Civilization: Going, going…

‘Zoom in your seats as your BFFs lose their jobs and their homes, as your loved ones die alone, as the bereaved get saddled with hospital bills, as corrupt school officials mismanage graduate tuition funds.’

CHECK your rear view mirror and look where you’re going: “The city of Vijayanagara was systematically destroyed and plundered in the course of the next five months and is today mostly a ruin.” [https://thediplomat.com/2015/06/450-years-ago-this-battle-changed-the-course-of-indian-history/] The capital of the “largest, most well-organized, and most militaristic Hindu state” in its area, having “preserved the political independence of south India for 200 years,” still fell prey to an alliance of Deccan sultanates. [https://nationalinterest.org/print/feature/5-battles-changed-indian-history-forever-12791] The tragedy: “As with the downfall of the Roman Empire, so with the downfall of the Vijayanagara Empire…swift, sudden and total…In the six months that the Bahamani coalition was camped in Vijayanagara, every single house, temple, building and habitation ‘in a radius spanning 20 leagues was burned down’…And this is how Hampi was reduced from being the global centre of awesome wealth and refined culture to merely becoming a tourist spot.” [https://medium.com/dharma-dispatch/the-terminal-battle-of-talikota-is-a-timeless-warning-8fc91035b7f5]

Keep your eyes peeled on Mayon, Kanlaon, Taal and the other volcanoes. An eruption during the long pandemic spells big trouble. “The eruption of the Okmok volcano contributed to the fall of the Roman Republic.” [Volcanic Eruption Helped End Roman Republic — Biblical Archaeology Society 6/26/20] Moreover, “Rome’s interest in Egypt as its famed ‘breadbasket’ was further magnified by the trials of the 40s BCE and that Egypt’s own capacity to defend against Rome was diminished by the famine, disease, land abandonment, and reduced state income that followed the Okmok II eruption.” [https://www.pnas.org/content/117/27/15443] Happenstance then and tomorrow, too. “At a time where civil preparedness for low-probability/high-consequence global risks is thrown into the spotlight, it is worth remembering there are other kinds of threat that, too, might one day wreak worldwide havoc.” [Clive Oppenheimer, “The sun of Rome is set! Volcanic dust veils and their political fallout”].

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Where is your conscience? “Severe hunger rose from 1.5 percent in December 2019 to 2.7 percent in May 2020, the highest since 2.8 percent was posted in September 2018.” [https://www.msn.com/en-ph/news/national/sws-42-million-families-experienced-involuntary-hunger-amid-covid-19-crisis/ar-BB14qnhf] “As is the case with physical hunger, the source of spiritual hunger is not God, who has given us abundant grace and truth; it is we who are the source.” [Msgr. Charles Pope, Of Hunger and Hallucinations, 30 June 2020; https://blog.adw.org/author/cpope/].

Be on your guard. Crisis Watch for July 2020: Japanese military 20 June 2020 reported detecting suspected Chinese submarine near Amami-Oshima island in East China Sea. Indian and Chinese soldiers 15 June 2020 clashed along Line of Actual Control in Galwan Valley in Ladakh, killing at least 20 Indian soldiers in deadliest clash in over five decades. After Indonesia 28 May stated China’s “nine dash line” claim in region lacks basis in international law and violates Indonesia’s Exclusive Economic Zone, China 02 June 2020 offered boundary negotiations with Jakarta; Indonesian MFA 05 June rejected offer. [https://www.crisisgroup.org/crisiswatch#overview]

Anticipate the coming troubles; update your frameworks, action plans, checklists and toolkits. “COVID-19 is undoubtedly a crisis in health and has caused the worst economic calamity so far in this century which had to go through the 2008 Global Financial Crisis…COVID-19 was unprecedented but not beyond the bounds of imagination. It was not even the first pandemic the region has faced…APEC economies have the most varied and extensive experience in dealing with calamities, from earthquakes to wildfires, super typhoons to pandemics,” thus, consider the APEC forum as a test kitchen for creative solutions. [Rebecca Fatima Sta. Maria, The Next Unexpected Crisis, Singapore, 20 July 2020; https://www.apec.org/Press/Blogs/2020/0720_NEXT]

Get your head out of the mud; the Doomsday Machine is real. The Soviet Union (when it still existed) actually did build one, sort of. “They called it Perimeter…If there’s a crisis, somebody in the Defense Ministries has to turn it on, so that’s the first step. It then tries to find evidence that there’s been a nuclear hit on the Soviet Union. If it determines that there has been a hit, then it tries to communicate back to the Defense Ministries. And if it can talk to them, it says, okay, humans are still alive. I don’t need to work. I’ll shut off…The system is still in place. It’s not on, as far as I understand, it’s not on hair-trigger alert. It doesn’t play the same central role in Russian nuclear strategy that it played under Soviet nuclear strategy.” [https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=113242681]

Can Terrans abide? Australian wildfires, California burning. Taal volcanic eruptions. The Flaming Arctic and global warming. The Long Goodbye: Global ecological disaster predicted in next 50 years; https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC556105/. The Final Collapse. The Lost Species: Vertebrates on the brink as indicators of biological annihilation and the sixth mass extinction; https://www.pnas.org/content/117/24/13596. The Great Implosion: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/14747731.2020.1748364. The 2020 Policy Battlespace Threat Briefings. The Thanos Snap. The Failed State. The Philippines is No. 54 (Year 2020 score of 81.0: High warning) on the Fragile States Index of 2013—2020 (https://fragilestatesindex.org/country-data/). Zoom in your seats as your BFFs lose their jobs and their homes, as your loved ones die alone, as the bereaved get saddled with hospital bills, as corrupt school officials mismanage graduate tuition funds.

Slap the virus, did you? So, how come: https://malaya.com.ph/index.php/news_news/1678-new-cases-4-deaths/. Worse: https://malaya.com.ph/index.php/news_news/mm-calabarzon-hospitals-bursting-at-the-seams-doh/. And: https://malaya.com.ph/index.php/news_news/6-chinese-pinoy-cohort-nabbed-for-kidnapping/. Thus: https://malaya.com.ph/index.php/news_news/solons-no-clear-covid-response-plan-in-sona/.

“Behold a great red dragon” [Revelation 12:3] “Any one of the four scenarios analyzed–triumphant China, ascendant China, stagnant China, or imploding China–is possible three decades hence…By 2050, China most likely will have experienced some mixture of successes and failures, and the most plausible scenarios would be an ascendant China or a stagnant China. In the former scenario, China will be largely successful in achieving its long-term goals, while, in the latter scenario, China will confront major challenges and will be mostly unsuccessful in implementing its grand strategy.” [https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR2798.html]