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Women’s rights are
human rights?
Stephen Henry Lewis,
United Nations’ envoy for HIV AIDS in Africa, 2006, said:
“[Women's rights have] never been made real, and so long as men control the levers and bastions of power… it never will be real. The demeaning diminution of women is everywhere evident… where freedom from sexual violence, the right to sexual autonomy, to sexual and reproductive health, social and economic independence, and even the whiff of gender equality are barely approximated. It’s a ghastly, deadly business, this untrammeled oppression of women in so many countries on the planet.”
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Nuclear Numb Nuts
Humanness is Humbling
No matter how smart mankind becomes, our humanness keeps us humble. Whether life is about orbiting Earth in astronaut suits or trying to out-run earthquakes of 8.0 magnitude, our shit goes with us wherever we go. Literally.
On May 12, Earth shuddered in Sichuan Province, County of Wenchuan, China, leaving millions of people like you and me homeless. Rescuers flocked to the area in hopes of recovering victims from tons of debris. Hundreds were saved by these heroic efforts, even though some were trapped for as long as twenty days. But it only took a matter of days after the quake for the survivors to realize how important toilets are in these modern times. Drinking water takes first place in necessities, food second, and latrines are close behind.
Meanwhile, 1,500 kilometers away in Beijing, millions felt the tremors as they continued preparations for the upcoming 2008 Summer Olympics. The sacred, flaming torch was on its way. The primary stadium built specifically for sporting events and aptly dubbed The Bird’s Nest withstood the quivering ground—a testament to ingenious design, engineering, and technology—letting the games begin.
While misplaced persons and volunteers in Sichuan Province stared into the night sky wondering if they would awake in the morning, a merry-go-round of orbiting spacecraft maneuvered the darkness above them. NASA scientists stationed around the world were anxiously awaiting the arrival of the Phoenix Mars Lander. But the PML, unlike its steely cousins circling closer to home, is invisible to earthbound observers.
Our Species’ Brilliance
Nevertheless, according to Dr. Tony Phillips of Spaceweather dot com, there’s no shortage of visible displays of our species’ brilliance:
There are hundreds of spacecraft in Earth orbit and most are visible from your back yard—if you know when to look. We cut through the confusion by narrowing the list to a handful of the brightest and most interesting. At the moment we’re monitoring the European Space Agency’s Jules Verne robotic cargo carrier, the International Space Station (ISS), NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, the Genesis prototype space hotel, and space shuttle Discovery (launched May 31, 2008). Spaceweather dot com furnishes a ‘flyby’ schedule for the ISS, which orbits Earth 15.77 times per day. Check your flyby times and enjoy the show! Refer spaceweather.com
Discovery has flown 34 flights, spent 296.84 days in space, completed 3,808 orbits, and flown 98,710,673 statute miles (158,859,429 km) in total, as of November 2007. She is the orbiter fleet leader, having flown more flights than any other orbiter in the fleet. She has also flown on more individual flights than any other spacecraft in history. She’ll be retired in 2010, hopefully with the great honors she deserves.
But wait—irony makes itself known aboard Discovery’s payload. Now in hot pursuit and only two minutes behind, Discovery is on a mission (STS-124) to deliver a new Japanese science lab and robotic arm to the ISS along with spare parts to repair the station’s malfunctioning toilet.
The ISS is a research facility currently being assembled in space. The on-orbit assembly of ISS began in 1998… a long-term collaborative effort between the United States, Russia, Japan, Canada, and eleven European countries. Brazil and Italy also participate through separate contracts with NASA….The projected completion date is 2010, with the station remaining in operation until around 2016. As of 2008, the ISS is larger than any previous space station.
The ISS has been continuously manned since the first resident crew entered the station on November 2, 2000…thereby providing a permanent human presence in space…At present the station has a capacity for a crew of three…The station has, however, been visited by astronauts from 16 countries. The ISS was also the destination of the first five space tourists….
At an estimated cost of $155 billion for the ISS project from its start until the program’s end in 2017, the ISS will be the most expensive object ever built by humankind. Refer Wikipedia
With such grand statistics, ISS certainly deserves a working bathroom!
No Shortage of Stupidity
There’s also no shortage of our species’ stupidity. I just hope that it’s not too late for women to save humanity from men. Last night I had the dubious pleasure of watching Free Speech TV’s program featuring Dr. Helen Caldicott, controversial proponent of a nuclear-free world. She’s not afraid to ‘tell it like it is,’ and calls upon our human emotions to stop the nuclear industry from cremating our planet and all who dwell thereon. The rest of this section is from Wikipedia.
Dr. Helen Caldicott is an Australian physician and anti-nuclear advocate who has founded several associations dedicated to opposing nuclear weapons, nuclear weapons proliferation, war and military action in general, particularly the use of depleted uranium munitions.
Dr. Caldicott founded the Nuclear Policy Research Institute, headquartered in Washington, DC. NPRI seeks to facilitate an ongoing public education campaign in the mainstream media about what it perceives as the dangers of nuclear energy, including weapons and power programs and policies. ¹
Caldicott has been awarded 19 honorary doctoral degrees and was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by Nobel Laureate Linus Pauling. She was awarded the Lannan Foundation Prize for Cultural Freedom in 2003, and in 2006, the Peace Organisation of Australia presented her with the inaugural Australian Peace Prize “for her longstanding commitment to raising awareness about the medical and environmental hazards of the nuclear age.” The Smithsonian Institution has named Caldicott as one of the most influential women of the 20th century.
Caldicott and many environmentalists, however, claim that much of the cost of nuclear power is not included in the figures provided by those that state nuclear energy is comparatively inexpensive. They insist that the costs of mining and enriching uranium, reactor construction and then finally decommissioning and dismantling the reactor, transportation of high-level and intermediate waste and long-term storage for 240,000 years, and the worst case scenario of all, the accidental or terrorist-induced nuclear meltdown must be included in the true cost of nuclear energy. The Union of Concerned Scientists states in an analysis of nuclear energy:
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An accident at a US nuclear power plant could kill more people than were killed by the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki. The financial repercussions could also be catastrophic. The 1986 accident at the Chernobyl nuclear plant cost the former Soviet Union more than three times the economical benefits accrued from the operation of every other Soviet nuclear power plant operated between 1954 and 1990. ²
Caldicott’s response to criticism of her factual accuracy is to attack the honesty of the critics.
As an example, in an appearance on the E&E TV talk show hosted by Monica Trauzzi, this exchange took place:
Monica Trauzzi: “Can you explain how there can be such a disparity between your contention that nuclear power plants will produce the same amount of emissions as standard power plants, and what the industry is seeing which is, hey, it’s absolutely clean and safe and secure?”
Helen Caldicott: “The industry lies. You know, when I used to debate with generals from the Pentagon about the medical effects of nuclear war, they don’t lie. They know a bomb dropping on Washington would vaporize hundreds of thousands of people and burn millions. But the nuclear industry I’ve been debating for 35 years, and they lie. And it’s hard to deal with people who lie. In medicine, if I lied about my patients or my treatment I would be deregistered. It’s inappropriate to lie about science. Now there’s only one decent study to look at the whole nuclear fuel chain from beginning to end, and that’s the one I’ve quoted in my book (Nuclear Power Is Not the Answer). The nuclear industry picks and chooses what suits them for their propaganda. Refer Wikipedia
Silence Turns to Gold
The United States was the first country in the world to develop nuclear weapons, and is the only country to have used them in war against another nation [Japan]. During the Cold War it conducted over a thousand nuclear tests and developed many long-range weapon delivery systems. It maintains an arsenal of about 5,000 warheads to this day, as well as facilities for their construction and design, though many of the Cold War facilities have since been deactivated and are sites for environmental remediation.
The current delivery systems of the U.S. make virtually any part of the globe within the reach of its nuclear arsenal. Though its land-based missile systems have a maximum range of 10,000 kilometers (less than worldwide), its submarine-based forces extend its reach from a coastline 12,000 kilometers inland. Additionally, the ability to refuel long-range bombers in flight and the use of aircraft carriers extends the possible range virtually indefinitely.
The recognized nuclear powers include the U.S., Russia, the United Kingdom, the People’s Republic of China, and France; they do not include the generally-recognized but undeclared Israel, nor the declared but unrecognized India, Pakistan, and North Korea.
The U.S. government has officially taken a silent policy towards the nuclear weapons ambitions of the state of Israel, while being exceedingly vocal against proliferation of such weapons in the countries of Iran and North Korea, something which has been called [duh!] hypocritical by many critics. The same critics point out the fact that not only is the United States sitting on the largest nuclear weapons stockpile in the world, but it is also violating its own non-proliferation treaties in the pursuit of so-called “nuclear bunker busters.” The 2003 invasion of Iraq by the U.S. was done, in part, on accusations of weapons development, and the Bush administration has said that its policies on proliferation were responsible for the Libyan government’s agreement to abandon its nuclear ambitions.
Many of the former nuclear facilities produced significant environmental damages during their years of activity, and since the 1990s have been Superfund sites of cleanup and environmental remediation. The Radiation Exposure Compensation Act of 1990 allows for U.S. citizens exposed to radiation or other health risks through the U.S. nuclear program to file for compensation and damages. Above section refer Wikipedia
And so, while spacecraft orbit Earth and Olympians pay homage to the fiercely flickering flame of superiority, submarines with nuclear weapons slither through Earth’s dark oceans, hoping for a place to spawn. Perhaps if they were aware, innocent Chinese children would realize that earthquakes aren’t the worst thing that can happen to good little girls and boys.
Upon This Flame
I watched the rocket flight.
I saw men ride
a thundering plume of flame
serenely out of sight.
They rose astride
a million fiery horses yoked in one dancing blaze
till they flew free
of all our slow earth-crawl and weighty ways.
Like a wind, the ship’s wash came
shaking the earth and me.
And then I saw
the first man rubbing firesticks till his straw
glowed and puffed smoke.
I watched how he leaned and blew
till the fire broke
and the flame crept, leapt, soared, roared
not only in the straw but in his eyes.
And then I knew
that the fire by which men rise
and leave old worlds behind leaps
not so much in the pale
straw or the rocket’s tail
as in the mind.
Upon this flame man flies.
~James Dillet Freeman
1912—2003
(Two of James Dillet Freeman’s poems will reside forever upon the Moon:
“Prayer for Protection” taken and left there by Apollo 11 pilot Buzz Aldrin in 1969,
and
“I Am There” taken and left there by Apollo 15 astronaut James Irwin in 1971.)
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