Operation Cage

What sphinx of cement and aluminum bashed open their skulls and ate up their brains and imagination? 

Moloch! Solitude! Filth! Ugliness! Ashcans and unobtainable dollars! Children screaming under the stairways! Boys sobbing in armies! Old men weeping in the parks! 

Moloch! Moloch! Nightmare of Moloch! Moloch the loveless! Mental Moloch! Moloch the heavy judger of men! 

Moloch the incomprehensible prison! Moloch the crossbone soulless jailhouse and Congress of sorrows! Moloch whose buildings are judgment! Moloch the vast stone of war! Moloch the stunned governments! 

Moloch whose mind is pure machinery! Moloch whose blood is running money! Moloch whose fingers are ten armies! Moloch whose breast is a cannibal dynamo! Moloch whose ear is a smoking tomb!

Cage probe deepens with Poyrazköy indictment

In the wake of a court decision to accept an indictment involving a weapons cache discovered in İstanbul's Poyrazköy neighborhood, the İstanbul Public Prosecutor's Office has decided to deepen a probe into alleged instigators of the Cage Operation Action Plan, which mentions a suspected military plot to assassinate Turkey's prominent non-Muslim figures.

The prosecutor's office initiated a probe shortly after the Cage plan made its way into Turkish dailies in November. The probe gained momentum after a ruling by the İstanbul 12th High Criminal Court to accept the Poyrazköy indictment, contrary to expectations that it would forward the file to a military court. The ruling was applauded by most jurists and observers because it is the first such decision involving army officers in a civilian court since a Constitutional Court annulment of a law allowing military officers to be tried in civilian courts.

A probe by the İstanbul Prosecutor's Office into the Cage plan gained momentum after an İstanbul court accepted the Poyrazköy indictment earlier this week. The indictment concerns a large weapons cache discovered in İstanbul’s Poyrazköy neighborhood last April

The Poyrazköy indictment concerns a cache of munitions discovered in İstanbul's Poyrazköy district in April of last year on land owned by the İstek Foundation. The indictment also covers the subversive Cage plan, which is believed to have been drafted by naval officers to foment chaos in the country to help overthrow the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) government.

The plan aimed to kill dozens of young visitors to the Rahmi M. Koç Museum in İstanbul and assassinate Turkey's prominent non-Muslim figures, all the while putting the blame for the killings on the AK Party. The desired result was an increase in internal and external pressure on the party, leading to diminishing public support for the government. Some Turkish dailies reported on Friday that the İstanbul Public Prosecutor's Office has summoned for interrogation admirals Kadir Sağdıç, Mehmet Ilgar and retired Adm. Ali Feyyaz Öğütçü, whose names are frequently mentioned in the Cage plan. None of the admirals have yet testified to prosecutors.

Öğütçü’s name appears in Cage documents as “the president.” Öğütçü was forced to retire after this August’s Supreme Military Council (YAŞ) meeting, reportedly due to his suspected ties to Ergenekon. Ergenekon is a clandestine criminal organization accused of working to topple the AK Party government.

According to a National Intelligence Organization (MİT) document, Öğütçü was one of the founders of the Karargah houses, which the Ergenekon investigation has revealed were meeting spots for generals plotting a coup d’état in addition to housing hit men and serving as storage places for munitions.

Öğütçü was implicated in the placement of blocks of TNT and other explosives at the bottom of a submarine exhibited at the Rahmi M. Koç Museum. The TNT and other explosives were found by police in July after a document was discovered on a computer owned by a suspect previously detained as part of the Ergenekon probe. The explosives were to be detonated while a group of students were visiting the museum.

The İstanbul Public Prosecutor’s Office is deepening a probe into alleged instigators of the Cage Operation Action Plan, which included such heinous plots as detonating explosives during school field trips to military museums.

The Poyrazköy indictment demands life sentences for five naval officers -- Lt. Col. Ercan Kireçtepe, Lt. Col. Mustafa Turhan Ecevit, Maj. Eren Günay, Maj. Emre Onat and retired Maj. Levent Bektaş -- on charges of “attempting to destroy Parliament and government.”

The indictment also demands lengthy prison terms for 11 other naval officers for “membership in a terrorist organization” and “possessing unlicensed weapons.” Up to 15 years in prison is demanded for Adm. Levent Görgeç, navy colonels Tayfun Duman, Şafak Yürekli, Mert Yanık, İbrahim Koray Özyurt, Dora Sungunay, Muharrem Naci Alacalı and Ali Türkşen and navy sergeant majors Halil Cura, Sadettin Doğan and Feridun Arslan.

Indictment verifies Cage museum plan with concrete evidence

The indictment puts forward several pieces of evidence for a frightening planned act of terror of the junta nested within the Naval Forces Command against young students visiting the Koç Museum. According to the plan, several blocks of TNT and other explosives placed at the bottom of a submarine exhibited at the museum would be detonated while a large group of students was visiting the museum.

After the discovery of explosives in the submarine, a military investigation announced that the explosives had been forgotten by commandos. Ergenekon prosecutors, however, decided that the findings of the military investigation were too weak to ease concerns over the discovery of explosives at a museum. The prosecutors examined the submarine at the museum and reached the conclusion that it was not possible for commandos to have forgetten a large amount of explosives in a submarine.

According to the Poyrazköy indictment, a letter reached the İstanbul Prosecutor’s Office on Dec. 15, 2008 about the discovery of explosives in a submarine at the museum. The letter indicated that the explosives were taken away by officers from the Naval Forces Command and the relevant judicial authorities were not informed about the discovery.

Civilian prosecutors interrogated a museum official, also a retired noncommissioned officer, on Jan. 29, 2009 about the claims included in the letter. The official, Hasan Oğuz, said he saw TNT blocks, detonators and other explosives inside a package in the submarine. “We informed the Northern Sea Base Command about the explosives. A major and two noncommissioned officers came and took away the explosives,” the indictment quotes Oğuz as saying.

Another letter sent to the prosecutor’s office by an unidentified individual claimed that the explosives placed in the submarine aimed at killing 200-300 young visitors at the museum as part of the Cage Operation Action Plan to instigate chaos in society.

The claims in the letter came as evidence of a plan mentioned on a DVD seized during a police search at the office of retired Maj. Bektaş. The plan urged an increase in the number of young students visiting the museum so that the planned explosion would foment greater chaos in society. “Materials to be planted at the museum have reached operators. We should increase the number of visitors to the museum. C.G. will tell us when the visitor numbers at the museum are at their highest. We should increase publicity and activities [about the museum] in schools. Students are the most important elements of this project. We should confirm the day of the operation,” read the plan.

In line with the letters and the plan found on the DVD, prosecutors started to monitor the phone conversations of suspected naval officers and discovered that the Cage plan had been put into operation.

Greenpeace : Attack-the-one-you-can't-reach and International Terrorism

Seriously though, this is COMPLETELY inexcusable and ridiculous - the biggest oil spill in recorded history (by orders of magnitude) was by BP, British Petroleum, the people who brought you the Shah of Iran; and that was only about 4 years ago (although, people appear to have already forgotten).

But Gazprom is the Russian government, and Royal Dutch Shell is headquartered in the Netherlands.

Attack the one you can't reach by paying other people to misdirect the attack system - this is exactly what happened in the 80s with the anti-apartheid sanctions.

Mobil Oil, one of the Rockefeller Oil companies was the largest foreign corporation doing business in South Africa, all throughout apa

"The Deepwater Horizon oil spill disaster in the Gulf of Mexico last April not only had devastating effects on humans and the environment but also on the endangered sea turtles. The total environmental impact of the 4.9 million barrels of crude oil, may take decades to assess. As of August 30, a total of 1,086 stranded sea turtles were collected, 525 of which were dead. There were reports that turtles may have been burnt alive during "controlled burns" until an agreement was reached to ensure measures to rescue the animals from the sea surface before the burnings.

The eggs and eventual hatchlings of thousands of loggerhead nests on the beaches of Northern Florida and Alabama were also in great danger. In order to protect the nests, the relevant US Authorities developed and implemented a plan to relocate 70,000 eggs, thousands of miles away to Atlantic beaches of Florida's east coast."

Ray McGovern Pays Tribute to Obama's Heroic Personal Cowardice

Ray McGovern Pays Tribute to Obama's Heroic Personal Cowardice from Spike EP on Vimeo.

"Now, after careful deliberation, I have decided that the United States should take military action against Syrian regime targets. This would not be an open-ended intervention. We would not put boots on the ground. Instead, our action would be designed to be limited in duration and scope. But I’m confident we can hold the Assad regime accountable for their use of chemical weapons, deter this kind of behavior, and degrade their capacity to carry it out.

Our military has positioned assets in the region. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs has informed me that we are prepared to strike whenever we choose. Moreover, the Chairman has indicated to me that our capacity to execute this mission is not time-sensitive; it will be effective tomorrow, or next week, or one month from now. And I’m prepared to give that order.

But having made my decision as Commander-in-Chief based on what I am convinced is our national security interests, I’m also mindful that I’m the President of the world’s oldest constitutional democracy. I’ve long believed that our power is rooted not just in our military might, but in our example as a government of the people, by the people, and for the people. And that’s why I’ve made a second decision: I will seek authorization for the use of force from the American people’s representatives in Congress.

Over the last several days, we’ve heard from members of Congress who want their voices to be heard. I absolutely agree. So this morning, I spoke with all four congressional leaders, and they’ve agreed to schedule a debate and then a vote as soon as Congress comes back into session.

In the coming days, my administration stands ready to provide every member with the information they need to understand what happened in Syria and why it has such profound implications for America’s national security. And all of us should be accountable as we move forward, and that can only be accomplished with a vote.

I’m confident in the case our government has made without waiting for U.N. inspectors. I’m comfortable going forward without the approval of a United Nations Security Council that, so far, has been completely paralyzed and unwilling to hold Assad accountable. As a consequence, many people have advised against taking this decision to Congress, and undoubtedly, they were impacted by what we saw happen in the United Kingdom this week when the Parliament of our closest ally failed to pass a resolution with a similar goal, even as the Prime Minister supported taking action.

Yet, while I believe I have the authority to carry out this military action without specific congressional authorization, I know that the country will be stronger if we take this course, and our actions will be even more effective. We should have this debate, because the issues are too big for business as usual. And this morning, John Boehner, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi and Mitch McConnell agreed that this is the right thing to do for our democracy."

- Obama Practices War Avoidance,
(and/or Personal Cowardice, I don't really care which),
August 31st 2013

The Green Death

"This fellow requires a swift kick to the backside, would you care to administer it, Jeremy..?"

- The Secretary of State for Ecology,

First Thorpe Cabinet

"I am the BOSS!

I am all around you. 

Exactly. I am the computer!"

- The BOSS

"Will new technologies alter the tendency of the world system to grow and collapse? 

Let us assume, however, that the technological optimists are correct and that nuclear energy will solve the resource problems of the world. 

Let us also assume a reduction in pollution generation all sources by a factor of four, starting in 1975. 

Let us also assume that the normal yield per hectare of all the world's land can be further increased by a factor of two. 

Besides we assume perfect birth control, practiced voluntarily, starting in 1975."

Cybernetics :

"Science concerned with the study of systems of any nature which are capable of receiving, storing and processing information so as to use it for control." — A. N. Kolmogorov

"The art of securing efficient operation." — Louis Couffignal

"'The art of steersmanship': deals with all forms of behavior in so far as they are regular, or determinate, or reproducible: stands to the real machine -- electronic, mechanical, neural, or economic -- much as geometry stands to real object in our terrestrial space; offers a method for the scientific treatment of the system in which complexity is outstanding and too important to be ignored." — W. Ross Ashby

"A branch of mathematics dealing with problems of control, recursiveness, and information, focuses on forms and the patterns that connect." — Gregory Bateson

"The art of effective organization." — Stafford Beer

"The art and science of manipulating defensible metaphors." — Gordon Pask

"The art of creating equilibrium in a world of constraints and possibilities." — Ernst von Glasersfeld

"The science and art of understanding." — Humberto Maturana

"The ability to cure all temporary truth of eternal triteness." — Herbert Brun

"The science and art of the understanding of understanding." — Rodney E. Donaldson, the first president of the American Society for Cybernetics

"A way of thinking about ways of thinking of which it is one." — Larry Richards

"The art of interaction in dynamic networks." — Roy Ascott

The Limits to Growth:
A Report to The Club of Rome (1972)
by Donella H. Meadows, Dennis l. Meadows, Jorgen Randers, William W. Behrens III 
Abstract established by Eduard Pestel
Short Version of the Limits to Growth 

Our world model was built specifically to investigate five major trends of global concern – accelerating industrialization, rapid population growth, widespread malnutrition, depletion of nonrenewable resources, and a deteriorating environment.
The model we have constructed is, like every model, imperfect, oversimplified, and unfinished. 

In spite of the preliminary state of our work, we believe it is important to publish the model and our findings now. (...) We feel that the model described here is already sufficiently developed to be of some use to decision-makers. Furthermore, the basic behavior modes we have already observed in this model appear to be so fundamental and general that we do not expect our broad conclusions to be substantially altered by further revisions. 

Our conclusions are: 

1. If the present growth trends in world population, industrialization, pollution, food production, and resource depletion continue unchanged, the limits to growth on this planet will be reached sometime within the next one hundred years. The most probable result will be a rather sudden and uncontrollable decline in both population and industrial capacity. 

2. It is possible to alter these growth trends and to establish a condition of ecological and economic stability that is sustainable far into the future. The state of global equilibrium could be designed so that the basic material needs of each person on earth are satisfied and each person has an equal opportunity to realize his individual human potential.
If the world's people decide to strive for this second outcome rather than the first, the sooner they begin working to attain it, the greater will be their chances of success. 

All five elements basic to the study reported here--population, food production, and consumption of nonrenewable natural resources--are increasing. The amount of their increase each year follows a pattern that mathematicians call exponential growth. 

A quantity exhibits exponential growth when it increases by a constant percentage of the whole in a constant time period.
Such exponential growth is a common process in biological, financial, and many other systems of the world.
Exponential growth is a dynamic phenomenon, which means that it involves elements that change over time. (...) When many different quantities are growing simultaneously in a system, however, and when all the quantities are interrelated in a complicated way, analysis of the causes of growth and of the future behavior of the system becomes very difficult indeed. 

Over the course of the last 30 years there has evolved at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology a new method for understanding the dynamic behavior of complex systems. The method is called System Dynamics. The basis of the method is the recognition that the structure of any system--the many circular, interlocking, sometimes time-delayed relationships among its components--is often just as important in determining its behavior as the individual components themselves. The world model described in this book is a System Dynamics model Extrapolation of present trends is a time-honored way of looking into the future, especially the very near future, and especially if the quantity being considered is not much influenced by other trends that are occurring elsewhere in the system. Of course, none of the five factors we are examining here is independent. Each interacts constantly with all the others. We have already mentioned some of these interactions. Population cannot grow without food, food production is increased by growth of capital, more capital requires more resources, discarded resources become pollution, pollution interferes with the growth of both population and food. 

Furthermore, over long time periods each of these factors also feeds back to influence itself. 

In this first simple world model, we are interested only in the broad behavior modes of the population- capital system. By behavior modes we mean the tendencies of the variables in the system (population or pollution, for example) to change as time progresses. 

A major purpose in constructing the world model has been to determine which, if any, of these behavior modes will be most characteristic of the world system as it reaches the limits to growth. This process of determining behavior modes is "prediction" only in the most limited sense of the word. 

Because we are interested at this point only in broad behavior modes, this first world model needs not be extremely detailed. We thus consider only one general population, a population that statistically reflects the average characteristics of the global population. We include only one class of pollutants--the long- lived, globally distributed family of pollutants, such as lead, mercury, asbestos, and stable pesticides and radioisotopes--whose dynamic behavior in the ecosystem we are beginning to understand. We plot one generalized resource that represents the combined reserves of all nonrenewable resources, although we know that each separate resource will follow the general dynamic pattern at its own specific level and rate. 

This high level of aggregation is necessary at this point to keep the model understandable. At the same time it limits the information we can expect to gain from the model. 

Can anything be learned from such a highly aggregated model? Can its output be considered meaningful? In terms of exact predictions, the output is not meaningful. 

On the other hand it is vitally important to gain some understanding of the causes of growth in human society, the limits to growth, and the behavior of our socio-economic systems when the limits are reached. 

All levels in the model (population, capital, pollution, etc.) begin with 1900 values. From 1900 to 1970 the variables agree generally with their historical value to the extent that we know them. Population rises from 1.6 billion in 1900 to 3.5 billion in 1970. Although the birth rate declines gradually, the death rate falls more quickly, especially after 1940, and the rate of population growth increases. Industrial output, food and services per capita increase exponentially. The resource base in 1970 is still about 95 percent of its 1900 value, but it declines dramatically thereafter, as population and industrial output continue to grow. 

The behavior mode of the system is that of overshoot and collapse. In this run the collapse occurs because of nonrenewable resource depletion. The industrial capital stock grows to a level that requires an enormous input of resources. In the very process of that growth it depletes a large fraction of the resource reserves available. As resource prices rise and mines are depleted, more and more capital must be used for obtaining resources, leaving less to be invested for future growth. Finally investment cannot keep up with depreciation, and the industrial base collapses, taking with it the service and agricultural systems, which have become dependent on industrial inputs (such as fertilizers, pesticides, hospital laboratories, computers, and especially energy for mechanization). For a short time the situation is especially serious because population, with the delays inherent in the age structure and the process of social adjustment, keeps rising. Population finally decreases when the death rate is driven upward by lack of food and health services. The exact timing of these events is not meaningful, given the great aggregation and many uncertainties in the model. It is significant, however, that growth is stopped well before the year 2100. We have tried in every doubtful case to make the most optimistic estimate of unknown quantities, and we have also ignored discontinuous events such as wars or epidemics, which might act to bring an end to growth even sooner than our model would indicate. In other words, the model is biased to allow growth to continue longer than it probably can continue in the real world. We can thus say with some confidence that, under the assumption of no major change in the present system, population and industrial growth will certainly stop within the next century, at the latest. 

To test the model assumption about available resources, we doubled the resource reserves in 1900, keeping all other assumptions identical to those in the standard run. Now industrialization can reach a higher level since resources are not so quickly depleted. The larger industrial plant releases pollution at such a rate, however, that the environmental pollution absorption mechanisms become saturated. Pollution rises very rapidly, causing an immediate increase in the death rate and a decline in food production. At the end of the run resources are severely depleted in spite of the doubled amount initially available. 

Is the future of the world system bound to be growth and then collapse into a dismal, depleted existence? Only if we make the initial assumption that our present way of doing things will not change. We have ample evidence of mankind's ingenuity and social flexibility. There are, of course, many likely changes in the system, some of which are already taking place. The Green Revolution is raising agricultural yields in non industrialized countries. Knowledge about modern methods of birth control is spreading rapidly. 

Although the history of human effort contains numerous incidents of mankind's failure to live within physical limits, it is success in overcoming limits that forms the cultural tradition of many dominant people in today's world. Over the past three hundred years, mankind has compiled an impressive record of pushing back the apparent limits to population and economic growth by a series of spectacular technological advances. Since the recent history of a large part of human society has been so continuously successful, it is quite natural that many people expect technological breakthrough to go on raising physical ceilings indefinitely. 

Will new technologies alter the tendency of the world system to grow and collapse? 

Let us assume, however, that the technological optimists are correct and that nuclear energy will solve the resource problems of the world. 

Let us also assume a reduction in pollution generation all sources by a factor of four, starting in 1975. 

Let us also assume that the normal yield per hectare of all the world's land can be further increased by a factor of two. Besides we assume perfect birth control, practiced voluntarily, starting in 1975.

 All this means we are utilizing a technological policy in every sector of the world model to circumvent in some way the various limits to growth. The model system is producing nuclear power, recycling resources, and mining the most remote reserves; withholding as many pollutants as possible; pushing yields from the land to undreamed-of heights; and producing only children who are actively wanted by their parents. The result is still an end to growth before the year 2100.

Because of three simultaneous crises. Overuse of land leads to erosion, and food production drops. Resources are severely depleted by a prosperous world population (but not as prosperous as the present US population). Pollution rises, drops, and then rises again dramatically, causing a further decrease in food production and a sudden rise in the death rate. The application of technological solutions alone has prolonged the period of population and industrial growth, but it has not removed the ultimate limits to that growth. 

Given the many approximations and limitations of the world model, there is no point in dwelling glumly on the series of catastrophes it tends to generate. We shall emphasize just one more time that none of these computer outputs is a prediction. We would not expect the real world to behave like the world model in any of the graphs we have shown, especially in the collapse modes. The model contains dynamic statements about only the physical aspects of man's activities. It assumes that social variables-- income distribution, attitudes about family size, choices among goods, services, and food--will continue to follow the same patterns they have followed throughout the world in recent history. These patterns, and the human value they represent, were all established in the growth phase of our civilization. They would certainly be greatly revised as population and income began to decrease. Since we find it difficult to imagine what new forms of human societal behavior might emerge and how quickly they would emerge under collapse conditions, we have not attempted to model such social changes. What validity our model has holds up only to the point in each output graph at which growth comes to an end and collapse begins. 

The unspoken assumption behind all of the model runs we have presented in this chapter is that population and capital growth should be allowed to continue until they reach some "natural" limit. This assumption also appears to be a basic part of the human value system currently operational in the real world. Given that first assumption, that population and capital growth should not be deliberately limited but should be left to "seek their own levels", we have not been able to find a set of policies that avoids the collapse mode of behavior.
The hopes of the technological optimists center on the ability of technology to remove or extend the limits to growth of population and capital. We have shown that in the world model the application of technology to apparent problems of resource depletion or pollution or food shortage has no impact on the essential problem, which is exponential growth in a finite and complex system. Our attempts to use even the most optimistic estimates of the benefits of technology in the model did not prevent the ultimate decline of population and industry, and in fact did not in any case postpone the collapse beyond the year 2100.
Unfortunately the model does not indicate, at this stage, the social side-effects of new technologies. These effects are often the most important in terms of the influence of a technology on people's lives.
Social side-effects must be anticipated and forestalled before the large-scale introduction of a new technology.
While technology can change rapidly, political and social, insitutions generally change very slowly. Furthermore, they almost never change in anticipation of social need, but only in response to one.
We must also keep in mind the presence of social delays--the delays necessary to allow society to absorb or to prepare for a change. Most delays, physical or social reduce the stability of the world system and increase the likelihood of the overshoot mode. The social delays, like the physical ones, are becoming increasingly more critical because the processes of exponential growth are creating additional pressures at a faster and faster rate. Although the rate of technological change has so far managed to keep up with this accelerated pace, mankind has made virtually no new discoveries to increase the rate of social, political, ethical, and cultural change.

Even if society's technological progress fulfills all expectations, it may very well be a problem with no technical solution, or the interaction of several such problems, that finally brings an end to population and capital growth.
Applying technology to the natural pressures that the environment exerts against any growth process has been so successful in the past that a whole culture has evolved around the principle of fighting against limits rather than learning to live with them.
Is it better to try to live within that limit by accepting a self-imposed restriction on growth? Or is it preferable to go on growing until some other natural limit arises, in the hope that at that time another technological leap will allow growth to continue still longer? For the last several hundred years human society has followed the second course so consistently and successfully that the first choice has been all but forgotten.
There may be much disagreement with the statement that population and capital growth must stop soon. But virtually no one will argue that material growth on this planet can go on forever. At this point in man's history, the choice posed above is still available in almost every sphere of human activity. Man can still choose his limits and stops when he pleases by weakening some of the strong pressures that cause capital and population growth, or by instituting counterpressures, or both. Such counterpressures will probably not be entirely pleasant. They will certainly involve profound changes in the social and economic structures that have been deeply impressed into human culture by centuries of growth. The alternative is to wait until the price of technology becomes more than society can pay, or until the side- effects of technology suppress growth themselves, or until problems arise that have no technical solutions. At any of those points the choice of limits will be gone.
Faith in technology as the ultimate solution to all problems can thus divert our attention from the most fundamental problem--the problem of growth in a finite system--and prevent us from taking effective action to solve it.
On the other hand, our intent is certainly not to brand technology as evil or futile or unnecessary. We strongly believe that many of the technological developments mentioned here--recycling, pollution- control devices, contraceptives--will be absolutely vital to the future of human society if they are combined with deliberate checks on growth. We would deplore an unreasoned rejection of the benefit of technology as strongly as we argue here against an unreasoned acceptance of them. Perhaps the best summary of our position is the motto of the Sierra Club: "Not blind opposition to progress, but opposition to blind progress".
We would hope that society will receive each technological advance by establishing the answers to three questions before the technology is widely adopted. The questions are:
- What will be the side-effects, both physical and social, if this development is introduced on a large scale?
- What social changes will be necessary before this development can be implemented properly, and how long will it take to achieve them ? 

- If the development is fully successful and removes some natural limits to growth, what limit will the growing system meet next? Will society prefer its pressures to the ones this development is designed to remove?
We are searching for a model that represents a world system that is:
1. sustainable without sudden and uncontrollable collapse; and
2. capable of satisfying the basic material requirements of all of its people
The overwhelming growth in world population caused by the positive birth-rate loop is a recent phenomenon, a result of mankind's very successful reduction of worldwide mortality. The controlling negative feedback loop has been weakened, allowing the positive loop to operate virtually without constraint.
There are only two ways to restore the resulting imbalance. Either the birth rate must be brought down to equal the new, lower death rate, or the death rate must rise again. All of the "natural" constraints to population growth operate in the second way--they raise the death. Any society wishing to avoid that result must take deliberate action to control the positive feedback loop--to reduce the birth rate.
But stabilizing population alone is not sufficient to prevent overshoot and collapse; a similar run with constant capital and rising population shows that stabilizing capital alone is also not sufficient. What happens if we bring both positive feedback loops under control simultaneously? We can stabilize the capital stock in the model by requiring that the investment rate equal the depreciation rate, with an additional model link exactly analogous to the population-stabilizing one.
The result of stopping population growth in 1975 and industrial capital growth in 1985 with no other changes is that population and capital reach constant values at a relatively high level of food, industrial output and services per person. Eventually, however, resource shortages reduce industrial output and the temporarily stable state degenerates. However, we can improve the model behavior greatly by combining technological changes with value changes that reduce the growth tendencies of the system.
Then the stable world population is only slightly larger than the population today. There is more than twice as much food per person as the average value in 1970, and world average lifetime is nearly 70 years. The average industrial output per capita is well above today's level, and services per capita have tripled. Total average income per capita (industrial output, food, and services combined) is about half the present average US income, equal to the present average European income, and three times the present average world income. Resources are still being gradually depleted, as they must be under any realistic assumption, but the rate of depletion is so slow that there is time for technology and industry to adjust to changes in resource availability.
If we relax our most unrealistic assumption--that we can suddenly and absolutely stabilize population and capital, replacing them with the following:
1. The population has access to 100 percent effective birth control. 
2. The average desired family size is two children.
3. The economic system endeavors to maintain average industrial output per capita at about the 1975 level. Excess industrial capability is employed for producing consumption goods rather than increasing  the industrial capital investment rate above the depreciation rate.

We do not suppose that any single one of the policies necessary to attain system stability in the model can or should be suddenly introduced in the world by 1975. A society choosing stability as a goal certainly must approach that goal gradually. It is important to realize, however, that the longer exponential growth is allowed to continue, the fewer possibilities remain for the final stable rate.
Many people will think that the changes we have introduced into the model to avoid the growth-and collapse behavior mode are not only impossible, but unpleasant, dangerous, even disastrous in themselves. Such policies as reducing the birth rate and diverting capital from production of material goods, by whatever means they might be implemented, seem unnatural and unimaginable, because they have not, in most people's experience, been tried, or even seriously suggested. Indeed there would be little point even in discussing such fundamental changes in the functioning of modern society if we felt that the present pattern of unrestricted growth were sustainable into the future. All the evidence available to us, however, suggests that of the three alternatives--unrestricted growth, a self-imposed limitation to growth, or a nature-imposed limitation to growth--only the last two are actually possible.
Achieving a self-imposed limitation to growth would require much effort. It would involve learning to do many things in new ways. It would tax the ingenuity, the flexibility, and the self-discipline of the human race. Bringing a deliberate, controlled end to growth is a tremendous challenge, not easily met. Would the final result be worth the effort? What would humanity gain by such a transition, and what would it lose? Let us consider in more detail what a world of non-growth might be like.
We have after much discussion, decided to call the state of constant population and capital, by the term "equilibrium". Equilibrium means a state of balance or equality between opposing forces. In the dynamic terms of the world model, the opposing forces are those causing population and capital stock to increase (high desired family size, low birth control effectiveness, high rate of capital investment) and those causing population and capital stock to decrease (lack of food, pollution, high rate of depreciation or obsolescence). The word "capital" should be understood to mean service, industrial, and agricultural capital combined. Thus the most basic definition of the state of global equilibrium is that population and capital are essentially stable, with the forces tending to increase or decrease them in a carefully controlled balance.
There is much room for variation within that definition. We have only specified that the stocks of capital and population remain constant, but they might theoretically be constant at a high level or a low level--or one might be high and the other low. The longer a society prefers to maintain the state of equilibrium, the lower the rates and levels must be.
By choosing a fairly long time horizon for its existence, and a long average lifetime as a desirable goal, we have now arrived at a minimum set of requirements for the state of global equilibrium. They are:
1. The capital plant and the population are constant in size. The birth rate equals the death rate and the capital investment rate equals the depreciation rate.
2. All input and output rates--birth, death, investment, and depreciation--are kept to a minimum.
3. The levels of capital and population and the ratio of the two are set in accordance with the values of the society. They may be deliberately revised and slowly adjusted as the advance of technology creates new options.
An equilibrium defined in this way does not mean stagnation. Within the first two guidelines above, corporations could expand or fail, local populations could increase or decrease income could become more or less evenly distributed. Technological advance would permit the services provided by a constant stock of capital to increase slowly. Within the third guideline, any country could change its average standard of living by altering the balance between its population and its capital. Furthermore, a society could adjust to changing internal or external factors by raising or lowering the population or capital stocks, or both, slowly and in a controlled fashion, with a predetermined goal in mind. The three points above define a dynamic equilibrium, which need not and probably would not "freeze" the world into the population

Capital configuration that happens to exist at present time. The object in accepting the above three statements is to create freedom for society, not to impose a straitjacket.
What would life be like in such an equilibrium state? Would innovation be stifled? Would society be locked into the patterns of inequality and injustice we see in the world today? Discussion of these questions must proceed on the basis of mental models, for there is no formal model of social conditions in the equilibrium state. No one can predict what sort of institutions mankind might develop under these new conditions. There is, of course, no guarantee that the new society would be much better or even much different from that which exists today. It seems possible, however, that a society released from struggling with the many problems caused by growth may have more energy and ingenuity available for solving other problems. In fact, we believe, that the evolution of a society that favors innovation and technological development, a society based on equality and justice, is far more likely to evolve in a state of global equilibrium than it is in the state of growth we are experiencing today
Population and capital are the only quantities that need be constant in the equilibrium state. Any human activity that does not require a large flow of irreplaceable resources or produce severe environmental degradation might continue to grow indefinitely. In particular, those pursuits that many people would list as the most desirable and satisfying activities of man--education, art, music, religion, basic scientific research, athletics, and social interactions--could flourish.
All of the activities listed above depend very strongly on two factors. First, they depend upon the availability of some surplus production after the basic human needs of food and shelter have been met. Second, they require leisure time. In any equilibrium state the relative levels of capital and population could be adjusted to assure that human material needs are fulfilled at any desired level. Since the amount of material production would be essentially fixed, every improvement in production methods could result in increased leisure for the population--leisure that could be devoted to any activity that is relatively nonconsuming and nonpolluting, such as those listed above
Technological advance would be both necessary and welcome in the equilibrium state. The picture of the equilibrium state we have drawn here is idealized, to be sure. It may be impossible to achieve in the form described here, and it may not be the form most people on earth would choose. The only purpose in describing it at all is to emphasize that global equilibrium need not mean an end to progress or human development. The possibilities within an equilibrium state are almost endless.
An equilibrium state would not be free of pressures, since no society can be free of pressure. Equilibrium would require trading certain human freedoms, such as producing unlimited numbers of children or consuming uncontrolled amounts of resources, for other freedoms, such as relief from pollution and crowding and the threat of collapse of the world system. is possible that new freedoms might also arise-- universal and unlimited education, leisure for creativity and inventiveness, and, most important of all, the freedom from hunger and poverty enjoyed by such a small fraction of the world's people today.
We can say very little at this point about the practical, day by-day steps that might be taken to reach a desirable, sustainable state of global equilibrium. Neither the world model nor our own thoughts have been developed in sufficient detail to understand all the implications of the transition from growth to equilibrium. Before any part of the world's society embarks deliberately on such a transition, there must be much more discussion, more extensive analysis, and many new ideas contributed by many different people.

The equilibrium society will have to weigh the trade-offs engendered by a finite earth not only with consideration of present human values but also with consideration of future generations. long-term goals must be specified and short term goals made consistent with them.
We end on a note of urgency. We have repeatedly emphasized the importance of the natural delays in the population-capital system of the world. These delays mean, for example, that if Mexico's birth rate gradually declined from its present value to an exact replacement value by the year 2000, the country's population would continue to grow until the year 2060. During that time the population would grow from 50 million to 130 million. We cannot say with certainty how much longer mankind can postpone initiating deliberate control of its growth before it will have lost the chance for control. We suspect on the basis of present knowledge of the physical constraints of the planet that the growth phase cannot continue for another one hundred years. Again, because of the delays in the system, if the global society waits until those constraints are unmistakably apparent, it will have waited too long.
If there is cause for deep concern, there is also cause for hope. Deliberately limiting growth would be difficult, but not impossible. The way to proceed is clear, and the necessary steps, although they are new ones for human society, are well within human capabilities. Man possesses, for a small moment in his history, the most powerful combination of knowledge, tools, and resources the world has ever known. He has all that is physically necessary to create a totally new form of human society--one that would be built to last for generations. The two missing ingredients are a realistic, long-term goal that can guide mankind to the equilibrium society and the human will to achieve that goal. Without such a goal and a commitment to it, short-term concerns will generate the exponential growth that drives the world system toward the limits of the earth and ultimate collapse. With that goal and that commitment, mankind would be ready now to begin a controlled, orderly transition from growth to global equilibrium.

Source: http://www.clubofrome.org/docs/limits.rtf 

Horizon : The World of Buckminster Fuller from Spike EP on Vimeo.
Webster Tarpley - Ecoscience from Spike EP on Vimeo.

Siberia

It is the Americans' intention to cut off China's access to their present African oil markets, cut off their current main source of supply from Iran, encourage them to go North and provoke a nuclear war with Russia.

That's what this explosion in China could well be about - that's being reported as an explosion at a petroleum refinery.

"The Sino-Soviet split was one of the key events of the Cold War, equal in importance to the construction of the Berlin Wall, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Second Vietnam War, and Sino-American rapprochement. The split helped to determine the framework of the Second Cold War in general, and influenced the course of the Second Vietnam War in particular."

- Lorenz M. Lüthi

Siberia - "Why are the United States and China plotting to take over Siberia?" 

from Spike EP on Vimeo.

"The Polish-American intellectual Zbigniew Brzezinski, who was US President Jimmy Carter’s national security advisor and an architect behind the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, has actually advocated for the destruction of Russia through gradual disintegration and devolution. He has stipulated that «a more decentralized Russia would be less susceptible to imperial mobilization».

In other words, if the US divides Russia up, Moscow would not be able to challenge Washington. In this context, he states the following: «A loosely confederated Russia—composed of a European Russia, a Siberian Republic, and a Far Eastern Republic—would find it easier to cultivate closer economic regulations with Europe, with the new states of Central Asia, and with [East Asia], which would thereby accelerate Russia’s own development».

These views are not merely constrained to some academic’s ivory tower or to detached think-tanks. They have the backing of governments and have even cultivated adherents. One reflection of them is below.

US State-Owned Media Forecasts the Balkanization of Russia

Dmytro Sinchenko published an article on September 8, 2014 about dividing Russia. His article is titled «Waiting for World War III: How the World Will Change». 

Sinchenko was involved in EuroMaidan and his organization, the Ukrainian Initiative «Statesmen Movement» (Всеукраїнської ініціативи «Рух державотворців»), advocates for an ethnic nationalism, the territorial expansion of Ukraine at the expense of most the bordering countries, reinvigorating the pro-US Georgia-Ukraine-Azerbaijan-Moldova (GUAM) Organization for Democracy and Economic Development, joining NATO, and launching an offensive to defeat Russia as part of its foreign policy goals. 

As a note, the inclusion of the word democracy in GUAM should not fool anyone; GUAM, as the inclusion of the Republic of Azerbaijan proves, has nothing to do with democracy, but with counter-balancing Russia in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS).

Sinchenko’s article starts by talking about the history of the «Axis of Evil» phrase that the US has used to vilify its enemies. It talks about how George W. Bush Jr. coined the phrase in 2002 by grouping Iraq, Iran, and North Korea together, how John Bolton expanded the Axis of Evil to include Cuba, Libya, and Syria, how Condoleezza Rice included Belarus, Zimbabwe, and Myanmar (Burma), and then finally he proposes that Russia be added to the list as the world’s main pariah state. He even argues that the Kremlin is involved in all the conflicts in the Balkans, Caucasus, Middle East, North Africa, Ukraine, and Southeast Asia. He goes on to accuse Russia of planning to invade the Baltic States, the Caucasus, Moldova, Finland, Poland, and, even more ridiculously, two of its own close military and political allies, Belarus and Kazakhstan. As the article’s title implies, he even claims that Moscow is intentionally pushing for a third world war.

This fiction is not something that has been reported in the US-aligned corporate networks, but is something that has been published directly by US government-owned media. The forecast was published by the Ukrainian service of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, which has been a US propaganda tool in Europe and the Middle East that has helped topple governments.

Chillingly, the article tries to sanitize the possibilities of a new world war. Disgustingly ignoring the use of nuclear weapons and the massive destruction that would erupt for Ukraine and the world, the article misleadingly paints a cozy image of a world that will be corrected by a major global war. Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and the author are essentially saying that «war is good for you» to the Ukrainian people and that some type of utopian paradise will emerge after a war with Russia.

The article also fits very nicely into the contours of Brzezinski’s forecast for Russia, Ukraine, and the Eurasian landmass. It forecasts the division of Russia whereas Ukraine is a part of an expanded European Union, which includes Georgia, Armenia, the Republic of Azerbaijan, Belarus, Israel, Lebanon, and Denmark’s North American dependency of Greenland, and also controls a confederation of states in the Caucasus and the Mediterranean Sea—the latter could be the Union for the Mediterranean, which would encompass Turkey, Syria, Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, and the Moroccan-occupied Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic or Western Sahara. Ukraine is presented as an integral component of the European Union. In this regard, Ukraine appears to be situated in a US-aligned Franco-German-Polish-Ukrainian corridor and Paris-Berlin-Warsaw-Kiev axis that Brzezinski advocated for creating in 1997, which Washington would use to challenge the Russian Federation and its allies in the CIS. 

The Soviet Union was on the brink of launching a nuclear attack against China in 1969 and only backed down after the US told Moscow such a move would start World War Three, according to a Chinese historian.

The extraordinary assertion, made in a publication sanctioned by China's ruling Communist Party, suggests that the world came perilously close to nuclear war just seven years after the Cuban missile crisis.

Liu Chenshan, the author of a series of articles that chronicle the five times China has faced a nuclear threat since 1949, wrote that the most serious threat came in 1969 at the height of a bitter border dispute between Moscow and Beijing that left more than one thousand people dead on both sides.

He said Soviet diplomats warned Washington of Moscow's plans "to wipe out the Chinese threat and get rid of this modern adventurer," with a nuclear strike, asking the US to remain neutral.

But, he says, Washington told Moscow the United States would not stand idly by but launch its own nuclear attack against the Soviet Union if it attacked China, loosing nuclear missiles at 130 Soviet cities. The threat worked, he added, and made Moscow think twice, while forcing the two countries to regulate their border dispute at the negotiating table.

He quotes Soviet ministers and diplomats at the time to bolster his claim.

On 15 October 1969, he quotes Soviet premier Alexei Kosygin as telling Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev that Washington has drawn up "detailed plans" for a nuclear war against the USSR if it attacked China.

"[The United States] has clearly indicated that China's interests are closely related to theirs and they have mapped out detailed plans for nuclear war against us," Kosygin is said to have told Brezhnev.

That same day he says Anatoly Dobrynin, the Soviet ambassador to Washington, told Brezhnev something similar after consultations with US diplomats. "If China suffers a nuclear attack, they (the Americans) will deem it as the start of the third world war," Dobrynin said. "The Americans have betrayed us."

The historian claims that Washington saw the USSR as a greater threat than China and wanted a strong China to counter-balance Soviet power. Then US President Richard Nixon was also apparently fearful of the effect of a nuclear war on 250,000 US troops stationed in the Asia-Pacific region and still smarting from a Soviet refusal five years earlier to stage a joint attack on China's nascent nuclear programme.

The claims are likely to stir debate about a period of modern history that remains mired in controversy.

Mr Liu, the author, admits his version of history is likely to be contested by rival scholars. It is unclear whether he had access to special state archives but the fact that his articles appeared in such an official publication in a country where the media is so tightly controlled is being interpreted by some as a sign that he did have special access.

China to send 700 combat troops to South Sudan

China is to send 700 combat troops to South Sudan in what analysts describe as a significant shift from its stated policy of non-interference in African conflicts.

The first Chinese infantry battalion to take part in a UN peacekeeping mission will be equipped with drones, armoured carriers, antitank missiles, mortars and other weapons, “completely for self-defence purpose”, state media reported.

China is Africa’s biggest trade partner but has taken an arm’s length approach to the continent’s myriad of political and military disputes. But it has been unusually proactive in diplomatic efforts to pacify South Sudan, where it has invested heavily but where civil war has slashed oil production by a third.

Richard Poplak, an author and journalist studying Beijing’s influence on the continent, said: “This does seem to announce a new era in the way China is engaging with Africa. It runs contrary to China’s foreign policy of, ‘We don’t interfere’. It’s an enormous renunciation of that.”

Poplak, who has visited 18 African countries including South Sudan for a forthcoming book, added: “It comes down to interest. The Chinese have poured billions and billions into South Sudan, so many resources that it’s almost baffling. This is a shift in realpolitik: you can’t just talk all the time and not carry a big stick. The Chinese have realised that.”

China is the biggest contributor of peacekeepers among the five permanent members of the UN security council and currently has more than 2,000 posted around the world. But nearly all are engineers, medical and transport workers and security guards.

Poplak said it has previously sent small contingents of elite troops to Mali and South Sudan to guard its personnel but that the new infantry battalion would be of a different order.

However, China would still have far less military presence in Africa than other major powers, at least for the time being, he said. “I don’t think they will be anything as visible or machinelike as France or America but they’ve realised that as well as white hats they need blue hats.

“It’s not possible for anyone here or anyone in Beijing to say where this ends. It’s a precedent and any precedent is a dangerous precedent.”

A rally for the departing Chinese battalion was held on Monday in the city of Laiyang, Shandong province, according to the official Xinhua news agency. An initial contingent of 180 soldiers will fly to South Sudan next month, with the rest of the battalion following in March.

“The 700-strong infantry battalion included 121 officers and 579 soldiers. Forty-three members have participated in peacekeeping missions before. An infantry squad composed of 13 female soldiers will participate in a peacekeeping mission for the first time,” Xinhua reported.

The UN has more than 11,000 peacekeepers in South Sudan, which became independent from Sudan in 2011. Oil accounts for more than 90% of the new country’s foreign revenues.

Fighting broke out in December last year when President Salva Kiir accused his sacked deputy Riek Machar of attempting a coup. The fighting in the capital, Juba, set off a cycle of retaliatory massacres across large swaths of South Sudan, claiming thousands of lives and pushing the country to the brink of famine. Oil-producing regions have endured some of the worst violence.

The state-owned China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) said last Sunday it had signed a deal with the government in Juba to increase production. The CNPC said it would use heavy oil recovery technologies in “stabilising and increasing crude output”.

On Monday, Ethiopia’s prime minister, Hailemariam Desalegn, said South Sudan’s leaders could face punitive sanctions from their neighbours as a “last resort” if peace talks fail to end the war. Negotiations in Addis Ababa have led to several ceasefire deals but each has been violated within hours.

A 2011 report by the NGO Saferworld found that, despite its stated neutrality, China is gradually using diplomatic means to push for the resolution of certain conflicts. It also said the Asian power is becoming a major supplier of conventional arms to African states and has increased its contributions to UN peacekeeping missions twentyfold since 2000, with the majority based in Africa.

China's motive in South Sudan? - Al Jazeera English

China may be Africa's biggest trade partner, but it has generally taken an arms length approach to the continent's conflicts and domestic difficulties.

China is now committing 700 combat troops to South Sudan to help bring peace to the world's newest nation. And on Monday, it sent Wang Yi, the foreign minister, to help mediate talks between South Sudan's warring factions.

China has invested billions of dollars in South Sudan, particularly in its oil production.

However, Yi rejects accusations that China has its own agenda. Speaking during talks across the border in Sudan's capital Khartoum, he said: "China's mediation of South Sudan issues is completely the responsibility and duty of a responsible power, and not because of China's own interests."

Fighting began in South Sudan in December 2013 when President Salva Kiir accused his sacked deputy, Riek Machar, of attempting a coup.

Oil-producing regions have endured some of the worst violence, with output drastically reduced.

So can China help bring peace to South Sudan? Can it work with both sides? And are there underlying motives for China's involvement?

Presenter: Nick Clark

Guests:

Joseph Ochieno - writer for the New African magazine and commentator on African affairs.

Sanusha Naidu - specialist in African international relations and the rise of emerging powers in Africa.

Source: Al Jazeera