the devil in the deep blue sea

source

 

On Friday, November 30, 2018, the Trump administration approved sound-wave blast oil surveys in the Atlantic Ocean. (Read: Trump allows oil surveys that conservationists say harm whales, dolphins).

The permits officially allow the harassment of ocean wildlife.

The Reuters news report is incomplete; it does not mention the much greater threat to all humans that rely on marine wildlife for survival; seismic blasts affect the most critical ocean life-forms: zooplankton.

Deafening Blasts Kill these Ocean Animals for miles, reports National Geographic:

“healthy populations of fish, top predators, and marine mammals are not possible without viable planktonic productivity.”

The Trump administration just gave the official go-ahead for the extermination of the marine life that humans and animals on the planet rely upon for survival.

This is the “suicide by starvation” policy.

It is on top of the “genocide by plastic pollution” and “mass-murder by sound” policy.

And these, of course, are on top of the “hunger-strike by Scorched Earth” strategy.

How will homo sapiens react to this latest chilling act of suicidal, homicidal, mass-murdering mania?

Christmas shopping and decorations? Adding a personal little touch to the festive sleepwalking dance of Homo Consumericus towards a merry Death? Praying for a miracle? Denial? Escapism?

The “most intelligent” species on the planet is committing mass suicide. Enabling, supporting and enthusiastically cheering its own executioners:

“Ave, Imperator, morituri te salutant”…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Canis Sapiens

 

-Did you see anything?

-Not yet; You?

-No… I’m dying for a beer.

-Water.

The single-word answer carried a disapproving undertone, she thought.

-Beer!  She insisted.

-One thing we’re never going to share.

They had discussed it several times before.

-Some do drink alcohol, she rebutted half-heartedly, just to show she wasn’t tired. He didn’t tire that easy.

-It’s nonsensical; I don’t believe they enjoy it. Corrupted, uncultivated primitives, he added with contempt. “Mimicking human vices doesn’t make one more human”, he repeated his favorite dictum of Alpha. 

-You find it degrading? She asked after a few moments of silence.

-No. Just irrational. He answered without too much emphasis like he was stating an observation by a distanced, objective third party.

-I understand, she said. And on a non-communicative mode, she thought: “He is so advanced”. What she meant, internally, on a deeper level, was “He is sp wise, sophisticated, superb”. She was in awe of him.

This inner elation stayed with her for several kilometers.

Their vehicle ran out of fuel about an hour and a half earlier. They were walking on the cracked crust of soil towards the North-West. A while yet to reach the source they had detected.

-There’s something, he said, after several minutes had passed. She hadn’t seen it yet. She would sense it much later, as always. But she saw it through him.

-Energy? She asked, half-certain.

He confirmed it. He was sure about the thermal emission, the energy signal was loud and clear. They picked up their pace a bit, calculating their resources. They had to preserve them, in case there was difficulty.

She felt him getting ready beside her. She went through the routine as well. The two of them together were quite formidable. They had managed more than fine till now. She wasn’t worried about what they would face anymore.

Their coordination was almost perfect. It was their advantage; that, and the element of surprise they caused, especially when the full nature of their relationship, and its special, combined, ability, was revealed to the opponents. Not that there were many left: it was a new continent, sparsely populated; it felt vast once more after centuries of becoming smaller and crowded. Annihilation had been almost total there. But the primitives caused problems. Naturally.

After the inspection, she could feel her adrenal glands accelerating. She concentrated her intensity, directing it inwards, cumulating her own part, storing her strengths as tight as possible. Positive panoply, no leaking cracks. She sharpened the communication-reaction time to minimum. They were repeating their secret check ritual, the signals, cues and passwords, the by-pass commands, the image-symbols, the colors and the clicks, the super-processed codes they had created and perfected together. Their armory. Exclusive and impenetrable by others, on a unique undetectable randomly changing frequency.

They stopped transmitting at once, with the optimistic color-mark that affirmed readiness status 100%. They remained in maximum alertness phase. O.K. All was alright. O.K., O.K., O.K. Beryllium green background, so rare in the natural environment, the characters blinking against it in warm orange-gold. It was her idea, a stroke inspired by her name. It flashed one last time on the consciousness screens.

And then they saw together, almost the same instant, the station.

The red paint of the tank was flaking. They calculated it at ten thousand gallons. Half-hidden under a torn, makeshift tarpaulin. Six ground vehicles, two of them pods, one haulage truck, three all-terrain pickups. A two-story shed of tin and clay. A gyrocopter with its rotors folded away. Typical desert settlement. Nobody outside.

They positioned themselves to take bearings. “How many? – thirteen – dog? – No – should be easy so  – yes – let’s go – OK”

She took the thin insulating coverall off, rolled it up in a small ball in her hand and threw it in the helmet. She left that on the ground, locked. Then she removed the brainwave amplifier off his neck, left it next to the helmet, covered them both with their rucksacks and put four pieces of petrified mud on each end. 

They walked slowly towards the shed, with relaxed, long strides. The rotorcraft seemed in good nick. Relatively new conversion, nothing special: double four-wing rotors vertically mounted, double directional turbines bolted horizontally on the tail. Rubber tires on the simple landing gear. Good job efficiently done, nothing new.  Primitive technology, average mechanical and engineering craftsmanship.

They went in through the wooden door. Nine women, four men. No immediate reactions.

She turned her attention to the natural leader. Constructor. He was glistening with sweat, bare-chested apart from a hand-sewn leather vest; he sat drinking dark frothy beer at a low table to her right with a tall lanky bald youngster. A big redhead was moping up the plastic surface behind the counter. She had crude tattoos on her arms and a pierced bottom lip.

Her escort attracted the usual looks and unspoken comments as always.

She nodded a greeting, took two units out of her pocket and placed them on the rudimentary bar. “Water and beer,” she said to the woman. Her slit-eyed antipathy failed to surprise or involve Beryl. She leaned back and enjoyed the drink, turning her back to the bar. The beer was unripe, bitter and cold; she welcomed the acrid taste, pleasantly raw and prickly against her dry throat. Almost as good as real, sharp, fresh lemonade or berry wine. Cal drank noisily, sucking the water from the single-use styro, clucking his tongue and flapping his lips. Then he sat down, acting his docile subservient role to perfection. He even burped. She suppressed a spontaneous smile. He was playing the stupid slave so convincingly. They exchanged a mute joke between them, in private frequency. But there was no telenergy evident in the room apart from theirs. Their stealth communiqués were undetected, their status not in danger of disclosure.

The leader was watching her with a wince. She turned to face him directly. “I need fuel,” she said, in a neutral tone of voice. “We didn’t hear a craft,” the man said, eyeing her body up at leisure before he finally focused on her face. His head was crooked to one side, open-mouthed, salivating tongue visible through his flabby lips. “Look to your heart’s content,” she thought. “Not with you, anyway”.

-I ran out a while back.

-How much?

-Two thousand liters.

The mechanic looked as if he was thinking about it. Behind the glasses, she studied his face. Wrinkled red skin, thin yellow hair, faint blue eyes. His voice, with a distant southern accent, fitted the rough exterior.

“Marco,” he asked without turning his eye away “do we have what the lady wants?”

Somebody shouted, unseen in the dim far end of the shed; “if she has what we need”. He howled like a coyote. The men laughed. Cal lied down, seemingly relaxed. He yawned wide and shook his head. “How much?” asked Beryl. She didn’t seem to notice the hungry looks. “Three thousand, if you’re any good” replied the man in the tatty vest. A big clumsy tattoo of a winged rattlesnake stretched from his wrist right up his left arm and shoulder.

-I don’t.

With a motionless face, looking straight at him, she unbuttoned the top of her shirt with one hand, in a way that suggested she had done this before a thousand times for the same reason. He could see it now, the bright red “C” reflecting the hazy light, at the base of her neck. He laughed a hard, short, nasty laughter. “Tattoo,” he said sneering, with a smug, knowing expression. “We might be wastelanders, but you don’t look a genuine infective. I’ve risked more Cs than you’ve ever hit on your pretty little neck, missy”.

“I’m not interested in how you choose to die” she replied, glass-faced, in a flat, unimpressed voice, just as an infective would answer a non-believer. Patiently, without bitterness, having accepted the facts. “You have a detector, use it. And three thousand is double what I paid at the Aftercity station”. She paused as if she was calculating the price in her mind. “Two thousand for a thousand liters. All I have”. She let the packet fall on the bar next to her. Cal scratched his ear.

“Give the lass another beer, Jenny,” said the engineer. “Two thousand, then, if that’s all you have. And five hundred for the transport”. He looked bored but continued: “Bodi, bring the detector. Just for curiosity’s sake…” The gangly youth stood up and went to a cupboard on the wall opposite the bar. The older man gave her a mean, knowing look before he gulped the rest of his beer in one go, licked his lips and stood up heavily; he retched and walked towards her with a broadening smile, thumbs in belt. A grey plastic Smith and Wesson automatic was hanging low from his right hip in an open holster.

-Would be a shame though. Been quite a while since I had an aftercity broad. He winked. Where to, Ms. C?”

“Migration,” she said, following Bodi’s movements. The detector was an up-to-date model, multi-compatible. Cal was watching, ready.

-I’m registered, Mechanic.

She took the device and slipped it around her wrist, very calmly. She saw him behind her visor, looking at the small screen.

-Seven-five-three-six-b. Check it out. And I don’t think you can afford to be so rude to customers out here. Migrants are rare so early in the season.

The man glanced at the reading. Cal scratched his left ear, twice, and immediately the thirteen wasters collapsed on the floor without a sound.

It was so easy after all; like stealing sweets from babies, as the old cliché went. Telembolism. When they’d wake up, two days later, they wouldn’t remember much. They’d find currency creds on the bar and two thousand liters less in the tank. The transporter’s homing device would return it to its base like a loyal horse to its stable. One man, in particular, would discover a brand new shiny “C” on the base of his neck, fake and indelible, like hers, but his registered with the central memory bank. He would have to burn his skin off with a laser gun or cut his throat to get rid of it. 

“Sad fossil,” thought Beryl looking at the motionless body sprawled on the dirty lino floor. “Guns can’t help you in your burrow. So much has changed after the Blaze…if only you could, too”.

 

The primitives had reasons to hate the After-citizens; they didn’t belong to the new continent. They had stayed behind, in the past, captives within a futile mindset of adversity, bigotry and mistrust, stagnant in their immature misunderstanding of what ‘survival of the fittest’ meant. Rendered obsolete in a world where their way of thinking had finally become redundant; contrary to what was considered to be the key to success before, power-struggle, aggression, the ‘killer instinct’, after the reversal of facts and fortunes that, ironically, came about as a direct result of this archaic mentality, advocates of violence and dominance found themselves in the fringe of humanity; they became the new misfits themselves, overtaken by history, protozoan vestige remains in the 23rd century. Their isolated tribes were decaying fast, watching life, hope, change, pass them by, the inevitable approaching. The end of inhumanity. They were losing every contest they inflicted upon themselves and the few others who came in contact with them, sinking faster and faster into insignificance. Soon they’d be gone but not forgotten, their way of living recorded for posterity as a pathway to extinction, rejected,  inconceivable by the new species that was replacing them on the scarred face of the new Earth.

Only those among them who managed to cross the barriers of their own kind and evolve would be able to find a home and a future in this bruised but optimistic time of regeneration. The remainder would die out in the deserts, like trilobites clinging on the rock face. Extinct bottom feeders in the harsh museum of the wastelands, buried in a bizarre riverbed of history that had dried out.

The primitive man. The failed species that polluted, killed, exploited, humiliated and enslaved all else in its wake, was slowly but surely disappearing from New Eden. The Blaze had changed everything. Like a forest fire, it came to renew the pastures for the next mutation. Growth was sprouting again, tiny, imperceptible, feeble, but potentially greener, stronger, purer than before. Altered…

 

…………………………………………………………………………………………..

 

Two hours later they were crossing the northeast borders, the vehicle bio-refueled for six more days of travel, enough to reach the green-power grid. Beryl was stroking the dog’s velvety ears and the powerful neck, his short ochre coat that was streaked with steel-blue stripes; Cal was half asleep. His large, dark snout was beginning to grey. The Great Dane was eight years old, middle-aged already. In the pro-revival age, he wouldn’t have lived much longer. Now, she knew they would be together for at least twenty years more. And then, they’d be reunited, after his cloning and memory transfer. Like mother and Cal’s ancestor. His quiet strength and wisdom enriched, his old self in a new body, his own choice, like an autonomous, equal citizen. 

Humans and Canis Sapiens like Cal had come a long way after the Blaze. There weren’t many like them, but as years went by their numbers were increasing. In the hard times, humanity again relied on the dog, not merely for survival, but for another language, too. It had happened before. Long, long time ago. But now it was different. There were no masters or servants in this new relationship.

They exchanged sleepy thoughts, as the car found its way in the dusk, navigating by satellite like the ships of the past sailed by the stars. Like the old time. Long, long time ago. But different.

The night would be starry later, but Beryl wouldn’t see the sky. Not for real, anyway. 

“Would be good to meet a man like us, Cal,” she said in silence. “Now that we have crossed the desert, I don’t want us to be on our own anymore”.

“It will be good,” he said in his familiar, reassuring way. Beryl had grown up. She would have a good family.

-You might have a daughter and a son later; before I’m too old to run with them. Like we used to run together at the Ocean when I was a pup.

-“It will be good” she repeated. She’d find someone. She knew. She’d find him, or he’d find her, in the reconstructed meta-societies of the west.

-“We’ll meet him together, won’t we Cal? If I’m lucky, he’ll be like us. We’ll be great, the three of us. And if our children are empathic, you’ll have so much to teach them…You have a lot to teach them anyway”.

The big dog purred with contentment, curled up more comfortably and sighed in agreement. It would be so beautiful again by the Ocean…

Beryl closed her eyes behind the visors; they fell asleep.

She didn’t really need to close her eyes to sleep: it was just a muscle habit, the eyelids needing their rest. They both could ‘see’ with all their teleactive senses, but she had never seen him in the old way –only the picture generated in her brain by the stimuli transferred via sensors in her visor. The colors – all the colors of the rainbow and then some, beyond the human spectrum – existed only in her mind, not in her physical eyes. Blind. But it didn’t matter: she’d never known what it is to ‘see’ otherwise, without telenergy. She was a Blaze child. Both of them were, in a way: illuminated. Different. Changelings.

The twenty-third-century world was finding new therapies for its wounds. It went on, resolutely, turning scars into miracles. Beauty was constantly reshaping, changing conceptual and subconscious meanings, becoming an acceptance of differences within the peaceful coexistence of all lifeforms on the planet. A new interspecies and intercultural language that can be used by all logical beings brings cataclysmic change. The Blaze was the new Flood. The feared worse had come and passed. Sentient beings were finding new dimensions in understanding, friendship and compassion, transforming their traumatized epidermis like a snake sheds old skin, building their own ‘unnatural’ spring from ruins, memories and painful lessons learned.   

Humans and dogs were continuing their symbiosis, surviving the Blaze. Interdependent, altered, mutated, but at last, equal.

Communication was not based solely on speech and technology anymore. Thinking species on planet Earth were emerging from their hermetically isolated compartments of infancy, a step above primitive, finally; getting to know each other for the first time, beyond their superficial differences; developing, evolving, conquering an endless new universe beyond genetic borders, without even leaving their ancestral homes. It was no longer necessary to go to the stars. The stars, in a sense, had come to Earth; like a meteoric shower, the inevitable blast had devastated everything; but it also sowed incredible, fascinating seeds. Who among the doom prophets of the twentieth century would have thought?

 

Life was bursting out of its shell after the ultimate destruction, fragile yet powerful, sparkling, instinctive, full of visions and possibilities anew, sublime in its otherness. Different from anything that went before, innocent to anything that laid ahead. Dreaming, creating the sensitive foundations of a new opportunity, grateful for having been given a new chance…

 

 

(from the ‘Diaries of an alternative future’ by Gaz Mirovski)

notes

Alpha Mutant (2244-2259): the first completely empathic canine, author of the “Thoughts of Alpha”. A Labrador-Great Dane cross originally known as ‘Orson’.

Telenergy: advanced form of interactive telepathy. Appeared first as a mutation; subsequently discovered that it can be induced, enhanced and taught to sentient infants, human, primate, canine, feline, cetacean, certain birds and co-habitual insects (bees & ants).

Telembolism: temporary unconsciousness caused by a highly-focused, brain-generated electric current, transmitted via telenergy, resembling an initial phase of non-fatal cardiac arrest, followed by a deep coma. Full consciousness returns after a varying period of time; short-term memory is moderately affected.

Wastelanders: primitive people, descendants of the humans who survived the nuclear blast in unaffected areas of the globe.

Cs: contagious radioactive carriers permanently marked with the letter “C” and registered with the World Health Service. Classified in a central memory bank with an individual number-letter combination and carrying a subcutaneous microchip.

Teleactive senses: the seventeen so-far known, telenergy-activated senses (vision, hearing, smell, taste, touch, thermo-awareness, tissue-awareness, vestibular/balance sense, kinaesthetic sense, electro-sense, echo-location, magneto-sense, pressure detection, light-polarisation sense, intuition, time sense, space/distance sense) of human and non-human species.

After-citizens: inhabitants of the cities built after the Blast.

Migrants: after-citizens in a phase of voluntary displacement.

Pro– and meta-anabiotic era: the time period before and after the mass-cloning that preserved the human and other species on planet Earth.

Empathic: a third-level telepathic/ psychic individual, with a highly-developed, tele-active energy field of reception and transmission utilising all known senses and capable of voluntary synesthaesia (sense-coupling or multi-sense combinations).

Blaze: the thermonuclear explosion and the world-wide Catastrophe it caused.

May 2007

a nod and a reply to Harlan Ellison’s “A Boy and His Dog“

Hope is dying. Dream we must.

 

source

 

The popular saying, hope dies last? I beg to differ. It’s dreams that die last. And they only die when we do. Dreams die when the brain dies – unlike hopes. The sentient animal dreams. “Hopes” are conditions: expecting, projecting, wishful thinking. Dreams are unconditional, infinite possibilities.

We have no way of knowing if other sentient animals experience what we define as “hope” – until, maybe, one day we can communicate with dolphins and ask them some important questions hoping they answer. We can merely hope they answer. They might refuse to communicate, or they might respond in a non-informative way, like telling us to mind our own business. Would you blame them for that?

Animals do learn from past events and they do get conditioned to react to similar situations in similar ways – we call it learning, experience, training. But that is not hope. Although it would offer humans more actual reason to be optimistic, if we did manage to learn from history much better…

Humans always imagined Eutopias , Dystopias & Utopias. There is some confusion about these terms: Eutopia (from Greek “eu” = good + “topos” = place) is a realistic ideal situation, a society that we can actually work towards to and make happen. (Eutopia is not pronounced like Utopia in Greek, but Eftopia). Utopia is also a good place, but it’s unrealistic: a perfect state that is not feasible.  Heaven. A Paradise. Pessimists would say that a Eutopia is Utopian, as human nature is imperfect. Optimists would think that even Utopias are feasible – hence the confusion between these two (remember The Field of Dreams?) Realists would say that every improvement is Eutopian – a step closer to that Good Place. Everyone agrees on what Dystopia means: a very negative version of the future that we will end up in, as a result of bad choices, if we don’t work to avoid it.

The belief that human society is always improving, that there is always progress, is a particularly persistent form of optimism that is obviously unwarranted. We are accelerating towards a Dystopian future that is just a few decades away, at most. Civilizations flourish, reach an apex, decline and often entirely disappear. (According to the Great Filter theory, “intelligent” life may self-destruct before it reaches capability for interstellar travel). The industrial civilization, for all its accomplishments and improvements in quality and expectancy of life, is sleepwalking towards extinction.

Hope is dying. 

Powerful examples of thought-provoking Dystopian concepts in literature and film are Aldus Huxley’s Brave New World (1932), George Orwell’s Animal Farm (1945) and 1984 (1949), Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 (1953), Anthony Burgess’ A Clockwork Orange (1962), Philip K. Dick’s The Man In the High Castle (1962) and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968, the book which gave us the classic Blade Runner), Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse – 5 (1969), Alan Moore & David Floyd’s V for Vendetta (1988-89), Susan Collins’ The Hunger Games (2008) and a personal favorite, Equilibrium (2002).

Some great Utopias (in the Eutopian sense) include the most influential Plato’s Republic (c 380 BC), H. G. Wells’ A Modern Utopia (1905), and one of my most favorite science fiction novels, Arthur C. Clark’s Childhood’s End (1953).

Up until recently, we thought that non-human animals only live in the now – we were wrong. Not only some animals remember the past but they can also plan for the future. Undoubtedly, some intelligent sentient animals are self-aware and they do dream. We don’t know exactly if they can imagine the future like we do or how far ahead they can plan for, but there is evidence to suggest that some great apes do make future plans; of course, many animals dream in a rudimentary, elementary, involuntary sense.

We don’t just dream in that involuntary sense – we consciously, intentionally, assertively, proactively imagine better realities and better futures.  We aspire, wish for, yearn, visualize, envision. And engage in wishful thinking –  daydreaming – escapism, and often delude and convince ourselves that our hopes are justified – even if and especially when they aren’t…

We dream because the Eros Principle (the life instinct) seeks joy. It motivates us to create, preserve, perpetuate life. Our brain plays out scenarios – wish fulfillment – that we get pleasure from. It plays out soothing scenarios but also anxiety dreams, or nightmares, reactions to negative experiences, tension-release mechanisms. We don’t exactly understand the purpose of involuntary dreams, but they aren’t the subject of this post anyway.

The other dreams, the visions, the active, positive, creative wonderings of our imagination, the Voyages to a Good Place, are the ones we can make sense of; they represent the kind of future and improved reality we want ourselves and our children to live in; those conscious, intentional dreams, are the stuff inventions, breakthroughs in science, technology and society are made of; yet at the moment of conception, when the first flight of fancy or novel idea is born in the mind, we don’t know if they are realistic, if they have any chances of ever becoming true, if they could indeed lead to something better or not; still, the mere fact that we dream those dreams excites us and makes us happy. It makes us optimistic. It gives us hope.

So it’s dreams that offer hope, not the other way around.

And when reality proves that hope is not justified, what we are left with is still -dreams. Ideas are still there in the mind, in a dormant state, waiting to happen. Especially now, with the virtual reality of the cyberworld in place, alternative realities are part of our everyday tangible reality. We create them just to escape or as models of a better tomorrow. Even escapism can shape the future – with technologies that allow us to access and sense, experience the virtual world as if it was the real one. Science fiction that started with the stories of Jules Verne and long before him, thousands of years ago, with primitive and early humans casting their mind as far and wide as the cosmos, creating Eutopias, Utopias and Dystopias with imagination alone, has become a driver of innovation, invention and science.

Dreaming shapes our world.

Scientists by definition are realists; they know, to take a prime example, the most important issue of all, that Global Warming is real; they also know for a fact that we have very slim chances of avoiding it; they don’t hope – hope alone doesn’t actually help in increasing the odds of survival. In a way, hope leads to unrealistic expectations, complacency, inaction: “Oh sure, things are looking bad, but hey, everything’s gonna be alright“. No, it’s not. That’s false hope. Things don’t work like that. If things are bad, to make them better, or simply avoid them getting worse, we need ideas to make changes happen; and actions, not hopes.

Science is determined to solve the problem because realistic, factual thought knows the human population will not do enough, will not change the way it conducts its life sufficiently fast to restore the damage. There are too many idiotic deniers and too many insane, ignorant world-scale criminals working against humanity: lying to the public, casting doubt about research and facts, deflecting and distracting public opinion from the emergency and seriousness of the threat.

Politics and positions of influence and power attract opportunists and malignant narcissists. History is full of them and of the catastrophic carnages of war and genocides they caused. Unfortunately just as Global Warming requires massive common effort and international cooperation, there are some world leaders that are sworn to the opposite, for their own political and financial gain, their monumental lack of empathy and their ties with corporate greed. The situation is made worse because of the combined influence of religions and traditions that cultivate and propagate apathy, faith in messianic saviors and belief in miracles.

 

 

Religion trades in hopes: it sells comfort, and promises miraculous salvation; it promotes apathy and obeisance with the illusion of an afterlife where things are perfect – a future where dreams have already come true. Hey, you don’t have to get off your butt to make this life better (“do not worry about tomorrow”); all you got to do is believe without proof – have faith without evidence – do as you’re told – comply, and magically you will be rewarded – after you’re dead.

But – what about now? What about this life? OK, then, pray. Prayers will give you comfort…Meanwhile, you can “sin” all you like, be a total asshole – don’t you worry, little mortal, you will be forgiven. Go ahead, detonate nuclear bombs, destroy the world, kill millions of innocent children, abuse, murder, rape, exploit – still, you will go to heaven if you repent, so this life doesn’t matter. What kind of pay-as-you-go morality is this? Go ahead and be a total dick and a creep, a child molester even, a cruel homicidal sadist, then go to confession and the slate is wiped clean. Pope will sell you absolution. Christian ethics, Muslim morals – wonderfully elastic, ever so convenient…and deadly. Religion, conformity and consumerism formed the Axis of Evil that threatens life on Earth.

Comfort is not motivation. It reinforces optimism that things are going to be alright on their own. It’s a cop-out. It’s irrational. Pray and wait, some time prayers may be answered. Just wait, things are going to get better because they always do…but in truth, we don’t know that things are going to get better, in fact, the evidence points to the contrary. Waiting for miracles to happen or imaginary superheroes and totalitarian leaders to save us is definitely not the best survival plan. What animal senses danger and prays or hopes instead of getting out of harm’s way? only one – the most intelligent of all, as we arrogantly claim: homo sapiens, dumbed down by its own imbecilic, prehistoric invention, of a primitive psychological need born out of fear and ignorance about natural laws.

Without changes, we can’t rely on chances. We can’t just hope for a random fortunate turn of events. That would be highly illogical, in situations that actually depend on us, on action or inaction. We need to get out of our comfort zone to make things better. Keep doing the same thing and expecting different results is insane. We need effort, not wishful thinking.

In predictable fields, where we can recognize trends and make projections, it is quite possible to collect data and make educated judgments about the outcome. Some things are quite predictable. A sumo wrestler can’t possibly win the Olympic gold medal in pole-vaulting. That’s an improbability; winning the lottery is a probability, it’s just very, very unlikely, because although someone – a random person – does win the lottery quite often, the odds of it happening to you, or me – a specific person, are astronomical. Common sense (in other words, experience) and science can predict outcomes with varying degrees of accuracy. From the study of past events, facts and figures and cause and effect and natural laws, not by guessing or reading the tea leaves and the daily horoscope…

Sure, we could hope our lives away, but it would be self-destructive. When we know reality is bad and can’t get better by just hoping, without positive action hope dies. Belief without reason can make you feel better – it can be comforting: but it’s not going to make our world any better for you and your loved ones, cure AIDS or avoid catastrophe…

 

 

What realists and scientists and dreamers and inventors and creators and we all (potentially) have in common are, unsurprisingly, dreams. Ambitions. Creative thinking. Curiosity. Goals. Ideas. Ingenuity. Plans. Visions. Some of us don’t just rely on hope, expecting leaders, Lady Luck and gods to make things better: they imagine a better place, a better life, a better future; they wish for a better way, a more efficient method of achieving this or that and they act, work to find ways to invent it and make it happen. That is the value of dreams.

They could be totally unrealistic – like the idea of time travel, which is theoretically possible, but only under such unlikely conditions to make it highly improbable – or they could be totally possible. Faith promises absolute certainties without facts, proof or reason. Science deals with possibilities, facts and logic.

The distance between a better future (a Eutopia) and a bad present (not quite a terminal Dystopia, yet…but increasingly becoming one) is those possibilities and rational thought. We empirically know that there are no problems without solutions.

What we have, beyond hope, is our ability to dream a better reality and make it happen. That’s how progress is achieved. That’s how we find cures for disease. That’s how we improve living standards. Religious faith believes in gods’ will; the same “benevolence” that, according to the primitive “logic” that invented gods in man’s own image, gives cancer to innocent children.

Faith submits and subjugates us to accepting a malicious, preposterous, fatalistic concept. Humanity and rational thought revolts against it. If you could create a universe, would you punish your most innocent children for any reason – and then be such a reprehensible coward as to blame it on themselves, parents, women and “original sin”? The answer is a resounding no – human morality is much better than that. Only a capricious, vindictive sadist would do what theists accept as the work of a divine superior mind. Epicurus disposed of that absurdity more than two thousand years ago – and his logic remains irrefutable:

“Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent.  Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent.  Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil?  Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?”

So don’t despair when hope is dying. It’s only the primitive belief in fate and a  future dependent on divine will that keeps us shackled in a prehistoric dark cave, rejecting the marvel and potency of Ideas, casting doubt in our potential to shape our own present and future reality. Our history attests to the opposite. Humanism rejects the morally bankrupt concept of a superior puppet-master.

Don’t give up when everything points out to a very dark dystopia with little chance of escape. Realism is a better source for optimism –  fear kicks butt into gear. We are the product of adaptation and evolution that equipped us for survival  – with instincts, cognition, curiosity, imagination. For as long as we can dream, we grasp the possibility of a better tomorrow out of thin air and find exactly what we need to do to make it happen.

We can cure sickness – because we can dream, and act-move-work to make ideas realize a better tomorrow. We are work in progress and that in itself is wonderful. Sure, we are capable of some pretty horrible things and we’ve put ourselves and life on the planet in a very critical situation. But it’s us who did that – not Jesus or Mohammed, and that means we can correct it.

 

 

Scientists have given up hope about humanity collectively changing overnight and surviving Global Warming. Professor Stephen Hawking spoke of alternative possibilities for survival. That is realism and imagination, positive thinking and problem-solving all in one.

Scientists have given up hope because it is passive and unrealistic: educated, pragmatic thought is the opposite of that: active, inquisitive, always questioning, wondering, probing, proposing theories & hypotheses, experimenting, pushing the boundaries – not expecting that all will somehow be revealed as if by magic; conscious Dreams and plans are real and proactive. Visions and visualizations of possibilities are the opposite of passive and pathetic – they are windows of the mind to an alternative universe that we could arrive at by a change of course – making the invention of solutions possible.

Hold on to that thought.

If there is a real, pressing need, intelligence, ingenuity, research, study, the prolific human brain will find a way to answer it. That is what inspiration and experimentation have been doing for thousands of years. Providing solutions to problems, old and new. After days, months, years, decades, centuries – as better tools and improved methods become available, Eureka springs into consciousness like a triumphant cascade of light – a moment of great joy and sublime sense of accomplishment.

The first step towards that progress was dreaming.

We had been looking at the moon and stars, longingly, for thousands of years. Wondering what they were. Yearning to reach them. Hope alone would have never gotten us there.

What took us there was the dream, the initial Erotic hunger and thirst: falling in love with an idea. Interacting with the objects of desire: knowledge, life, the universe and everything – every question, every enigma, every knowable fact, every conceivable answer, every reachable conclusion, discovery, frontier…at first flirting with it, pondering on it; then probing at it, embracing its possibilities, visualizing the journey and the outcome; nurturing, feeding and keeping the dream alive, no matter how long it requires; growing and expanding the thought process to fruition; examining, learning and memorizing every step on the map along the way, working with facts and tools and figures; artfully applying old and new techniques towards finding the best route to make the voyage possible, to arrive at the destination, give birth to and unveil a new reality, create a new state of existence.

This is what I meant by Eutopian voyager: the journey bridging the distance between imagination and existence, between Eros  (the yearning) and materialization. It’s what makes us special as a species. The dream is the first step, even before we prepare to set sail. That precious beginning, like a little spark in the darkness.

There is a magnificent moment in the masterpiece of Stanley Kubrick & Arthur C. Clarke, 2001: A Space Odyssey dedicated to The Dawn of Homo Sapiens, accompanied by the truly mindblowing orchestral introduction of Richard Strauss’ Thus Spoke Zarathustra. It is that split second, that the thinking mind grasps the possibility, the first glimpse of an idea that begins to form. You can feel the spark igniting, the glorious instant of change that made an entirely different history possible. An alternative universe was born at that very fraction of a second, the burst of an impulse that generated a universe that includes humanity. The start of an epic journey to discovery and becoming. The conscious dream that transformed our distant ancestors from thinking apes to sapient humans.

It doesn’t matter if hope dies. It’s a good thing: letting go of the superstition that things can improve if we remain fatalistic, passive witnesses of history, by some kind of an outside miracle, means coming of age as a reasoning, intelligent species. Our very humanity is born out of that brave, defiant, magnificent risk of trying different things, overcoming obstacles, pushing boundaries, becoming ourselves, protagonists in our lives, rather than just following a predetermined track.

Empathy, Realism, Imagination, Ingenuity are far better propositions for individual and collective improvement, rather than relying on hopes; they have often been false. They let us down more times than not. Hopes are mortal during our lifetimes, especially if we put our faith in gods and god-like despots, instead of pragmatic, hard-working, fact-checking, inquisitive, problem-solving, mature rational thought.

Giving up faith, empowering our minds, opening our eyes to reality, embracing aspiration and action is our only source of hope: Eutopian change for the better. It means we grow up to take control of our fate and future, instead of putting our trust in Pandora or some other imaginary benefactor. It signifies we care enough for ourselves and each other to take responsibility for our actions, instead of blaming what happens on divine will. Caring for each other and the future generations are what makes us humane, our strength, our heritage and our legacy. Isolation, lack of cooperation, hostility, are paving a highway to death and destruction.

Emancipation from servitude to a creator is the prerequisite of what we call Freedom. Religion & free will are mutually exclusive. The concept of a divine master endowing us with free will is oxymoronic and immature. The very reason we arrived at two minutes to midnight for life as we know it, is blind faith: sheeple mentality, religious traditionalism, patriarchal inequality, injustice, prejudice, division between the favorite sons and the children of lesser gods, between the master’s flock and the infidels, between us and them; exhausting the planet’s resources as if Earth was made for us to consume because the Bible says so; removing control of reproduction from women; believing that we have a better world to go to after death; replacing reason and philosophy (Eros, lust for knowledge) with a sterile, debilitating worship for tribal totems and anachronistic taboos; being reared and conditioned by churches to follow and obey mass-murdering tyrants like the faithful follow their tyrannical, whimsical gods.

What we define as “humane” is the very essence of morality that is a natural product of evolution, instead of god-made: empathy, compassion, communication, mutual support and teamwork, tolerance, understanding, are essential attributes of social species; we depend on these evolutionary qualities for survival and happiness, instead of obeying commands to avoid punishment and gain favor with a supernatural despot; that servile proposition is the very essence of corruption, it’s a transaction instead of ethics…

What we term as heroic is altruism, the sacrifice of self for the greater good: the very same natural product of evolution that is innate in most social animals; we aid and protect each other, shed our individual lives to save one another and the young – no different than any other mammal; they all display these instincts; they didn’t get them from faith, churches, commandments or biblical teachings, but from the common genetic code of synergistic behavior members of social species carry in their DNA.

Already ancient Greek thought, although still religious, realized that hope is not enough, prayer alone can’t provide solutions – action can: “Syn Athena kai heira kinei”  – pray to the goddess Athena (to save you from drowning), but also use your arms to swim. Philosophy thousands of years ago arrived at the conclusion that there is no imaginary friend in the sky – and then patriarchal religion spread like wildfire imprisoning human consciousness to this day, poisoning the human mind since childhood, trying to keep us controlled in the pens of organized churches to serve the interests of the Elite masterclass. As a result, billions live in poverty, die of preventable diseases, are denied their human rights and deprived of education, marginalized, exploited, robbed of opportunities and real participation in the decision-making about their lives, even in the world’s wealthiest economies.

What we need in this critical time is to keep the dream and our humanity alive. Reject the mental slavery that keeps humanity following the twin sirens of death and destruction to its peril. Religion is a death-wish. It’s the enemy of the life force – the Eros principle; an obsession with the afterlife at the expense of this one.

Corporate greed has been using the same propaganda techniques as religion, to establish its world domination; it has used the hypnotic influence of blind faith to manipulate the public, keep voters uninformed, deluded and powerless to determine their own future.

Hopes are dying and our dreams are being transformed into nightmares. The old vampires of fascism and tyranny are rising and baying for blood.

We have to resist and survive. We have to unite, organize and act: work together.

Keep Life Going. Life is its own reward.

Plant many, many baby tomorrows. Dream as if your life depends on it – it does. Save the forests. Preserve the future.

When agents of Evil crawl out of darkness to kill Hope, what we have left is stronger: Dreams. Ideas. Human values.      

 

*Συν Αθηνά και χείρα κίνει

Escape to Mars

 

Mars is in the news again.

NASA’s InSight spacecraft is on course to attempt a landing on November 26. Update: InSight Lands Safely on Mars – Congratulations, humankind!

For some, colonizing the red planet or the moon is our only chance. For others, it’s an impossible dream because of our biology.

Mars has always excited the human imagination. The planet nearest to Earth has featured endlessly in fantasy & science fiction, both literature and film.

Until The Martian (a great science & survival movie – but without much heart…) there was talk of a “movie curse” – a “box office curse” on Mars-related pictures.

Curiously, there has also been a curse on Edgar Rice Burroughs (“probably the most influential writer in the entire history of the world”, according to Ray Bradbury, at least); his novels are still as popular as ever, but despite the financial success of some of their cinematic adaptations, like the Tarzan series, they failed on the critical reception front. Victims of artistic snobbery against “pulp” fiction.

The huge-budget Disney project of a Burroughs novel set on Mars was, therefore, a double-whammy gamble against these odds; and fail it did, financially, monumentally so, yet only just, because its cost was so gigantically overblown it was a mathematical impossibility to recoup. Still, the film grossed a whopping, staggering, gargantuan 300 million USD worldwide, against a jaw-dropping production and marketing combined costs of $350 million… to break even, it would have to generate worldwide tickets sales of more than $600 million, a height reached by only 63 films in the entire history of moviemaking…it was a tall order but it was also colossal mismanagement, not lack of merit, that caused its failure.

Just give it a bit more time though…and it might just get there. Fantasy and sci-fi fans haven’t stopped loving, downloading, renting, watching, rewatching, blogging, talking, writing about it and defending it:

I’m talking of course about the awe-inspiring picture that’s adored by countless lovers of escapism, that totally wild visual feast, that cinematic riot of a space-opera-western-sci-fi-magic, that thrilling action-fairytale-adventure unlike no other, that mesmerizing, marvelous and uniquely Barsoomian, otherworldly romantic saga…

the one and only

John Carter

 

 

The one movie that most fantasy aficionados want to see a sequel of before we die. An absolutely No 1 wet dream when it comes to movie bucket lists; and so heartbreaking that will never (?) happen, as John Carter has become box office poison, judged solely on how much money the studio lost on it, instead of the absolutely insane number of people who did see it, loved it and can’t have enough it. Yeah, that’s Hollywood, folks…Maybe it will change its mind yet…The film has all the markings of an underappreciated classic. And I think it will be favorably judged in years to come, by cinematic history, as the instincts of its objective viewers have already exonerated it and shown its detractors to be wrong.

 

 

It’s the moviegoers that are always the final decider, judge and jury of motion pictures. Just read what they have to say: the film critics who bashed it must have been watching a different picture – the consensus from those who did not believe the naysayers but formed their own opinion reads like “wow, what an absolutely stunning, surprising, mind-blowingly wonderful treat of a movie”… Disney studio executives made abysmally stupid errors in the marketing and promotion of the film despite the mostly excellent initial reviews…and why didn’t they call it Princess of Mars – what was wrong with Burroughs’ original title? it would have definitely made a big difference at the box office…

 

 

The -unimaginatively if not downright male-chauvinistically-named John Carter didn’t pretend to be arthouse, a vehicle of philosophical musings about the cosmos or an auteur director’s masterful commentary about the human condition. Its job was to offer one and a half hour of exhilarating entertainment, a host of fantastical creatures and adventures in imaginary worlds – and that it does pretty damn well, with a solid cast, great storytelling, memorable characters, fantastic atmosphere, beautiful music and stunning visuals. So well, in fact, that I haven’t been able to dismiss it ever since it first won me over; it’s still alluring and enjoyable every single time, archetypal fantasy at its best. And, needless to add, for me it’s The Princess of Mars and John Carter – that’s how I think of it.

 

 

Every other genre picture that came before it, from Star Wars to Indiana Jones and Avatar (James Cameron admitted as much), had borrowed, copied from and was inspired directly by Burroughs’ iconic novels and the fantasy comics they generated. John Carter should have been more successful in cinemas than Avatar – not just because it’s a better movie than the much-hyped Avatar, but also because it is the original article while Cameron’s is a derivative “white savior” messianic pastiche epic…(basically, a copycat of Dances with Wolves set on another planet). John Carter does not save Barsoom – he is saved by it: “Fifty million miles apart, and no way to bridge the gap, no way to return my body and my soul to their true home“, his demoralized spirit and hungry heart having found new reasons to live and dream on Mars…But Avatar had the hype, the famous director, the better marketing and better studio management behind it…

 

 

John Carter is a back to the roots movie that just grows on you and involves you with its authenticity and old-fashioned cinematic magic; just like “magic” its appeal is never quite explicable yet it feels true; this is the stuff dreams are made of, silver screen dreams included: you somehow end up far more fond and nostalgic of it than other more critically acclaimed examples of the genre. The child in you finds himself or herself returning to the age of innocence and looking up in the night sky wishing that Burroughs’ Barsoomian universe was real, hoping that the Princes of Helium and her Earthman are out there living happily ever after… it’s Deja’s and John’s love story, a story made of the timeless essence myths and legends that stay with us are made of, because they speak to our souls…

 

 

Lynn Collins’ Deja Thoris is gorgeous and terrific: a fully developed, athletic-looking, fiery, scorchingly-attractive, proud, strong woman, unlike so many vapid lame adolescent cartoonish lifeless female pinup caricatures and totally feeble decorative bores in fantasy and sci-fi. She is a prototype “regal, formidable heroine who was entitled to choose for herself who she slept with despite what some men in her warlike, slave-owning culture thought to the contrary”; a woman of color, a warrior and a woman of wisdom – she is  the Regent of Science and Letters – and before you think her scant outfits are a titillation device, think again: Barsoomian culture considers clothes “unsightly pieces of cloth”. Much less prissy than we are, those Martians…

Taylor Kitsch is fresh, fit and handsome here; he was cast because Carter’s character is a military survivor – not an apologist: a heartbroken man who has seen the ugly madness of war, has lost his loved ones and is looking for inner peace; a wounded human defending the Eros Principle, not a blunt, blind instrument of death; there “was a certain damaged quality behind the eyes,” said producer Jim Morris. “There’s something a little broken.”

 

 

John Carter is an entirely likable and thoroughly believable character, a perfect match for the Princess: a genuinely decent, honorable man who is star-struck and out of his depth on Barsoom, yet clever and courageous, swiftly adapting and evolving into a positively inspiring, noble hero as the movie progresses, never a stereotypical arrogant brute macho dick: he is respectful, intelligent, sophisticated, well-read and keen to learn; as a result, the love affair of Deja and John is effective; we empathize with them and their quest – to fight against oppression and be together.

The film remains faithful to the author’s vision while avoiding the sexist pitfalls of his era. It is an empowering film for women and a true romance. Barsoom has depth and a universal, timeless message of a legitimate struggle for freedom and survival bringing people together, that it delivers very well, without beating the viewer over the head with ideological propaganda, but through the medium of unapologetically fun adventure.

 

 

From the Tharks and their thoats to the stunning cyberpunkish airships and from the Great White Apes to the most-adorable-fantasy-dog-ever, Barsoom, Deja, Helium, Tharks, Therns, Zodangas, John’s escapades on Earth and Mars, and the ingenious finale are a great spin of the yarn Burroughs crafted…

Ignore the naysayers: this is a must-see movie. One brilliant, epic, intense, addictive, joyful picture with a very original story and impressive attention to detail that draws you in and leaves you craving a sequel – with the same cast, if at all possible…Willem Dafoe as Tars Tarkas, Samantha Morton as Sola, Mark Strong as Matai Shang, Dominic West as Sab Than, Ciarán Hinds as Tardos Mors, James Purefoy as Kantos Kan, Bryan Cranston as Colonel Powell, Daryl Sabara as Edgar Rice Burroughs… and directed by Pixar’s brilliant Andrew Stanton, who would have loved to make those sequels…

 

Thark on Thoat

 

The film begins in 1881 after the sudden death of John Carter, a former American Civil War Confederate Army captain. His nephew, Edgar Rice Burroughs, attends the funeral. Following Carter’s instructions, the body is put in a tomb that can be unlocked only from the inside. His attorney hands over Carter’s personal journal to Burroughs, in the hope of finding clues explaining Carter’s cause of death.

 

John: Maybe I ought to get behind you.

Dejah: You let me know when it gets dangerous.

 

The diary goes back to 1868 in Arizona, where Union Colonel Powell arrests Carter, a civil war veteran, for refusing to join the army. Carter was trying to live a normal civilian life while Powell, aware of his military background, sought his help in fighting the Apache. Carter escapes but fails to get far with U.S. cavalry in close pursuit. After a run-in with Apaches, Carter and a wounded Powell seek shelter in a cave that turns out to be what Carter had been searching for, the ‘Spider Cave of Gold’. A Thern appears and attacks them with a knife; Carter kills him but accidentally activates the Martian’s medallion, which transports him to a ruined and dying planet, Barsoom.

 

Conceptual Art of Woola

 

Because of his different bone density and the planet’s low gravity, Carter is able to jump very high and perform feats of incredible strength. He is however captured by the Green Martian Tharks and their Jeddak (emperor) Tars Tarkas. And he is “adopted” by a Barsoomian dog-like companion, the devoted Woola. Woola is a calot: Carter saves him from a Great White Ape and “in a little experiment, wrapped an arm around Woola’s neck and began to stroke his ugly head as one would stroke the head of a dog. Woola, who’d never before experienced kindness, felt an immediate love for the Earthman, and thereafter became his loyal hound.”

 

 

Woola is intensely loyal and affectionate, fiercely protective of Carter and his family, funny, playful and has a very keen sense of smell – he can find Carter from practically anywhere. His ten (or six) legs allow him to run faster than any other creature on Mars, at an amazing 250 miles per hour. He also digs into the sand to burrow for camouflage. Technically he is a reptilian, a kind of lizard, and his three rows of shark-like teeth are extremely sharp and useful in battle.  Basically, Woola is the best pet anybody could ever wish for on Barsoom and adorably “ugly”-cute…

 

 

Elsewhere on Barsoom, the Red Martian cities of Helium and Zodanga have been at war for a thousand years. Sab Than, Jeddak of the genocidal Zodanga, armed with a powerful weapon he got from the Thern leader Matai Shang, proposes a marriage between himself and the Princess of Helium, offering a cease-fire and an end to the war. The Princess refuses, perhaps sensing it’s an evil plot, she escapes and in the process, she meets Carter; they rescue each other, then Dejah, Carter and Tarkas’ daughter Sola embark on a journey to the end of a sacred river; they seek to find a way for Carter to return to Earth, that the Martians call Jasoom. They learn about the “ninth ray”, a means of using infinite energy that can save the dying planet and is also the key to understanding how the medallion works.

 

 

 

Deja, John and Sola are attacked by Shang’s minions, the Green Martians of Warhoon. Carter and the Princess are captured but Sola manages to escape. Dejah reluctantly agrees to marry Sab Than in order to save Helium and Carter. She gives him the medallion and sends him back to Earth, but he decides to stay; he is then captured by Shang, who explains to him how the Thern overlords manipulate the civilizations of different planets. Carter escapes and returns with Sola to the Tharks to ask their help, only to discover that Tarkas has been overthrown by a ruthless, cruel brute, Tal Hajus. Tarkas, Carter, and Sola are thrown against two enormous four-armed Great White-Apes. Carter defeats them and kills Hajus. The Tharks adopt the Earthman as their new Jeddak leader.

 

 

The Thark army attacks the imperialistic Zodangans at Helium and defeats them by killing Sab Than, but Shang escapes. Carter marries Deja and becomes the prince of Helium. He decides to stay forever on Mars and throws away his medallion on their wedding night. Shang then appears and takes the opportunity to banish him back to Earth; Carter embarks on a long quest, hoping to find another medallion; after several years he appears to die suddenly and asks for the unusual funeral arrangements, as his return to Mars would leave his Earth body in a comatose state. He makes Burroughs his protector, leaving clues to him about opening the tomb.

 

 

 

“We may have been born worlds apart, but I know you, John Carter…”

“Don’t you see? Carter, I fled to find another way. You are the other way“.

 

 

Back in present time, Burroughs opens Carter’s tomb only to find it empty. A Thern who has been watching Carter disguised as a man has followed Burroughs and is about to kill him when Carter appears and kills the Thern. Carter then tells Burroughs that he never found a medallion but devised this scheme to lure one of the Therns into revealing himself. Carter takes the medallion, whispers the code and is transported back to Barsoom, to be reunited with Deja.

 

 

As the InSight is making its final precarious approach to the Red Planet, I will be roaming alongside John somewhere in Helium, with Whoola zooming back and forth chasing Martian sticks at three hundred miles an hour. Update: Woola has a new friend to play with – InSight has landed!

How about you? Wanna step onto my Spaceship and travel to Barsoom?

 

 

 

Carter to his nephew, Edgar Rice Burrows, as he turns to go into the mausoleum:

– Oh, and Ned. Take up a cause, fall in love, write a book.

Carter about to close the mausoleum:

– It’s time I went home…

 

 

85 thousand children and one journalist

 

I was watching a Faux News video of Trump.

Then news reports about the eighty-five thousand entirely preventable deaths of children under five from extreme malnutrition as a result of the US-backed war in Yemen appeared on my timeline.

“America First – Fuck the World” was a much-“liked” comment under the video.

That was a response to the US President’s “patriotic” refusal to condemn Saudi Arabia for the killing of Washington Post’s journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

Trump defended and justified his allegiance with the Saudis on the basis of the “billions and billions of dollars” that the US is getting from arms sales to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s regime and the low Saudi oil prices America is enjoying in return.

 

 

source

 

85 thousand dead children and one murdered journalist. Small price to pay.

The Trump supporters’ comments under the video hailed Trump’s patriotism, amazing intelligence and awesome Christian values, making America Great Again.

They expressed their disgust and hatred of the Press for asking him such “awful” questions.

Trump’s supporters would rather live lobotomized in one man’s no-questions-asked totalitarian Dystopia.

And, Fuck The World. White America (thinks it) will survive Climate Change…

85 thousand dead children and one murdered journalist.

Happy Thanksgiving, Trump & Co.

Look at them in the eye and tell them it was worth it.

For your Greatness.

 

source

 

 

Plant Trees for FREE

 

 

Did you know that there is a search engine that plants trees as you browse?

Ecosia does exactly that. You search the web, Ecosia plants trees. It costs you nothing, and you are helping the ecosystem while you are sitting in front of your computer.

They use their profits to plant trees where its needed the most.

And that’s not the only reason to switch to Ecosia: they stand for a better internet.

It is completely transparent (they publish their monthly financial reports, so you can see exactly where the income from your searches goes).

They are more than carbon neutral: their servers run on 100% renewable energy and every tree they plant removes 1kg of CO2 from the atmosphere.

And they are privacy friendly: they don’t sell your data to advertisers, have no third party trackers and they anonymize all searches within one week.

I switched to Ecosia already and I am very happy with its efficiency as a search engine, and the results.

Plus just looking at the tree counter going up as I browse the internet, and think of all those trees that help our children have a future on the Planet… it’s priceless. It makes me happy. It gives me a reason to dream of a better tomorrow.

If you care, please switch to Ecosia today. And share.

 

http://www.ecosia.org