*****WAR OVER*****

The military can no more forsake newer costlier weapons than  flies above a summer pasture can avoid fresh cowflop. Whether it’s iron over bronze for spearheads, steel over iron for cannons, titanium over aluminum for jets—despite the cost, the new is better and required. 

No surprise. We pay them to kill and expect they do so efficiently. And the romance: “There’s nothing as exciting as the smell of napalm in the morning!” New weapons are like new toys to their minds, not shiny new—more likely black and drab. Yet except for a few old school hardliners, experts have agreed there are weapons which—however technically perfected—should just stay banned.

Not everyone agrees. In recent memory Saddam Hussein used poison gas on his Iraqi countrymen. Syrian factions (they keep blaming each other) have barrel-bombed their helpless  counterparts from helicopters hovering over crowded urban areas. Countless others (we included) research and maintain stockpiles of the verboten just in case.

But even the dullest tool in the military shed knows that, however carefully employed, C(hemical), B(iological), and R(adiological) weapons have a nasty history of unpredictably blowing back on one’s own cherished troops. Best not to use them. But if you plant landmines as you leave town, keep a good map to avoid them should you decide to re-invade. 

Any weapon, from hand grenades to lately touted “smaller” (more usable) nuclear weapons can endanger its users. It could be as simple as a poor pitch or as complicated as an unexpected detonation at ground level which hurls heaps of fallout when the wind is in the wrong direction.

And we, the wizards of the devil’s dynamite, are we safe? H-bombs have fallen by accident on American soil (fortuitously their chemical explosions failed to trigger the big nuclear ones).  ICBMs have exploded in their concrete silos.

Had we determined Agent Orange to be a severe risk to our soldiers we might have banned it for its hazardous blowback.

The same should apply to warheads. War planners cannot guarantee small wars can be kept from escalating to massive nuclear exchanges. The resulting nuclear winter should frighten even the most unwitting strategists. More grounded country types already understand.

If the blinding light does not immediately vaporize you where you stood, or the blast does not turn your organs to flying bits of human jelly, and if by some miracle you do not perish from the radioactive dust settling on everything—that is, supposing you had some shelter with fresh air, food, light, flush toilets, and maybe a good book—you would still find at your door crazed zombies (your former neighbors) who will eat your brain and those of your beloveds.

To any reasonable intelligence, nuclear weapons must be regarded as SELF-BANNING. They render war logically impossible not just mentally inconceivable. A war requires not only that everyone else loses, some winner has to survive. In nuclear war there are no “winners.” The meager few who live a tad longer cannot be called winners.

The world is at its limit. We know everyone; we can just about phone anyone. There is no land, no mineral, no wealth, no Helen of Troy worth a war whereby we lose our food, our health, our history, our wisdom, honor, devotion, love . . . where only untidy piles of radioactive rubble signal we once existed.

The boomerang of nuclear war will return to cull its hurler. It is that comical gun which is trained on the shooter. In this day of pandemic who (with his head screwed on straight) would release a disease on his enemies and think it would not make the rounds? 

Perhaps the military and the masses are not yet aware, but for those with ears to hear and eyes to see, the long sought goal has been achieved: WAR IS ENDED, not by peacemakers but by weapons makers.

J.S.Manista

c. 2021

Putting your skin in the nuclear game

 

How can we nonviolently prevent nuclear war?

     1. Like so many in Congress we can ignore nuclear weapons and

         hope they go away—some in the new administration want to

         restart talks—that’s progress.

     2. The pope condemns war every so often but diplomatically 

  hasn’t mentioned anyone by name.

      3. Political oppositions must rise up in all nuclear nations and press   

          governments to reduce their numbers—zero’s a nice number.

      4. Convince the military to dismantle them—yep, that's right.

 

      5. Wave a magic wand

No one knows how effective the new government will be. Obama promised to rid us of nukes and to close Guantanamo—still waiting.

 

The pope has spoken for himself but most bishops are hardliners.

Activist efforts continue despite setbacks. 

The fourth method is an outlier, but it has been tried. Ground Zero’s attempt last year to urge submariners to disobey unlawful orders (viz.,“Fire the missiles”) didn’t dent Trident. 

Keep waving that wand, Bubba.

What do you do though, if writing your congress-person or upholding honkable banners are not yielding the desired results?

One method I didn’t mention is direct action (civil disobedience/ nonviolent resistance) first advocated by Henry David Thoreau against slavery and the war with Mexico. Ghandi employed it for civil rights in South Africa and against colonial rule in India. More recently Martin Luther King, Jr., and others used the same principles effectively in the struggles of the ‘sixties. Unlike the others direct action has a distinct risk of financial loss and/or incarceration. 

It’s one thing to claim imprisoned heroes like Plowshares7 Jesuit priest Steven Kelly or Wikileaks’ founder Julian Assange or soldier and intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning or Edward Snowden, leaker of National Security Administration (NSA) surveillance techniques methods; it’s quite another to follow in their footsteps.

In May of  2019, the Ground Zero Center for Non-Violent Action (GZ) emailed me about their proposal to protest at the Bangor-Kitsap Trident Base the weekend of May 11. Activists were invited to perform brief gestures of non-violent civil disobedience. They scheduled a morning of inspirational talks by GZ leaders and a keynote by Kathy Kelly, a well-known war-crime protestor and Afghanistan activist. In the afternoon a lawyer sympathetic to the cause would present legal information and instruction. Replying I’d attend, I ordered an 8’ x 3’ vinyl banner prepared and contacted other Olympians to rideshare that day. 

By scheduling the event the day before Mothers’s Day they wished to remind people that holiday had close connections to peace advocacy. Ann Reeves Jarvis of West Virginia used her Mothers Friendship Day in 1868 to reconcile former Union and Confederate soldiers. Two years later the suffragette and abolitionist Julia Ward Howe authored her Mother’s Day Proclamation urging mothers to unite in promoting world peace.  

At the entrance of the Trident Base a one-foot-wide blue line, labeled US Government brightly in white, has been painted on each lane of the highway at Trident Boulevard, the Navy property. Knowledge of this line is critical to understanding the GZ protests.

After lunch GZ’s legal advisor clarified for us that protestors who stand (dance, read poetry, sing peace songs, etc.) blocking highway traffic on the state side of the blue marker and who also refuse to disperse when ordered to do so by the highway police will be cited for blocking access on a state highway and must report to a state court as notified to answer the charges. Those protestors who cross the blue line onto the base and stand (dance, read poetry, sing peace songs, etc.), who refuse to return to the state property when ordered by base security (the Marines) will be cited for federal trespass and informed they must report to a federal court. He could not make it plainer the federal violation is regarded as more serious—occasionally much  more serious—than the state offense.

We were then asked as to what course we’d choose (without judgment as to our sincerity or dedication to the cause): 1. to stand alongside the highway; 2. to violate the state law; or 3. to violate the federal law. Eight stalwarts opted for the state side; I chose the federal side: the rest, about fifty in number, chose to march, sing, witness, and cheer.

GZ and Navy base security had earlier agreed on the site and timing to avoid dangerous surprises. Banners and sign in hand we proceeded to the base as state police cars parked on an overpass, and Marines with protective vests and weapons, parked their van near the blue line.

First the eight formed a line in front of the blue demarcator and began with a song together, followed by each demonstrator presenting his or her rationale for blocking the road: citing international law, recounting other heroic stands, praying and announcing recent comments of the pope. Finished, they stood in place, and as each was approached by the highway police to disperse, they refused, and were in turn politely taken by an arm and led off to the roadside where individual citations were drafted and delivered. 

As the last was led away I stepped forward with my banner held chest high, got to the center of the road, and took two steps behind the blue line. A Navy security officer told me to step back to the state side. I stood still and did not answer. Then he asked if I knew the meaning of the word trespass. I acknowledged I did and was approached by two guards, one who took the banner out of my hands while the other led me behind the van out of sight of the crowd.

They took several photographs of (presumably for Navy and NSA records) while a guard asked for my ID and address. 

One guard, fearful I might faint, inquired if I preferred to sit on the van floor where the side was open. I did and gladly accepted a paper cup of water besides. Despite our training to remember carefully everything we were asked and said, there was some casual conversation before they returned my banner and took me back across the blue line. My allies cheered my return. The citation told me I would be advised of my court date. 

I had no strategy for the court appearance and became concerned that for all my bravado at the gate I could easily fail in court and have little to show for my vaunted defiance. Consulting the GZ lawyer I decided to plead not guilty at the arraignment, and then negotiate to enter a statement if I changed my plea to guilty. The trial was scheduled for October 23, 2019 at 1:30 PM before Judge Theresa Fricke at the Federal Court Building in Tacoma, Washington.

Arriving with my colleague Joanne Dufour of the Olympia Committee to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (OCANW), we were met at the courtroom door by several GZ members.

When my case was called Judge Fricke began by explaining my pleading guilty now precluded any future legal action by me on the charge at hand. I told her I understood and requested to make my statement. The courtroom was fairly large and empty except for a few  accused and their supporters. A microphone at a nearby desk had been provided for answers, questions, or statements. She directed me to take the chair and I began reading my statement, periodically looking up to the judge and the others about:

    “After study and prayer I concluded our nuclear policy of Mutually

    Assured Destruction is an irrational delusion which, by accident or

    intention, will inevitably one day annihilate all life on earth—an

    omnicide where neither we nor roaches nor viruses survive. We

    have ignored this for close to 75 years as if, cowed and lulled by our

    country’s militarism, we slept on an ever costlier, ever larger pile of 

    dynamite, trusting that diabolical MADness to prevent our 

    obliteration.

    "But we have seen ingenious systems fail and we know fissile

    materials have been misplaced, lost, or stolen. For decades we

    presumptively feared it would be a maniac from some other

    country who might topple the Jenga tower of worldwide death. I

    decided I could no longer by silence be complicit in this risk of the

    greatest conceivable evil.

      “Heartened by the heroism of protestors and filled with a hope of 

    responding rationally and creatively to the prospect of planetary

    horror, I had a banner made asserting Nuclear Weapons Are

    Immoral to produce, stockpile, and use and displayed it on the

    ground of those most likely to benefit from reading it and taking its

    message to heart. I did not just trespass on the base which—without

    my banner—I had no cause to do—but with it I finally and publicly

    answered the duty of my conscience and exercised my right of  free

    speech where the federal government seemed not to want me to.

   “Your honor has the opportunity—as do all—to join the community

    resisting nuclear madness. Declare the money, genius, and effort we

    have so far expended out of fear a moral waste. Declare we could

    have aided the world to have cleaner water, wider education, more

    hospitals, and all manner of economic development instead of 

    spreading a debilitating fear of impending doom.

    

The courtroom had grown quiet before and during my delivery. The silence persisted as if to underscore my message.  Then the Navy prosecutor stood and recommended a $50 fine. Judge Fricke accepted my guilty plea and stated: “In recognition of the defendant’s conscientious plea I will lower the fine to $25.” She closed her remarks with, “I respect your First Amendment protest and your firmly held beliefs.”

Unlike standing at the corner of Fourth and Water Street in downtown Olympia, where you can disagree with the government’s nuclear policy for free, doing so on their territory up close and personal, will cost  $65: $25 fine, $10 mandatory fee, and $30 to cover court costs. The maximum penalty allowed was six months in jail and a $5,000 fine. The GZ lawyer had advised me my instance of trespass was a misdemeanor and, depending on the judge, a harsh sentence was unlikely. Other than creating a federal record, this civil disobedience fell well within my tolerance.

The support from GZ, from Olympia friends, from OCANW, and others transformed the shame of a guilty plea to the euphoria of realizing I had (however briefly) placed a thorn in the briefs of the military and gotten away with it.

Although in the larger picture my action did not create national notice as had the Kings Bay Plowshares7 at the Georgia Trident Base on the Atlantic coast. Except for a couple of peace movement newsletters, my nonviolent resistance disappeared in the flood of Mother’s Day stories and other news of the day. 

If so, was it worth the effort, or was it just theater for anti-nuclear partisans? As an answer I’d like to enter a quotation from Pulitzer Prize winning author Chris Hedges on the nature of protest and hope:

   “Hope has a cost. Hope is not comfortable or easy. Hope requires

   personal risk. It is not about the right attitude. Hope is not about

   peace of mind. Hope is action. Hope is doing something. The more

   futile, the more useless, the more irrelevant and incomprehensible an

   act of rebellion is, the vaster and more potent hope becomes.

   Hope never makes sense. Hope is weak, unorganized and absurd.

   Hope, which is always nonviolent, exposes in its powerlessness, the

   lies, fraud and coercion employed by the state. . . . Hope posits that

   people are drawn to the good by the good. . . . Hope sees in our

   enemy our own face.”

Are we crazy? That's what so many around us are thinking. Are they really advocating unilateral nuclear disarmament? How naive. How utterly unrealistic. Russia . . . China . . . North Korea would not hesitate to blast us from the face of the earth but for our ability to exterminate in retaliation any attacker and not bat an eyelash doing it.

I’d like to go farther than reducing stockpiles or totally eliminating nuclear weapons. I’d like to end war itself in any form, small bombs, big bombs, chemical agents, biological weapons, even poking each other in the eye with Pic-Up-Stix. 

The present reality is any war we’re in today (or conceive of being in tomorrow) can escalate into full nuclear exchange without a prayer of stopping it before every last weapon is hurled along its deadly path.

Only very recently we witnessed the irresponsible shenanigans of two toddler personalities—North Korea and the good ol’ US of A. The recent resurgence of activity against nuclear weapons can be laid at the feet of Un and Ump.

How did we ever give any mortal the opportunity to expunge all humanity from this part of the universe? George Washington set this country on the wrong path when he stated, “If you want peace, prepare for war.” Unmindful of our demonstrated aggressive disposition we accepted his profoundly paranoid orientation to foreign nations. We devised modern equivalents of unchallenged xenophobia: “Peace through power.” 

We refused to see the dangerous but only way out. President Kennedy told the General Assembly of the UN on September 25, 1961:

   “We must abolish nuclear weapons before they abolish us.”

Rather than devise a system of checks and restraints (all fallible) to prevent anyone flipping a Doomsday switch, we must disassemble Doomsday itself. Dismantle every weapon starting with our own. Risky? You betcha. In the long run though is Unilateral Nuclear Disarmament truly any more risky than relying on the threat of Mutually Assured Destruction? The people of our so-called enemies have no more desire to exterminate us than we have of exterminating them--including their military.

International Workers of the World (Wobblies) almost stopped World War I before it began when they openly questioned, “Why should French workers kill German workers?” Today will the classic pacifist rationale, War will end when men refuse to fight, remain unaddressed?

Today among nuclear and non-nuclear there is no shortage of powerful incentives:

1. GONE—the budget busting waste of maintaining, modernizing, or developing weapons
2. FREEDOM of scientists and engineers to work on peace-producing projects among all nations: clean water, higher education, better no-cost health,  new economic development
3. ELIMINATION of debilitating fear of annihilation among both nuclear and non-nuclear nations
4. FUTURE of resolving disputes without resort to fighting

Through accidents of history we stumbled into international leadership. I am no gambler, but for the seventy-five years since Hiroshima and Nagasaki, this nation has been gambling that threats of war and death will keep us safe. To me personally, gambling on hopes  for peace and life is a far better bet.

On Prayer (for beginners and unbelievers)

Christians pray; atheists (at least those not in foxholes) don’t. How come?

For an atheist why have a one-way conversation with someone or something that doesn’t exist, and because he or it doesn’t exist can’t answer your prayers? A person would first have to fool themselves into believing in prayer then have to fool themselves into accepting the whatever that happens is God’s answer. One could save a lot of time not praying. After all, as many Christians must admit, atheists are often good loving human beings (if not sometimes more so) than committed believers. Where’s the advantage?

Despite what you heard on the street or learned from your friends in back alleys (or were told by your parents and Sunday school teachers) Christian prayer is not turning in requisitions and accepting deliveries. Prayer can mean a lot more than supplication. As for types of prayer there’s everything from Anne Lamott’s famous three, Help, Thanks, Wow, to a list expanding up to 650 from a Google query. 

Lists often get them in the wrong order, putting “ask” first, while adoration and thanksgiving vie for second and third. That might be how many believers would rank them but they’d be wrong. Most elements of prayer have been adapted, I speculate, from protocols of approaching tribal kings for favors: “Kneel, worms [mixed metaphors], before the great and mysterious Oz!” [Better butter up the ol’ dude before it’s off with your heads.]

First, admitting the socioeconomic gap between the parties (adoration)—Infinite, Eternal Creator of All Things compared to mortal creature who owes everything he is, was, and will be to said Creator—is a great place to start, defining who you are and where you’re coming from. Granted you’ll never worship Him enough but something is better than nothing just to let Him know you understand the situation. And a little humbling never hurt anyone. 

[After ladling on the praise, not to waste the Big Guy’s time, get on with the matter at hand (petitioning):]

Creator:“What brings you to God today?”

creature: “Oh, Lord, won’t you buy me a Mercedes-Benz?”

C: “Why not buy one yourself?” 

c: “Minimum-wage job, can’t save enough. Have to eat, pay rent, doctor bills, cable, Starbucks—You know the drill.”

C: “You realize how much you’d save cutting out gourmet coffee and putting up with an occasional disease or two? Hey, weren’t you here last week confessing an unwarranted desire for a BMW7-series sedan?”

[Doesn’t look like this prayer is going to get answered favorably, so it might be best to leave now.]

c: “Well I was in the neighborhood and since I hadn’t revered You in a while I thought to put in a word in case You changed Your Mind.“

C: Who were you singing about in the line, “. . . but naught changeth Thee” . . . chopped liver?”

c: “OK. I accept Your Will but before I go I sincerely want to thank you from the bottom of my heart (thanksgiving) that You gave me a part of Your busy schedule. And thanks again for creating me and sustaining me even as a carless pedestrian. I am grateful I have feet and can get about pretty easily if I make the effort. It’s not like I’m a worm slithering in the dirt—not that there’s anything wrong with being a worm. See Ya!”

There’s a lot of wonderful things that can be said about prayer, but perhaps not by me at this time. At least I tried to clarify why Christians have that extra requirement (burden, opportunity) which atheists ignore—prayer, talking to God. Or as an atheist said to me regularly as I left for church on Sundays, “Say hello to your Imaginary Friend for me.” I did, though she probably really didn’t want me to.

Biggest Daily News Never Told

"If it bleeds, it leads," a truism of newspaper journalism is not entirely faulty guidance but one can imagine instances where even grisly murders might eventually play second fiddle to "dog bites man" features should the readership become so inured to major crime they come to regard it as just a part of daily life. Somewhat farfetched I grant, until the day without the murder is newsworthy.

Who would be fascinated if the same story ran--headlines, graphics, and photos--day after day despite such a magical record and despite the overwhelming significance of its occurrence morning after morning? Opening the news with anything less would betray the highest ideals of news coverage.

"NUCLEAR NATIONS AVOIDED WORLD'S DESTRUCTION ANOTHER DAY

"Somehow the most powerful, aggressive, and arrogant leaders of the nuclear gangs managed once again to not attack each other through missteps, failing computer chips, radars tracking flocks of geese, lightning strikes, and damn people just pushing the wrong buttons for another twenty four hours. 

"Had we been able to tell you this yesterday you could have slept easier, gone fishing with your children, built your spouse the potting shed you've been promising all these years, or read at least one of the shorter texts in your holy scriptures without subconscious distraction.

"No, we did't tell you. We couldn't be sure. Stranger things happen regularly. But parlaying chances in a thicket of sociopathic heads of state and complex systems lacking sufficient redundancies to guarantee you a single second of continued existence is beyond our pay grade."

Sooner or later, once the immensity of the message wears off or people become numb from thinking on their fragile mortality, the story (still immense, still very much there) falls below the fold, gets pushed to the second page, finally to the spot above the crosswords among the comics, and then to . . .nothing. That's where we are today.

One might easily attribute it to some conspiracy theory--a cabal of military, industrial, secret government agencies working behind the scenes to ensure they receive adequate cover and funds to expand and  renew weapons of mass destruction without so much as a single plebiscite from us for support. Or, maybe it's just our collective unconscious jamming fears of horrendous catastrophes back into our mental basements, behind the stack of baby buggies, broken toys, and half-used paint cans. Could be, editors are not so different from us plebes; they have fears and one of them is pissing off their readers.

As we hinted earlier the day may come when the biggest news will happen. But that day no one will be printing much less reading the news.

Choice and Duty

Several days before the Wehrmacht invaded Poland Hermann Goebbels, Germany's minister of propaganda, made sure rumors of Polish military activity abounded, going so far as to stage a false flag assault of German soldiers dressed in Polish uniforms on a radio station near the border, thereby rendering the September 1 invasion a "retaliation" for the unprovoked Polish attack.

We've seen that kind of thing before (Quemoy, Matsu). It is a distinct mark of war's beginning that the aggressors claim a violation shortly before they open fire. In today's wars it may be even harder to determine just who shot first. If you're in a submarine, underwater, and totally dependent on coded official communiques you can't easily turn on Moscow TV and check if any story is true, or for that matter, Al Jazeera, Dutch cable news, or UK's BBC.

So you're sitting in front of your missile control screen checking to see that your Tootsie is armed, targeted, and cleared to launch, just waiting for your turn to Pass Go and collect $200, when a novel thought crackles through your cortex: "Is this real? Or just a pretext for us radically-conditioned, subconsciously loyal lackeys to take the bait and bring the world to an end?"

For a real first strike perhaps they'd say your country's been attacked. There's that. But if so, the deterrent has failed and the enemy has set off to kill as many of you as they can. You could attack them in turn, but why? Your missiles wouldn't be deterring anything. Plenty of people are already going to die.

Your missiles would only increase those numbers, possibly ending all life on earth. Now that's a sin of an entirely different sort than just choosing heinously and callously to vaporize, melt, blind, crush, separate into segments, blow away the parts, and irradiate what's left of millions to wither in nauseous agony in one fell swoop. Allowing the enemy to live to procreate and possibly evolve to a peaceful sort has lots of merit in the overall scheme--gentlemanly, if not positively Christian, or ethical if you're not into religion.

If, however, your action was a first strike, you'd also have to consider whether you'd risk your families' evisceration in the ensuing guaranteed counterattack or whether that was just so much malarkey and that the world would be much better off without those feather-brains constantly rattling their hydrogen-sabres.

On the other hand, if your firing was instead the real assurance that destruction would be mutual, review the guidance above about whether increasing the death tolls would be worth it, since you could stay underwater in that well-stocked submarine, travel the world in search of an unirradiated isle where you might thrive a while, and watch satellite TV as to whether the world was really going to make it.

Lastly, you may have to determine whether becoming a submarine missileer was what you really wanted to do with your life, because the MP with the 45 at your temple is likely not to wait very long for your answer to his, "What's the holdup, Mister/Ms?" Unless you and your colleagues are prepared at that point to tell Captain Bligh the ship is no longer his, you may have to conclude risking your death then and there is preferable to ensuring the deaths of hundreds of thousands elsewhere in ten to twenty minutes.

Now this would be a great time to kick back, grab a Bud, and make a lot of chin music about the complexities of conscience. True, it would have been better to think about these things before you ever swore to defend the constitution in uniform. But, alas and alack, whenever do these problems come up at the right time?

Halifax Harbor, Beirut, Nuclear Weapons

Antinuclear demonstration, Hiroshima/Nagasaki remembrance,
75th anniversary, Olympia Washington August 6th, 2020

Momma said, "Don't keep tons of ammonium nitrate sitting in a big heap near where people live, 'cause someday that shit's gonna go off." But she didn't say it in Canadian or Lebanese.

Travelers to Canada's maritimes are often apprised of the events of the 6 December 1917 when a shipload of ammunition was struck by a passing vessel and exploded in Halifax harbor about 9 AM, killing 2,000 residents and injuring 9,000 more. The explosion was thought equivalent to 2.9 kilotons of TNT and was at the time the world's largest manmade explosion to date. It flattened much of the Richmond district of Halifax and precipitated international relief efforts to medicate the many wounded. It was, one for the history books. Nonetheless I knew nothing of it prior to my visit in the year 2000.

But Halifax was the first thing on my mind on learning of the disastrous explosion in the port of Beirut the evening of August fourth. How could a group of modern, knowledgeable citizens, probably familiar with the chemicals of terror weapons, sit comfortably nearby 2,700 tons of ammonium nitrate stored in a hot warehouse? Had they never heard of Timothy McVeigh? Maybe not, after all they were Lebanese, not Oklahomans.

Well, the damn pile didn't explode the first day, nor the second, nor for many days after until the sixth year of its storage when it finally did explode. Despite the yearly pleas of authorities who recognized the danger, the situation seemed well in hand and demanded no immediate attention.

My next thought though was about a similar situation, recognized as dangerous--imminently so--which has also failed to receive immediate attention. So far this situation hasn't yet gone critical despite its teetering on the knife edge of history for close to seventy years. I refer to the horrific destructive potential of hair-triggered nuclear weapons scattered about the nations of the world: tunneled into prairies, aloft on bombers, roaming wastelands on trucks, and undersea in submarines.

Currently we are in danger of a new arms race of nuclear weapons and delivery systems as the US, North Korea, Russia, China, India, and Pakistan have all recently rattled their nuclear sabres and let existing restrictive treaties expire left and right. Waiting in the wings are the small fry wannabes of Iran, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia who gaze longingly at their future of nuclear threatening among the big boy gangs of the earth.

Can these Rube Goldberg contraptions of Mutually Assured Destruction stay balanced long enough to let humanity think in generational terms? Or as contraptions with an expanding diversity of wobbling intricacies isn't it the bettor's favorite that they won't--sooner than later? Eat, drink, and be merry for the next day, or the day after that, if not tomorrow of course, we shall certainly die.

And on the other hand we shall certainly kill. It won't really make that much difference if we kill in a first strike or we kill just as certainly in retaliation. Some are disturbed by the thought of dying and would like to avoid it at all costs so they make a deal with the devil and relax--as much as is possible--relying on MAD to keep their chestnuts out of the fire. But there are those of us who are equally appalled at the thought of killing people who have personally posed no threat to us, killing in massive, horrendous, tortuous ways that likely will end all life on earth.

How arrogant that course would be--to risk ending the human experiment over some matter of national pride or power! Yet we seem unpersuaded there is any other way--only the way of domination--been that way for centuries and it won't change in the foreseeable, if rather brief, future.

But no man, no nation, can have the authority to risk the world's end, or further, to wreak such suffering on the innocent whether the world ends or not. Powers who propose use of such weapons, stockpile them as reasonable deterrents to obliteration, or constantly rob their citizens of wealth to develop and assemble even more destructive varieties cannot claim they have the authority to do so. Their declared intentions label them as madmen, whether they are heads of democratic or authoritarian states, they have no authority to risk worldwide suicide.

The people of nuclear states have every right to remove such authorities and to dismantle all these instruments of terror and death universally so that humanity can finally be free of fear.

Defending Samantha Bee (and not Roseanne Barr)

Evocative Ivanka

Provocative Ivanka

Sam Bee had every right to call

Ivanka Trump a feckless cunt

On cable TV.  But Roseanne Barr,

Whose hateful racist tweets—even 

Though they were intended

For a private (?) audience of her

Declared “followers”—merited

Loss of a national broadcast TV

Platform. First, Roseanne: In this

Country no one is allowed to deny

The historic oppression of blacks

Or to harbor ignorant opinons

About their descendants except 

The current president for whom

There is--apparently--no hope.

To denigrate recognized powerful

Black women such as Valerie Jarrett 

Or Condoleeza Rice without citing

Justification of some action or policy

Deserving condemnation can 

Only be deemed racist especially

In the light of the hatred implied

In comparing them to apes.

But ABC, foisting Ms. Barr

Back on the national scene,

Knowing full well her cockamamie

Background?  Did they think viewers

Wouldn’t notice? Or were they

Urging us to let bygones be

Bygones? Perhaps they took a shot

In the dark expecting to placate 

The base of the Numbskull-

In-Chief? Or, more plainly, since

Barr gave no reason for likening

Jarrett or Rice to simians and further

Left no course to redeem themselves

Except by not being Black in public

What were we to think? Ms Bee, 

Who too quickly apologized for 

Her prickly slur, is taken to task

Not for her position on Ivanka’s

Behavior but because she, Bee,

Used a "forbidden word" before a

Late night, limited audience.

In this day of open talk about

Pussies (brought on by her father's

Remarks) can one expect the good

Old Saxon coinage NOT be far behind?

“Blowjobs,” once regarded as coarse

Speech of whores and Johns (capital J 

For sex workers' clients; lower-case j 

For toilets) entered our lingua franca 

Thanks to the feckless Bill Clinton, 

Who flagrantly and repeatedly misused

The power of his office to waylay 

A naive intern for a little crotch joy--

Public and family be damned. Ms Bee

Understood the message of Ivanka's

Madonna and child post and noted 

Ivanka might sway her father to

Revise his abhorrent policy of separating

Immigrant children from their parents.

She could wear something low cut and

Incestuously lean against her father

While pleading mercy for immigrant

Families. Ivanka could, but she won't

Since the children of immigrants 

Are no more real to her than their

Mothers. Unlike Roseanne who

Closes the door for all Blacks,

Ms Bee despairs Ivanka will do

The right thing. Critics complain Bee’s

Choice of wording cost audience 

Sympathy on the real issue. I think not. 

Had Bee stated, “Worthless twat,”

Or “Stupid pussy,” her words wouldn't 

Have had the intended effect.

No, like mother to mother, Ivanka’s

Useless preening earned the word 

Women reserve for feckless cunts.

c. 2018, JSManista