Island. The New York Times had explained in an article that it was a disease of bacterial origin, very infectious, rapidly spreading around the world, only lower than AIDS. Lyme disease produces severe symptoms up to death, attacks humans and animals
Let's go back to overpopulation. Serious studies indicate that in the near future, there will be strong robotization, then factories, services and what we are used to considering human management, it will be operated by machines.
What to do with all that useless human labor? Billions of forced retirees would roam the globe without a specific purpose. They could turn into soldiers. Then, it would take an enemy! A war? We are not very close already?
Or, they could be employed as colonists destined for stellar conquests.
The United States is studying the possibility of a lunar base as a support for the colonization of Mars. China appears to be interested in the dark side of the moon, probably, also in this case, as a support for more ambitious projects.
A war would seem the simplest solution to the problem. Obviously, there is a risk that in the eagerness to win the parties involved will exaggerate with nuclear power. So, poor all of us!
The M.A.D has now lapsed. (Mutual Assured Dammage) who had made US presidents and Russian leaders reconsider the risk of a nuclear war and advised them to install the historic red telephone for direct communications in times of crisis. It was the first cold war. Like all things of the past, he still observed some rules. Now we are at the beginning of another cold war, more aggressive and without rules.
The INF Treaty (Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty), signed in 1987 da Ronald Reagan et Michail Gorbachev, was annulled by the heirs of the first with the accusation that the successors of the second had violated the agreement. The Russians obviously withdrew from the agreement. therefore, green light for missiles of all sizes: ground-based intermediate-range nuclear missiles, cruise and ballistic missiles, capable of hitting a target in 6/10 minutes.
Europe is again involved in a cold war and once again becomes the chessboard of US military operations. If it is true that today whoever throws the first shot wins, the old continent is in bad shape. In particular Germany and Italy which host the major US bases and their nuclear bombs, although the two states signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
On the other hand, the European states submitted to the US when they accepted to be part of NATO in 1946, and again, when they confirmed NATO's new status in 1991 smell, shortly before the birth of United Europe: they all voted for NATO enlargement, no more defensive purpose and no more territorial limits of intervention. European member states will be obliged to follow the winds of war blown from overseas.
This has enormously weakened a promising United Europe which, after only twenty years of life, seems to be disintegrating, held together by the financial glue of the euro.
Sin! Europe could have been a fourth balancing power, even stronger if it had opened up to Russia than by history, common culture and traditions belongs to Europe.
Hans M. Kristensen, Director of the Nuclear and Information Project with the Federation of American Scientists wrote an article in Nuclear Notebook, published on Bulletin of atomic scientists. This issue's column examines the US nuclear arsenal, which has remained approximately unchanged in the last year, the Department of Defense maintained a stock estimated at nearly 3.800 tested of which approx 1.300 they are mounted on ballistic missiles, 300 in strategic bomber bases in the United States, others 150 tactical bombs are deployed in European bases.
If Russia's nuclear potential is added to these bombs, China and other powers, one has the impression of living on the brink of a catastrophe. indeed, the Apocalypse clock, imagined in 1947 by the Federation of Atomic Scientists to mark the time of humanity before total destruction, marks two minutes to midnight: l’Armagheddon.
Obviously, the media does not inform the public of this enormous danger that threatens the earth and humanity. Better to leave the populations to their normal life and small daily squabbles. But, a serious malaise begins to spread, fewer and fewer Europeans believe in a future.
It's not all! A new chapter opens in the history of sophisticated weapons, a vision from star wars: the change from kinetic to direct energy weapons. No more old bullets, but electromagnetic pulses, heat waves, cyber weapons and other sci-fi fiends that we had only seen in pure fantasy movies. Today they are a reality. We will be dealing with miniaturized drones with the most diverse uses, other than the insects of Plum Island, there will be killers on command or transporters of miniature nuke, infectors of epidemics or more simply spy mosquitoes. (Manlio Dinucci, Nuclear War, the day before. Zambon Publishing House, Frankfurt 2017)
Incredible is the development of space systems and robotic aircraft created to prevent the installation of weapons in space or to destroy the communication satellites of the adversaries. It would be thrilling, if it did not foresee a system of life even more subject to a power capable of control from space and cyberspace.
Climate is another cause for concern. In seventy years we have managed to ruin even nature in this technological race without brakes. We have polluted the seas. Huge islands of plastic float on the oceans. Plastic is found in the belly of whales and fish. We were able to intervene in the biological balance of nature. Many breeds are dying for lack of food or water. The Amazon rainforest, the great oxygen lung of the earth, it is cut to make way for intensive cultivation or burned for economic purposes; Australia is also burning from the heat, drought and human stupidity.
Nature tries every now and then to shake all these human insects off the surface with earthquakes or hurricanes, even in areas that had never known monsoon climates.
Experts are clamoring for something to be done, Ma, obviously, their financial interests are such that their requests are taken into consideration only if indispensable.
To combat CO2 emission pollution, carbon dioxide and especially from fossil fuel sources, the production of electric cars and clean energy has begun on the thrust of the Green Economy, especially in Europe and the United States where ecological demand is growing greatly. The large wind turbines, solar panels, electric motors begin to conquer the markets. Excellent news! But!!! There is a problem. To run wind turbines, the batteries of the most advanced electric motors and mobile phones require a material that is becoming more precious than oil. This is Neodymium (nd) one of the 17 components of the Rare Earths. This material does not occur in veins or deposits, but mixed with other components of the Rare Earths. Its extraction cannot be defined ecological. To obtain industrial quantities of Rare Earths (REE) vast territories are excavated, which are poisoned by the presence of radioactive substances contained in the lands themselves. The soil is treated with acids to separate the ND from the other components dispersed in the soil. In the production process, a large amount of pollutants are discharged into the air. These pollutants are breathed in areas tens of kilometers from the plants and the inhabitants fall ill with ailments similar to nuclear poisoning. Tons of water are used to wash the metal producing a toxic mud. In Mongolia, at Batou, in the settling basin of the resulting sludge, length 10 kilometers and deep 300 meters, are pumped about 7 millions of tons of mine tailings every year, growing the toxic lake of 1 meter per year.
http//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Balyunebo.ast2006181.jpg
China holds the 36% of world reserves. The United States is second with the 13% of Nd reserves and the same rate of pollution in extraction. It goes without saying that the Neodomio is a source of super profits.
How can we save ourselves? We are in the position of the cat biting its own tail. Every positive solution contains within itself a destructive solution. What can we do to bring the planet and our lives back to a less dangerous reality?
One day perhaps nature will set things right with an extraordinary natural catastrophe, which will take us back a hundred years and will give us the opportunity to start over with greater wisdom and respect for nature and men.
Sometimes, however, there is good news. The 20 August 2019, the media announced that 181 major US companies have decided on a drastic change of policy: no more exasperated profit, but pay attention to the working conditions of the employees, gender equality and especially the climate. This means the use of non-polluting machinery or work processes. These companies are part of the Business Round Table, among them names like J.P. Morgan, At-T, Apple. These giants employ around fifteen million people. According to these companies, through this new corporate policy they would achieve profit maximization. A good start for a total change that finally leads to a greater respect for nature and men. As long as it is not just an image campaign!
However, I would like to end this text with a positive thought.
We live on a beautiful planet, where natural and historical beauty, the art, the music, the thought were extraordinary, like all human beings who over time have collaborated to create this magnificence.
These men and women have left a legacy that has certainly been collected. I hope that the salvation of our planet will come from these heirs.
After all, as Fyodor Dostoievsky wrote in his masterpiece theIdiot:
The beauty will save the world.