The Only Problem With Humanity Is The People

John Pilger is a war correspondent, filmmaker and author recently posted an article in the Guardian where he quotes the judges at Nuremberg: “Individual citizens have the duty to violate domestic laws to prevent crimes against peace and humanity.”  The judges, Pilger tells his readers, were succinct.

He also tells his readers that he has a copy of the Daily Express front page of September 5 1945 and the words: “I write this as a warning to the world.”  The headlines are from war correspondent Wilfred Burchett – the first reporter to release a story about the atomic bombing of Hiroshima.

Pilger goes on to express his concern that the US military is running a really big drone – in this case Inside-The-Beltway, and he means it all.  Obama, he proposes, is a weak leader, who might have noble intent, but is little more than the new figure-head of a well crafted US military machine.

Reading Pilger’s piece brings to mind a strange story I came across while researching advances in technology. I had started with a rat learning a piece of relevant behavior.  This rat was wired and his neural signals were transmitted to another rat in South America via the internet.  The results were that the second rat learned through the remote experience of the first rat.  But that’s not the story that brought a smile to my face and a heavy sigh. After trudging through DARPA and Area 51 technology and Eisenhower threatening to attack Area 51 with the 12^th Army if he was not told exactly what was going on in there, I ended up with an account of  a bailing-out of the last inhabitants of Mars.  They had fucked up their planet seriously and were looking for a place to call… no, simply a place to carry on with their shenanigans.  So, according to the account I was reading, they landed on Earth.  It was back in the day, way back.  They landed in Atlantis and they found humanity all mellow and artsy and peaceful.

SO to these hell-raisers who had just fucked up a big red planet they had no problem taking over mastership of the little blue marble.  The way the writer described it, and the image that stuck in my mind, was “the alien race of warring refugees had found earth inhabited by people that were as docile and as meek as a bunch of pre-teens at a sleep over.”

You connect the dots.

READ MORE: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/sep/10/silent-military-coup-took-over-washington

http://www.examiner.com/article/eisenhower-threatened-to-invade-area-51-former-us-congress-members-hear

http://www.darpa.mil/

Selling Shakespeare

A set of Shakespeare’s first four folios was left to Senate House Library in 1956 by Sir Louis Sterling to be housed permanently in the institution. But now the library is planning to auction them to raise funds for the library.

The first folio is the name given to the printed edition of 36 of Shakespeare’s plays prepared by two of the playwright’s actors, John Heminges and Henry Condell, after his death in 1623 – the most important and authoritative early printed collection of his work. Later folios followed, the third including a further seven plays attributed to Shakespeare.

The sale raises several questions: What would Sir Francis Bacon say about this?  Are eternal pledges terminal?  If Hollywood buys the books is this considered optioning the works?

In answer to the first, Bacon never actually said he wrote the plays and sonnets, though he did say: “Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested.”

Regarding the second question, a deal struck in ancient Celtic society was binding and active even in future incarnations.  But modern contract law would have us believe a pledge is as good as the attorneys who defend it.

And regarding question three, are we looking at a movie of the plays, a movie of the actors who assembled the folios… or a movie of the mysterious sale and the shrouded secret buyer, who plots to undo all we know, all we ever knew, and all we might learn… by creating a videogame that pitches our cognitive all against a torrent of AK-47 wielding, cockroach-like warriors, who inhabit a shadowy labyrinth of caves, in a dark, rocky island, in a lake of lava, on a collapsing star, swirling into the event horizon of a monstrous dark hole, at the center of an exploding universe?

Shakespeare might quote himself (with a nod from Bacon): “When we are born we cry that we are come to this stage of fools!”

READ MORE: http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2013/sep/03/university-of-london-plan-sell-shakespeare-plays

The Arms Are Fair When The Intent Of Bearing Them Is Just

Official White House Photo by Pete Souza 

President Barack Obama meets with his National Security Staff to discuss the situation in Syria, in the Situation Room of the White House, Aug. 30, 2013. From left at the table: National Security Advisor Susan E. Rice; Attorney General Eric Holder; Secretary of State John Kerry; and Vice President Joe Biden.

“The armourers, accomplishing the knights, with busy hammers closing rivets up,
 give dreadful note of preparation.”  Richard III, Act V, scene 3.

Israel’s response to Obama’s surprise move to delay or even possibly cancel air strikes, highlights their concern that Obama’s administration is looking soft on Assad after accusing him of killing hundreds of people with chemical weapons.  They are concerned that this may embolden Assad’s backers in Tehran to develop nuclear arms.  Israeli officials have said that Israel is prepared to strike Iran alone because they are unsure Washington can be trusted.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday that the nation was “serene and self-confident”, while the Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal renewed a call to the “international community” to halt Assad’s violence in Syria.

The Saudi monarchy shares the Jewish state’s concern that neither may now look with confidence to Washington to curb what Riyadh sees as a drive by its Persian rival to dominate the Arab world.

A government source said the prime minister told his cabinet on Sunday: “We are in the middle of an ongoing event. It is not over and there are sensitive and delicate issues at play.

“There is no room here for individual comments,” he said. “I’m asking you not to behave irresponsibly when it comes to our ally, just so you can grab a fleeting headline.

“There is a man in nominal control of Syria who is using chemical weapons against civilians. That has to be stopped,” declared Netanyahu

That sentiment is echoed in Riyadh.  Abdullah al-Askar, chairman of the foreign affairs committee in the Shoura Council, said that U.S. strikes should aim to end Assad’s rule.

Askar, who said he was speaking in a personal capacity, told Reuters: “If the attack is just a punishment to show that the international community will not stand for chemical attacks, Assad will just remain in his place and do his bloody work… he second scenario is to finish the business.”

William Maclean, Matt Spetalnick, Alastair Macdonald – SNF edit

READ MORE:

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/09/02/us-syria-crisis-israel-saudi-insight-idUSBRE9810CE20130902

“A S**t-Load of Life”

(from an original story published by The Guardian)

QUESTION 2: How did life begin?

Four billion years ago, something started stirring in the primordial soup. A few simple chemicals got together and made biology – the first molecules capable of replicating themselves appeared. We humans are linked by evolution to those early biological molecules. But how did the basic chemicals present on early Earth spontaneously arrange themselves into something resembling life? How did we get DNA? What did the first cells look like? More than half a century after the chemist Stanley Miller proposed his “primordial soup” theory, we still can’t agree about what happened. Some say life began in hot pools near volcanoes, others that it was kick-started by meteorites hitting the sea.

I asked Stanley Miller how long it would take for the primordial soup to create the Amino Acid chains that are the antecedents of organic life.  I met him while working on a documentary about the evolution of human uniqueness.  “Nine million years,” he declared with absolute confidence. “It really doesn’t talk that long,” he added.  When I left the meeting I was more than certain that Miller was equally as confident that there was a s**t-load of other organic life out there in the universe.