nukes

In this episode of Esoteric Hollywood I break down Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey and its esoteric meaning. Included are my rebuttals of the Neo-Darwinian philosophy that underpins the narrative, as well as the exotheology mythos that it seeks to evangelize with. 2001 is a technical achievement but also a tremendous propaganda piece that concludes with gnostic transhumanism.
Intro theme: “Dream Agent” by Ariel Electron, Holeg Spies and Thierry Gotti on the “Kore Kosmou” album.

He went to fight wars for his country and his king
Of his honor and his glory, the people would sing
Ooh, what a lucky man he was
Ooh, what a lucky man he was
A bullet had found him, his blood ran as he cried
No money could save him, so he laid down and he died
Ooh, what a lucky man he was
— Emerson, Lake and Palmer, “Lucky Man” from their album “Emerson, Lake and Palmer”, released in UK November 20, 1971

As a fifth-grader my history teacher gave me and one of my classmates an extra task, one might say a riddle. I believe the reason was that there was a certain kind of rivalry between us as to who “knew more” in class. In any case in the days before the Internet, anything we thought we knew came from class or books– remember them? The question was “what does ‘e = mc2‘ mean? A couple of days later he asked us for our answers. My classmate, Richard, said he could not complete the task because he could not find the Roman numeral “e”.

Seventy years ago, the atomic bombs known as Little Boy and Fat Man were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In Hiroshima about 90,000 people were killed immediately; another 40,000 were injured, many of whom died in protracted agony from radiation sickness. Three days later, a second atomic strike on the city of Nagasaki killed some 37,000 people and injured another 43,000. Together the two bombs eventually killed an estimated 200,000 Japanese civilians. Was there really a need to create this nightmare? Did this nuclear onslaught really oblige Japan to surrender?

It’s absolutely necessary to remember what happened 70 years ago in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, see the movies from then, listen to the survivors, the hibakusa. But it isn’t enough for us to rid the world of these crimes-against-humanity weapons. And that we must.

There could have been a deal with Iran today – to the benefit of everybody – if the nuclear issue had been approached in a fair, principled and visionary manner from Day One.
If there will be no deal later, one of the most important possible agreements in contemporary international history will have been lost, the risk of war will increase and the Iranians will suffer. And the United States and the EU (here France and Germany) will move further down in terms of relative global power and up in terms of self-isolation.

Or should that be the language of ‘assumed’ power?  The United Kingdom has been swamped by examples of sneering, belittling statements issuing from the Westminster bubble over the last few months, many of the insults being directed at Scotland during the Independence Referendum and the General Election, making the Scots justifiably angry and an increasing number of the English equally embarrassed.  That these comments came from all the main parties was an illustration of how low our political system has sunk.

The 2015 Review conference of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) ended Friday May 22 in New York without a final document being accepted.
Up till the very end it seemed that the conference would produce a non-committal final document.

Armageddon avoided – just

“We don’t think the Ukrainian conflict is a nuclear crisis.”