We oil the jaws of the war machine and feed it with our babies.
The killer's breed or the demon's seed, the glamour, the fortune, the pain,
Go to war again, blood is freedom's stain, don't you pray for my soul anymore.
2 minutes to midnight, the hands that threaten doom.
2 minutes to midnight, to kill the unborn in the womb. -- Iron Maiden, 1984.
I suppose only so much can be made of the symbolism of the doomsday clock, seeing as how it is done by mere scientists, and thus no one important.
LONDON - The world has nudged closer to a nuclear apocalypse and environmental disaster, a trans-Atlantic group of prominent scientists warned Wednesday, pushing the hand of its symbolic Doomsday Clock two minutes closer to midnight.
It was the fourth time since the end of the Cold War that the clock has ticked forward, this time from 11:53 to 11:55, amid fears over what the scientists are describing as "a second nuclear age" prompted largely by atomic standoffs with Iran and North Korea.
But the organization added that the "dangers posed by climate change are nearly as dire as those posed by nuclear weapons."
It is inescapable that the powers that be have, through their manifest policies and steadfast ignorance, made this world a more dangerous place. They will leave office in a couple of years, knowing full well that the planet and its inhabitants are positioned much more precariously in many areas than when they came into power. Thus they have to spend the rest of their careers and lives relying on terminally craven apologists to squint hard and find legacies to burnish.
Failing that, the usual dollops of belligerent nonsense and print fellatio will suffice.
"As scientists, we understand the dangers of nuclear weapons and their devastating effects, and we are learning how human activities and technologies are affecting climate systems in ways that may forever change life on Earth," said Stephen Hawking, the renowned cosmologist and mathematician.
"As citizens of the world, we have a duty to alert the public to the unnecessary risks that we live with every day, and to the perils we foresee if governments and societies do not take action now to render nuclear weapons obsolete and to prevent further climate change."
Oh, Stephen Hawking. How would he know? He's not a rugged outdoorsman, like duh preznit. Can he clear brush? Can he tell his Secret Service detail to let him win his next mountain-bike run? Didn't think so. QED, muthafuckas!
And as far as matters of war, remember that each of these things -- North Korea, Iran, and Iraq -- are by-products of a de facto policy of (to put it as charitably as possible) malign neglect. More to come.
2 comments:
I keep dropping those lyrics in comments every once in a while. I can't say that I've ever heard a better anti-war/military complex song - at least one with any balls.
Cool. I always felt Maiden were way underrated, musically and lyrically, but metal tends to immediately be ghettoized by the critics and pseudointellectuals.
And that's an important point you make, the fact that an anti-war song can have balls. It's something I plan on addressing in an upcoming post, but it's another serious cognitive disconnect, that an anti-war stance can also be a position of strength.
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