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| Bombs Bursting Out Life? |
But there are also some things that the powers that be do not want us to remember.
That self-inflicted amnesia, The Unmemorialized, raises some of the sayings of some of us that have been memorialized.
One such saying about our memory is: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it", written and spoken by George Santayana, telling us that denying The Unmemorialized reality is a vain exercise.
Santayana advocated, in essence, that our memories should match our history.
So, today we remember the militarization of the United States, an event which our 4th President said would eventually lead to the removal of our public freedoms.
Nevertheless, the polls that show Americans think that the military is the most competent institution, have been cited a few times here on Dredd Blog.
For example, take a look if you want to, at the post Stockholm Syndrome on Steroids?
Today, since it is day one of Memorial Day Weekend, we want Dredd Blog readers to know that the powers that be are, in their own words, "not American."
And we should remember that the military is without a doubt most competent to most quickly cause the extinction of the human race, and nothing else - not even the Earth itself, can do that as quickly as those who see themselves as the arbiters of security can:
Both US and Russian land-based missiles remain constantly on high-alert status, ready to be launched within minutes. Because of the 30-minute flight times of these missiles, the presidents of both the US and Russia would have only approximately 12 minutes to decide whether to launch their missiles when presented by their military leaders with information indicating an imminent attack (after lower-level threat assessment conferences).(Dan Ellsberg, emphasis added). The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, a group that studies "how close humanity is to catastrophic destruction--the figurative midnight", and who maintain "The Doomsday Clock", have it set to 5 minutes until lights out.
That’s only 12 minutes or less for the president to decide whether to launch global nuclear war. While this scenario is unlikely, it is definitely possible: Presidents have repeatedly rehearsed it, and it cannot be ruled out due to the graveness of its potential consequences.
...
If all 450 US land-based Minuteman III missiles with thermonuclear warheads were ever launched at Russia – with many of the targets in or near cities, as now planned – most Americans would die as a result, along with most of humanity. Our own weapons would contribute as much or more to these deaths in America and the rest of the globe as any Russian warheads launched.
This is because smoke from the enormous nuclear firestorms created by even a “successful” US nuclear first-strike would cause catastrophic disruption of global climate and massive destruction of the Earth’s protective ozone layer, leading to global famine.
Recent peer-reviewed studies, done by atmospheric scientists Alan Robock (Rutgers), Brian Toon (University of Colorado-Boulder), Richard Turco (UCLA) and colleagues, predict that such an attack would create immense firestorms that would quickly surround the planet with a dense stratospheric smoke layer.
The black smoke would be heated by the sun, lofted like a hot air balloon, and would remain in the stratosphere for at least 10 years. There it would block and prevent a large fraction of sunlight from reaching the Earth’s surface. The sharp reduction of warming sunlight would rapidly produce global Ice Age weather conditions. This would eliminate or dramatically reduce growing seasons for a decade and would likely cause the starvation of most or all humans.
Along with other effects – including prolonged destruction of the ozone layer – most complex life on Earth could be destroyed. Scientists say the process would be similar to when an asteroid hit the Earth some 65 million years ago, raising a global dust cloud that reduced sunlight, lowering temperatures and killing vegetation. That caused the extinction of the dinosaurs and 70 percent of the Earth’s species.
This entire reality is an Unmemorial which the powers that be want us to forget so they can continue to, through The Ways of Bernays, convince us that they are "the most competent ones."
We need to redefine "competent" to mean "the ability to insure human life, not the ability to destroy it all."
It is way past time to Memorialize Peace by giving it a chance.
The next post in this series is here.
The lyrics to this song, and the original Rolling Stones version, are here.
Arrow. Zing. Bullseye.
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