So, on June 5, 2012 people in many part of Earth saw the planet Venus crossing the sun, a rare, tantalizing and informative glimpse at the structure of our solar system. An opportunity to let your imagination broaden beyond the daily round. Back in 1761 and 1769 when Europe was wasting its treasure and its people on the Seven Years War, French authorities ordered that scientists of any country, working on the observation of the transit were to be left in peace to continue their work.
The pursuit of knowledge trumped slaughter in pursuit of power.
Now more than ever the pursuit of knowledge must trump the mindless pursuit of power over various patches of our beautiful, longsuffering planet.
Do any of you have the courage to see that we cannot afford to waste any more people? We need the minds, energies and talents of all of us to grow the food, access the clean water, turn on the clean power, process the giant islands of garbage gathering in the oceans and devise efficient ways of dealing with disruption flowing from the droughts, floods and extreme weather brought on by the increasing levels of greenhouse gases.
We cannot afford to leave our children uneducated. It is past time for the ships of state to change course.
Do you, Messrs Putin and Wen Jiabao, have the courage to stop selling arms to Syria and other places of lunatic power struggles? You have the resources and the manpower to decide to educate people instead of killing them.
Do you, Mr. Assad, know that Steve Jobs was sired by a Syrian ? How many future benefactors of mankind will you slaughter?
Do you, Mr. Kim Jong Un have the courage to feed your people instead of wasting precious resources on missiles?
Do you, Robert Mugabe, have the courage to recognize the damage you have done in so many ways and the courage to slip away taking the worst of your thugs with you so that Zimbabwe can show what it can do?
Do you, the drug lords of Mexico and your political allies, have the courage to invest in the intelligence, energy and talent of the people of Mexico instead of catering to the warped and toxic legal system of the USA?
Do you, the power manipulators behind the front men of Saudi Arabia, Iran and Pakistan, have the courage to laugh at the Taliban and the Wahabis who are unhinged in their hatred of life, women and music?
Do you understand that they should only be allowed to use rocks for weapons ?
Men who “educate” their boys by having them learn the Korean by heart, but do not allow them access to the best of science, history, art and literature, thereby starving their souls, have no right to use any product of fine-tuned human sweat and intelligence. Men who believe they are doing their God’s will by wasting the lives and talents of the female half of the human race are fear-ridden, silly and sadly pathetic.
Do you, the decision-makers, both elected and self-appointed, of the United States of America, have the courage to follow your constitution? Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness is a powerful shorthand for all that is essential for the survival of humanity. Do you have the courage to change a system that force feeds its people bad food then spends billions of dollars treating preventable diseases? A system that is as moronic as that of the Taliban.
We are no longer groups of clans in a valley fighting other clans from over the hill for access to a precious waterhole or source of salt; we are billions of ants on a tiny ball in the unspeakably beautiful immensity of the universe.
We are made of stardust and to stardust eventually our constituent atoms return.
It is time that you, the people who have a measure of power, until you too return to stardust, recognize that the brief interval of sentient existence of each of us is precious and must not be wasted.
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