​Doomsday Clock is Ticking

By Ed Raymond

fargogadfly@gmail.com

Would women be able to stop the clock—and possibly rewind it?

Scientists who are members of The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists who constantly study the combined risks of nuclear annihilation, climate change, biological threats, and disruptive technologies, set their Doomsday Clock at 90 seconds to midnight in January of 2023. After studying the facts of the risks listed above, the members set the clock back or forward each January. With what is happening around the world in those four crucial risks, it will be interesting to see which way the minute hand is set in January of 2025.

The clock was set at seven minutes to midnight (midnight being the time everybody on earth dies from some or all of the four “risks”) when the Doomsday Clock was “invented” and “started” in 1947, two years after Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Because of world conditions, the clock has been set backward eight times and forward seventeen times. Here is a partial summary of when and why the clock was reset:

1947: set at seven minutes to midnight because of the development and use of atomic bombs by the United States to end the war with Japan.

1949: set forward at three minutes because the Soviet Union tested its first atomic weapons.

1957: set forward at two minutes because the US and Soviet Union tested the first hydrogen weapons.

1991: set back to seventeen minutes because of the end of what was called The Cold War between the US and Soviet Union.

2018: set forward to two minutes because of nuclear threats by Russia and several Middle East countries and the damage to the environment due to climate change.

2023: set forward to 90 seconds because of Putin’s threat to use nuclear weapons in the Ukraine War.

Will the clock be set forward or backward because of Trump’s election?

If misogyny, the hatred of women, falls under the category of a biological threat, will the Atomic Scientists move the clock forward to another record-breaking time — say 45 seconds to midnight? The status of women will certainly fall to new lows under the reign of the rapist-defamer President Donald J. Trump and his misogynistic White House gang of rapists, sexual assaulters, domestic abusers, subjugators of women, and billionaires. Pregnant women are already dying needlessly from sepsis and hemorrhages. Many of his loyalists are victims of excessive testosterone-poisoning and hemorrhaging egos.

Author Margaret Atwood evaluates the current condition of relationships: “Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them.” Is that one reason many citizens of the Divided States of America have fallen in love with 435 million firearms that flood every nook, cranny, and alley? Not only must we worry about the Doomsday Clock, language professors at England’s Oxford University just selected its “Word of the Year”: “Brain Rot!” Will this disease be a minor infection in 2025 or a world-wide pandemic?

A recent book by Julia Rombough titled “A Veil of Silence: Women and Sound in Renaissance Italy” reviewed in Erin Maglaque’s “Soundscapes of the Silenced” in The New York Review of Books, emphasizes how the Roman Catholic Church and its “conservatives” in the Vatican treated girls and women in the 15th and 16th Centuries. This was the period when Leonardo DaVinci, the illegitimate son of an Italian notary and a poor local peasant girl, started his life to eventually becoming a genius in many fields— and 600 years later is still considered to be the most intelligent, talented, and skilled artist who has ever lived.

Anyone who studies his written works also has to learn to read his every word backwards! Besides painting the Mona Lisa, the Last Supper, and engineering the dome on St. Peter’s, his drawings and designs still draw exclamations! Besides all that, he was a homosexual who served many popes. One of his acquaintances was Michelangelo, the gay guy who painted the ceiling in the Sistine Chapel that is visited by millions of tourists and worshippers each year.

A short history of a Catholic Pope who loved his women and children

Cardinal Rodrigo Borgia of Spain, who had bribed his way in becoming a cardinal of the Catholic Church, was elected Pope Alexander VI in 1492, the same year Christopher Columbus left Spain for our shores. He was a charming, affable man who served everyone well as Dean of the College of Cardinals, served five other popes as vice-chancellor of the church–like a vice-president! He was acclaimed for his authority, knowledge, experience, and influence. He also was a sexy part of the secular world, fathering three children as a young member of the church and for more than 30 years after having four children with his lover Cattanei.

It’s funny what you can learn about a church you belonged to for almost 30 years. I don’t remember studying anything about Pope Alexander VI and his seven children. If you want to be entertained, read the history of Alexander and his seven kids. It's kind of like a sexy soap opera on stilts.

The Roman Catholic Church and the Vatican have been subjugating girls and women for 2,000 years. Think of Mary Magdalene. More or less, a Catholic male at birth examines the religious creature that gave birth to him and says: “Thanks, Mom! Now, shut up and stay the hell out of my way!” Although the popes and the old men in the Vatican have been studying sex and come up with the “lollapaloozas” of celibacy and “intrinsically disordered” homosexuality over 2,000 years, Pope Francis and his cardinals and bishops decided in 2024 these subjects needed “further study.!”

Estimates for the number of Catholics in the Divided States of America range from 52 million to 70 million with perhaps the best one being at 61.9 million. According to Vatican rules, if one is leaving the church, one must write a letter of resignation to your diocese. Some day, I’m going to check to see if I’m still on the rolls of the French Catholic Church in Little Falls or one in Washington, D.C. In 2022 there were 35,000 priests and 42,000 nuns active in the U.S. church. Nuns had suffered a 76% decline over the last 50 years.

How much has the role of Catholic women changed since the 15th century?

When Leonardo DaVinci was utilizing his painting, drawing, and engineering skills in Florence and its surrounding small towns, there was one nun for every seventeen people. In 1427 there were about 500 nuns in Florence; by 1632 there were about 4,000 involved in many activities. Women had to follow all sorts of rules depending upon their circumstances. As an example, prostitutes, ladies of the evening, and sex workers in Florence were required to wear bells on their hats as they walked the streets. The bells announced they were open for business as well as warning the children and other citizens what they did for a living.

One in five adult women in the area lived in cloisters or monasteries where they often heard “religious” bells while they were forced to remain silent all day except for prayer times. The abbess (leader) of the Le Murate Convent carried a ladder while she checked all the rooms and alcoves where nuns might be talking to each other. If caught, she locked them in their cells for the night.

Nearly half of the noblewomen (those relatively rich) were cloistered before they turned 16. You see, families with lots of daughters had to spend a lot of money to marry off daughters because Italian men would often request rather large dowries. So, if the family had five daughters of marriageable age, they might afford dowries for only two—and the three other daughters would have to become nuns! One writer called it “burying girls alive in the cloister for the rest of their lives.” Others said “it was cheaper to marry Christ than marry a Florentine man.” Daughters of prominent but not rich noblemen lived at the cloisters but ran family businesses, sold and purchased real estate, and often held political offices. For poor daughters from ordinary families, their honor was preserved because of church security.

Italian cities were flooded with residential institutions for unmarriageable women.

In Florence there was a cloister called the Convertite which was reserved for sex workers. A high stone fence with sharp metal spikes surrounded the building to prevent entrances and exits. One man was sentenced to five years in prison for attempting to scale the walls with a rope ladder. Women who had committed adultery were often given the choice of ten months in prison or assignment to a cloister. Guess which one was most popular. Another cloister was reserved for “badly married” women—those who were sexually and physically abused, pimped out, destitute, or abandoned.

Some cities had “foundling” hospitals

Children born out of wedlock were often taken in by foundling hospitals that also took in abandoned adolescents who could stay until almost reaching adulthood. The hospital in Florence was called the Innocenti. Foundling hospitals were a form of orphanage which also supplied teenaged workers for nearby industries. Girls attended classes designed to prevent them from becoming sex workers. Remember the workhouses described by Charles Dickens in some of his novels about the poor in London? Same deal.

The famous Council of Trent was held in 1545 by the Vatican to discuss difficult theological questions like the ones discussed by Catholic bishops in the “counsel” promoted by Pope Francis last summer to determine the role of women and homosexuals in the protocols of the church. Church authorities at Trent also discussed Original Sin, salvation, saints, the sale of images and indulgences, and the role of dueling to settle religious and personal disputes. The Trent meetings did not settle anything quickly either. The participants took eighteen years to discuss and defend Catholic beliefs from many Protestant challenges from the Catholic Reformation. Women were still vulnerable to economic troubles and were totally dependent on male family members. Cloisters often specialized in making products for sale and use by businesses. Cloisters in Florence supplied most of the silk used by the textile industry that traded with Asian countries.

The standard rule in cloisters was silence by all nuns and their guide was often phrased this way: “Silence means the complete and perfect mortification of her senses.” Paul lays down the law in 1 Corinthians 14-34-35: “As in all the churches of the saints, the women should keep silent in the churches. For they are not permitted to speak, but should be in submission as the Law also says. And if they desire to learn anything, let them ask their husbands at home; for it is improper for a woman to speak in church.”

Men: Think about that stupid statement. Governments and men have been forced to listen to men 99.99% from the time we had ears. Men are responsible for killing billions of men, women and children to this point in history, and now are lying to each other about saving Planet Earth from the heat of Hell. Even if it’s too late, why don’t we listen to women and take a chance?