Martin Luther King, Jr. on the state of the world, 2007

Yesterday, a 12 year old pointed out to me a fragment from one of the speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr. ("The Casualties of the War in Vietnam", 25 February 1967, Los Angeles, CA) that seemed strinkingly accurate in its description of our present world:

There is grave irony in the fact that Hitler could come forth, following the nakedly aggressive expansionist theories he revealed in Mein Kampf, and do it all in the name of peace.
So when I see in this day the leaders of nations similarly talking pace while preparing for war, I take frightful pause.

It is indeed frightening that a 12 year old comes up with such an image of her present world...

Doomsday time 11:55

To give some oomph to the previous post, here is more detail on what recently moved the Board of Directors of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists to push forward the symbolic clock that marks our world's proximity to catastrophic destruction:
Doomsday Clock: 5 minutes to midnight
It is not the closest to midnight we have ever been, but it is worthwhile to note that the threat has never been as multilateral as today. And included in it is not only what we have inflicted (or can inflict) upon ourselves directly, but natural phenomena like global warming that are escalating beyond our control.

Armswatch: war cycles

Many have undertaken serious studies of cycles in all areas: economy, biology, war etc.
Some theories even venture to postulate exact numbers for such cycles, such as Edward Dewey's 57 years cycle in international conflict or the Kondratiev waves in western economy (50-60 years boom/depression cycles).
It might take some serious data mining and a pinch of modeling skills to propose the right parameters to measure amplitude (or intensity) of conflicts (i.e. wars) over the span of the last two centuries. Or you can just google up some graphs and charts and go with facts gathered by others already. In either case, the frequency is a different issue and harder to contest. And many facts point to a 50-60 years cycle for war on a larger scale (think Napoleon, 1848, WWI+WWII).
Well, since nothing after WWII quite qualifies for such labeling, if we take 60 years since 1945... we get a new item for my overdue disaster list!
This is some serious leap of speculation but it does point out that... I seriously need to watch some comedies these days.

Armswatch: the missile game

I am not an analyst so I will not undertake any interpretations to the news below but it's good to know that
North Korea speeds up its missile program
And accordingly, in the same spirit of stepping on others' corns that triggered Russian wrath in Europe, the US is getting less than friendly reactions to its expansion of its missile defense system in Asia:
US missile defense in Asia
And to join the show of military muscle flexing:
Russia hits target in ICBM debut test
Only time will tell how things will evolve, but there is a well known old conjecture that Man has never invented a weapon that was not used. And now it seems there are quite a few waiting...

Armswatch: rising antagonism?

Here we go again, a new accelerating arms race - with a shockingly overt statement of nuclear conflict:
Putin statement
And taking into account the potential they have, it is that much harder to ignore it:
Russia's nuclear arsenal
Makes me wonder if there is any safe place left on Earth (maybe in the Andes or perhaps Tibet - if you can put up with the melting glaciers...)