{"id":346035,"date":"2018-01-30T13:36:32","date_gmt":"2018-01-30T12:36:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/two-minutes-to-doomsday\/"},"modified":"2018-01-30T13:36:32","modified_gmt":"2018-01-30T12:36:32","slug":"two-minutes-to-doomsday","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/two-minutes-to-doomsday\/","title":{"rendered":"Two Minutes to Doomsday"},"content":{"rendered":"<div itemprop=\"articleBody\">\n<div id=\"attachment_97672\" style=\"max-width: 520px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-97672\" src=\"https:\/\/uziiw38pmyg1ai60732c4011-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com\/wp-content\/dropzone\/2017\/11\/Screen-Shot-2017-11-19-at-9.56.58-PM.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"510\" height=\"327\"  \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Photo by Toby Scott | <a href=\"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/2.0\/\">CC BY 2.0<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>Not since 1953, when the U.S. and the Soviets exploded thermonuclear bombs, has the world been such a powder keg!<\/p>\n<p>Only recently, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists moved the Doomsday Clock forward 30 seconds. It now registers two minutes to midnight. Verily, it\u2019s lights out when the clock strikes 12:00 midnight. Ka-boom, it\u2019s over!<\/p>\n<p>What\u2019s going on?<\/p>\n<p>Hitherto, in the aftermath of the Cold War, the clock was set all the way back to 17 minutes to midnight. Thereafter, it wasn\u2019t until 1998, when India and Pakistan staged back-to-back nuclear weapon testing, that the famous timepiece moved forward into single digits once again. It\u2019s important to note that resetting the clock is not a frivolous undertaking. A group of distinguished scientists make that decision.<\/p>\n<p>Here\u2019s the rationale for the move closer to the dreaded midnight hour: Upon the election of Trump, the Science and Security Board for the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists reset the Doomsday Clock to 2 \u00bd minutes to midnight. That was based upon extraordinarily provocative nasty destabilizing verbiage from the president himself. Indeed, he is commander in chief, ahem.<\/p>\n<p>Thereafter, following the self-crowning glory of Trump\u2019s inauguration, which was an absolute bust, especially as worldwide protests in the streets vastly outnumbered the inauguration, global risks have measurably increased with leaders Trump &amp; Kim exchanging simplistic infantile barbs at every&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.counterpunch.org\/2018\/01\/30\/two-minutes-to-doomsday\/\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Photo by Toby Scott | CC BY 2.0 Not since 1953, when the U.S. and the Soviets exploded thermonuclear bombs, has the world been such a powder keg! Only recently, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists moved the Doomsday Clock forward 30 seconds. It now registers two minutes to midnight. Verily, it\u2019s lights out when [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-346035","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/346035","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=346035"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/346035\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=346035"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=346035"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=346035"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}