89 seconds to midnight and counting...
The horror! The horror!
“Blindly continuing on the current path is a form of madness. The United States, China, and Russia have the collective power to destroy civilization. These three countries have the prime responsibility to pull the world back from the brink, and they can do so if their leaders seriously commence good-faith discussions about the global threats outlined here. Despite their profound disagreements, they should take that first step without delay. The world depends on immediate action.”
It is 89 seconds to midnight.
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
Editor, John Mecklin
January 28, 2025
Let us begin these lines with the warning above, which went unnoticed by the mainstream media. It must have been because of Carnival or because they were waiting for the clocks to move backwards on their own. Don’t worry, the great democrats and statesmen will certainly reverse the process and save us from the geopolitical quagmire we currently find ourselves in.
Who knows, maybe the great UN and its army of advisors will convince the knights of the round table to abandon warmongering and transform the world into a verdant field of happiness. Or as Dr. Strangelove would say, “Gentlemen, you cannot fight in here! This is the War Room!”!
Instead of sanctions, President Muffley should call President Dimitri and make peace. Maybe they should follow the advice of an alliance expert and go to a bar near the Lenin Library in Moscow, have a few beers and stop with this whole world-ending thing!
Are the “neutral” scientists right? In any case, the situation has never been so dangerous; in the last 10 years the clock has only been getting closer to midnight. Those were the good old days when I would listen to Iron Maiden’s “2 Minutes to Midnight” and not even know what they were talking about.
“As the mad men play on words
And make us all dance to their song
To the tune of starving millions
To make a better kind of gun”
So this was the doomsday clock they were talking about? The first time I thought the world was really going to end was when the New York towers collapsed. I won't go into the incredible details surrounding the fall of the 3 buildings, the planes and especially the plane that is said to have crashed into the Pentagon. I don't want to be called a conspirator!
Now, between you and me, finding the hijackers' passports was quite a stroke of luck, one was found a few blocks from the WTC, and if that wasn't enough, they also found 2 other passports when Flight 93 crashed, which practically disintegrated! These Americans really have a lot to teach us! It's a good thing our military went to take courses at the School of the Americas, they learned a lot of interesting techniques there!
Lately, what has been intriguing me is Trump's ear. So far, I haven't been able to see the slightest sign of a scar, not even a mosquito bite. What a great job the doctors there, or are they spin doctors? There's no shortage of screenwriters there! In these "post-truth" times, when will we really know what happened?
Maybe when what happened on the streets of Dallas and the September event mentioned above come to light, we'll finally be able to get an idea. However, the chance of that happening is smaller than the scar on the superstar president's ear! We've also had similar events here, planes crashing, poison tea parties and other more complex topics, so let's stop here!
Let's go back to the doomsday clock!
The speed of events is impressive. The spiral of madness knows no bounds. They have destroyed Gaza, turning it into a pile of rubble. Thousands of people have died and are homeless. The whole world has watched without doing anything, only empty words about peace. Great global leaders! The “multipolar” world is coming to fix all this!
At the same time, there are already plans to build a mini Dubai there, who knows, it will be connected to the new Silk Roads. #Brics+! #Maga!
Of course, the Chinese only want to trade. How nice these friends of ours are. There are plenty of defenders of the Chinese and their innocent trade routes around here. Since they are red, could they be the new Santa Clauses? Could it be because of this fascinating trade that we have become increasingly deindustrialized? Tell me, wise economists!
Could the grandiose plans for Brazilian reindustrialization be anything more than a poor propaganda plan that will only please useful idiots who will shout to the winds that Lula's PND has arrived, which will finally take us out of underdevelopment. The World Cup is ours!
Here is another question for the wise: how will we be able to compete with the kind Chinese? And I warn you, the Indians are coming, lowering costs even further. It will be a total massacre! Agriculture will save us! Agriculture is popular! Some unwary people say this, perhaps they received information from the descendants of those who created the beautiful land law, back in the distant 19th century.
Let's go back to the doomsday clock!
“The blind men shout: Let the creatures out
We'll show the unbelievers
The Napalm screams of human flames
Of a prime time Belsen feast, yeah!
As the reasons for the carnage cut their meat
And lick the gravy
We oil the jaws of the war machine
And feed it with our babies”
In 2002, despite fears of dirty bombs, misplaced bombs, and planes falling from the sky, the clock was 7 minutes to midnight. We were at peace! Russia and the US were negotiating reductions in the number of warheads. According to the 2002 report, Bush Jr. even promised that by 2012 the US would have only 2,200 warheads in its inventory!
Well, it's 2025 and the atomic scoreboard is as follows:
But don't worry, according to the Norwegian Nuclear Weapons Monitor, only 40% of these are operational, so we can sleep easy! Is all this just a psyop to scare us, or is there really a danger of tens of millions of people being vaporized? Fearmongers and doomsday prophets are out there, be careful!
“The killer's breed or the Demon's seed
The glamour, the fortune, the pain
Go to war again, blood is freedom's stain
Don't you pray for my soul anymore”
From the top of the lighthouse where I make my observations, I haven't started stocking up on cans of sardines yet. I'm waiting for the tax cuts to come into effect so I can buy a big batch! The world of Mad Max will finally arrive! Listening to the noise of the motorcycles flooding the cities, it seems to me that this world has already arrived!
Okay, enough pessimism. Just because yesterday there was talk of peace, and today they want to forcefully reinstate banking sanctions on the Russians, blockades and more banana peels, doesn't mean the world is going to end. Yesterday it seemed clear that the reimbursement of war expenses in Ukraine would be paid in rare earths and other minerals! Who would have thought it would be so sophisticated? Too bad environmentalists didn't suggest to Trump that he reimburse the expenses in carbon credits!
This way, the next war would be easier, and besides making it more profitable for shareholders, it could even be interesting for us Brazilians. Blow everything up there and your carbon footprint will be reduced, here we guarantee many compensatory hectares. There is still time for this idea to be presented at the COP in Belém. I borrow Feyerabend's famous statement here, "in science anything goes."
“2 minutes to midnight
The hands that threaten doom
2 minutes to midnight
To kill the unborn in the womb”
Unfortunately, carbon credits will not be valid for the bombing of Iran, so they are still discussing countermeasures and environmental compensations, this is one of the new things presented today by MAGA! Let's keep an eye on the semiotic machine gun! We will have daily news from the north.
While all this is happening and piling up into a gigantic pile of gigabytes, the ants continue to come and go. Following everything that runs through the increasingly lysergic and addictive screens, trying to understand the current world. Horror is around the next corner, in the next Breaking News, in the next semiotic grenade that will be thrown into the crowd.
The complexity only increases, the signals are changed and the course is constantly adjusted, and so the boat continues to travel up the Congo River. As Conrad said, “We are going deeper and deeper into the heart of darkness.”
Don’t forget, it’s 89 seconds to midnight!