As a young captain in the Air Force, I visited Los Alamos National Lab in 1992. The mood there was grim. What use for a lab that develops and tests nuclear weapons when the Cold War with the Soviet Union was over and America was downsizing its nuclear forces? The people I talked to said the lab would have to reinvent itself; its nuclear physicists and engineers would have to adapt. Perhaps they might move to more commercial applications of technology. Better that than closing down the lab, they said.
Who knew that, 25+ years later, nuclear weapons would make their own “surge” and that the U.S. would plan to “invest” more than a trillion dollars in nuclear modernization, beginning with smaller, more “usable,” low-yield nuclear warheads for the Navy’s Trident missiles, as James Carroll wrote about yesterday at TomDispatch.com. Even “small” warheads have genocidal implications, however, for once you start launching nuclear-tipped missiles, no matter how “small,” escalation is likely to follow.
That sunny day in New Mexico in 1992, I could not have imagined a new American surge in nuclear weapons, beginning with the Obama administration and now championed by men like Donald Trump, Mike Pompeo, and John Bolton. That day, it seemed the end of the era of MAD – mutually assured destruction – the end to fears of nuclear war. Soon even conservatives like Henry Kissinger and George Schultz were calling for the elimination of nuclear weapons.
But that was 2007-08, and this is now. The madness is back, America. I urge you to read and heed James Carroll’s warning at TomDispatch.com. If we want to save ourselves as well as our planet’s biosphere, we need to eliminate nuclear weapons, not build more of them.
William J. Astore is a retired lieutenant colonel (USAF). He taught history for fifteen years at military and civilian schools and blogs at Bracing Views. He can be reached at wastore@pct.edu. Reprinted from Bracing Views with the author’s permission.
Most people I think have nothing to live for, so for them there is nothing other than the pure joy of murder. It works the same way as love, people project their selflove onto others and claim that they love them, but nothing could be further from the truth. So, let the damn species die out, it’s not like they’ve done any other species any favors.
Epigone Opus
by toto che handala
Each of us
residing
at this juncture
inside this
holographic dream
of illusory space /time
One
followers another
past the beginning
pond scum
panspermia
stretched far beyond
Alone here
via a path
self-made
by every step trod
Walk in utter darkness
tell me
what can you see
We tip-toe
upon the shoulders of giants
an insignificant flea
g(r)azing over
the mysterious panorama
so what now
do you believe?
We stroll together
immersed by trillions
yet alone in our room
billions upon billions
blind but to a carrot and stick dime
We speak to each other
across a gulf
within this great obscurity of self
to find comfort and belonging
outside another impenetrable shell
From the fear
of an inevitable demise
that is our greatest mystery
So we pine
for our heroes of yesterday
in myopic nostalgic melancholy
The bracing bite of a squall
assails one and all
So we clothe ourselves
in the skins
of ancestral apparitions revered
Frost-bitten beaten red and black
we trudge on through
the howling wail of voices
we almost discern
still & silent transfixed
huddled by the fire
the young the old
we stare into the embers
begging for the voice of fallen kin
imperceptible whispers
please please
tell us who we are
Heroes of folklore
garner deeds and voices
echo in cadence
rattling our conscience
as we lay laurels
upon their memories
Resonance pulsates
along spider web connections
sparking inspiration
rise up
take their place
or shuffle away in shame
each life lived
a classic greek tragedy
We are simply after-born
the latest layer of copies
diluted and filtered
from a flawless jolt
do we bow before adam and eve
the launch of this fairy-tale hokum
Ah, but to do the family name proud
to gather at holidays to argue and impress
reflections of a mirrored-self
but merely delusional illusion
are you simply in love with yourself
or do you distain such pretentious superficiality?
As faint copies of billions
what is left?
the accumulated sum apex
or aging process to extinction
we are 6 of 100
do we continue after this
Is history a dusty forgotten page
to be discarded
or embedded forever by strings?
Verified Sprites flash
faux angels hover
as we reach
to grasp
the fading afterglow
of ethereal lucidity
validate the postulate
confirm the theory
Is our untouched unhallowed fallowed future
back to the
immersing swirling broth
down accumulative flaws and errors
till we dead end at extinction
like 99+%
As we clothe ourselves
in their skins
as we tread
where they’ve have been
through their eyes
we attempt to epiphany
As we become
faint dissolving copies
translucent fading decaying
while an event horizon waits just up ahead
is our destiny
a transfixed date
with a technological or evolutionary singularity?
We reach for the stars
stretching our grasp
as kids for soap bubbles and fireflies
stuck in mire
we war upon ourselves
we can perceive
even the strings of the micro
yet too myopic
to grasp
the equality in every human being
We squeal and squawk
for personal justice and freedom
while we inflict injustice
on our neighbor to pillage
then allow ourselves
to be imprisoned under lock and key by law
we bow before a constitution
while it gets shredded to pieces
We marvel
at our self-serving magnificence
while we pray
to a mythological maker
for more more more
driven by an addiction
of nefarious desire
this collective evil
of singular selfishness
What are we
then now
to be
was
are
destined into infinity
doomed to extinction
False vacuum
a Fermi paradox
slithering in a petri dish
transcension hypothosis
why don’t we know
from whence did we come
why are we here
for how long
why the amnesia
the silent conspiracy
Is this illusion
simply allusion
pixels
quarks in a movie
are we simply ‘dead’
to be born
do we need to die
does it even matter
in flux
static
while we’re here
we’ll never know
I like it; please live on
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$