New Darth Vader for Nuclear War in Space

911 was done with Space Weapons!!

Logical, USA must dominate the world by force,
or face collapse of the empire based on theft!

The USA ELITES are engaged in a bloodbath to
preserve the "freedom to rob, to exploit and dominate,
to undertake any course of action to ensure
that existing privilege is protected and advanced."

EVIDENCE:

Chilton Takes U.S. Strategic Command Helm

Donna Miles - American Forces Press Service
2007-10-18

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates today praised Air Force Gen. Kevin P.
Chilton as the general ceremonially took the reins of U.S. Strategic
Command.

Gates said Chilton, who began his tenure at STRATCOM on Oct. 3 after
having commanded Air Force Space Command, has the skills and experience to
lead the command forward in its critical role in the fight against
terrorist threats.

Speaking at today's assumption-of-command ceremony at Offutt Air Force
Base, Neb., the secretary pointed to Chilton's long, trail-blazing career
as prime experience for the STRATCOM job. Chilton was a test pilot on the
F-4 Phantom II and F-15 Eagle aircraft, laid new groundwork during
assignments at Air Force Space Command, and served as an astronaut aboard
three space shuttle missions.

Chilton will tap into this experience to help the United States confront
some of the most destructive threats it faces. These include terrorist
groups working to get control of weapons of mass destruction and potential
adversaries who might leverage information and space technologies to
threaten the United States and its interests.

Gates called space-based capabilities critical in stopping the
proliferation of dangerous materials. "It is through space that we can
monitor the weapons we already know exist," he said. "It is through space
that we can track adversaries attempting to acquire these weapons and then
do something about it. It is through space that our troops and our
leadership monitor the battlefield and communicate with each other.

"Therefore," Gates continued, "it is space that we must protect,
especially as we expand its use."

China's successful test of an anti-satellite weapon earlier this year
reinforced the importance of maintaining unfettered access to space, he
said. "This test and other developments show that our own near-earth
satellites are vulnerable and must be protected," he said.

As a former CIA director, Gates said he understands the importance of a
strong intelligence-gathering system and the need to analyze that
intelligence and plan a U.S. response.

He told Chilton he's confident the general will be able to tackle the
challenges ahead and build on the accomplishments Marine Gen. James E.
Cartwright began during his three years at STRATCOM. Cartwright served as
commander until August, when he became the eighth vice chairman of the
Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Cartwright "flattened the organization," speeding up information flow
throughout the command, Gates said. He also introduced the Global
Innovation and Strategy Center, which brings together outside experts to
focus on a specific issue, brainstorming solutions and developing
recommendations for STRATCOM leaders to follow up on.

Gates said he knew filling Cartwright's shoes at STRATCOM would be
challenging, but that he believes Chilton is the person to take the
command forward. "General Chilton, we look to you for the way ahead during
these turbulent times," he said.

Chilton said he feels honored to lead the organization that is "called on
to be the most responsive combatant command in the U.S. arsenal."

He noted STRATCOM's broad responsibilities. "We are responsible today for
providing the secretary of defense time-sensitive planning to conduct
global strike operations anywhere on the planet. We are tasked to conduct
operations in support of the global fight we are engaged in today," he
said. "And we are tasked to be the masters and defenders of domains that
have become ever more critical, not only to the way we fight as a nation,
but to our way of life as a nation … -- the domains of space and
cyberspace."

With the "tsunami change" that ushered in STRATCOM's reorganization and
adoption of a 24/7 operational mission beginning to settle, Chilton said,
he's ready to increase the command's focus on future threats as well as
today's fight.

"The type of combat we will face in the 21st century will go beyond the
physical force on force and the battles of centuries gone by," he said. It
will require "innovation, … speed, agility and focus."

He called the men and women serving at STRATCOM "just the team America
needs to defend her today and tomorrow."

"I am excited and proud and humbled to join this great team in our noble
endeavor," Chilton said.

http://www.emilitary.org/article.php?aid=12420

====================

Swans Commentary » swans.com
October 22, 2007

Blips #60 From The Martian Desk

by Gilles d'Aymery

"Les pieds dans le ruisseau . . . . Je vois mon image...Moi je vois
l'idiot."
—Jacques Brel, 1955

(Swans - October 22, 2007) CHE REMAINS ALIVE AND WELL: Richard Harris,
the professor of Global Studies and World Languages and Cultures at
California State University, Monterey Bay, California, and the author of
the much acclaimed Death of a Revolutionary: Che Guevara's Last Mission
reminded me by e-mail that October 9 was the 40th anniversary of Che's
death. He did not have to, but still, his request to let people know was
most welcome. Che Guevara is greater dead than alive. His assassin's
bullet killed a man. It did not kill the ideals the man professed all
along his tumultuous life. You can kill Gandhi, but there he is in our
hearts and souls, ever present. Same goes for the Rev. Martin Luther
King...and so many other justice advocates. For Christians, Jesus lives
on. For those of us who passionately defend the ideals of social justice,
human conciliation and cooperation, dignity, and acceptation of The Other,
which includes nature, the struggle will never end until success prevails.
It remains the most solemn obligation to which one must dedicate one's own
life. Ask yourself this simple question: Can Peace ever be attained
without Justice and Dignity?

WHAT'S THE MEANING OF JUSTICE, ANYWAY? It's first and foremost about the
little people not being trampled by the few that enrich themselves on
their back, and proceed to do so in the most vicious and violent means
imaginable. It's as basic as that! You might expand on the concept of
Justice. Even relatively moderate, corrupt, and bourgeois politicians know
what Justice is all about. Take Jacques Chirac, the former president of
France, who was vilified by Anne Applebaum, a grotesque gatekeeper of the
Washington Consensus ("Farewell, Jacques Chirac: A Leader With a Deep
Scorn for Fostering Democracy," Washington Post, May 8, 2007). Applebaum
related that during a visit to Tunisia, Chirac once said that, "the most
important human rights are the rights to be fed, to have health, to be
educated, and to be housed"; and she sneered at him for that eminently
obvious statement, adding, "Tunisia's human rights record is 'very
advanced' -- never mind the police who beat up dissidents." (Evidently,
Ms. Applebaum is little cognizant about police brutality against political
dissidents in the U.S.)

BUT CHIRAC WAS QUITE RIGHT. That is exactly what those of us, deemed
radicals and extremists, want. That's what Che was about: the right to a
decent, dignified life -- food, health, education, and housing. What's
wrong with that picture? Has the currently prevailing ideological system
brought these four fundamental needs to the masses? Hell, no! Even the
dinosaurian mastodon, the USA, has never brought those four basic freedoms
to its own people. Remember FDR's famous January 6, 1941, Annual Message
to Congress, the so-called Four Freedoms speech? Here is what he pompously
and cynically declaimed:
In the future days, which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a
world founded upon four essential human freedoms.

The first is freedom of speech and expression -- everywhere in the world.

The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way --
everywhere in the world.

The third is freedom from want -- which, translated into universal terms,
means economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy
peacetime life for its inhabitants-everywhere in the world.

The fourth is freedom from fear -- which, translated into world terms,
means a world-wide reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a
thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of
physical aggression against any neighbor -- anywhere in the world.

That is no vision of a distant millennium. It is a definite basis for a
kind of world attainable in our own time and generation. That kind of
world is the very antithesis of the so-called new order of tyranny which
the dictators seek to create with the crash of a bomb.

I SAY CYNICALLY because at the very time he was calling for worldwide
reductions in armaments, he was asking Congress to fund the biggest
increase in military spending, which turned into the
military-industrial-congressional complex whose "unwarranted influence"
Dwight Eisenhower cautioned the country and its policy makers against in
his Farewell Address to the Nation twenty-one years later, on January 17,
1961. Far from having abated, far from "a world-wide reduction of
armaments," the Iron Triangle has led the U.S. to a permanent war economy,
laying destruction and death all over the world, financially ruining the
country, and making America feared and hatred by ever wider members of the
human commons over the world, all the while -- oh supreme irony! -- having
a US populace frozen with paranoid fears.

AS TO FREEDOM FROM WANT, "attainable in our own time and generation . . .
. the antithesis of the so-called new order [that some] seek to create
with the crash of a bomb" (what an extraordinary metaphor for those
willing to glance at their own mirror!) take a look around the globe. What
you'll see is a raging spread of poverty and hunger. Or, simply, once
again look into your homey mirror: Close to twelve percent of the US
population, between 35 and 38 million people, are officially considered to
have "very low food security," which is a euphemism to mean that they go
hungry. These poor people used to be called "food insecure with hunger,"
but the word "hunger" has been removed from the bureaucratic lingua
franca. In the seemingly wealthiest country in the world (a proposition
that should at long, long, long last be challenged) hunger does not
"really" exist. This Hidden Crisis, in a land that bears the highest rate
of obesity per capita in the world (hunger and obesity are, strangely
enough, related), is seldom broached by the chattering classes, of which
Anne Applebaum is a card-carrying member. As George McGovern said during
his presidential campaign in 1972, "To admit the existence of widespread
hunger is to cast doubt on the efficacy of our whole system."

IT'S AN INDICATOR, or metric, that certainly casts doubt on War
Corporatism, aka, unfettered capitalism, but it's far from being the only
one. Socially-supported education, health care, and housing all fall short
from a humane attention in the U.S. Even The Other, the natural realm, is
belatedly being destroyed in the name of what Noam Chomsky once called the
"Fifth Freedom." In The Culture of Terrorism (1998), he wrote:
The central -- and not very surprising -- conclusion that emerges from the
documentary and historical record is that the U.S. international and
security policy, rooted in the structure of power in the domestic society,
has as its primary goal the preservation of what we might call the "Fifth
Freedom," understood crudely but with a fair degree of accuracy as the
freedom to rob, to exploit and dominate, to undertake any course of action
to ensure that existing privilege is protected and advanced.

BUT IF WE ARE TO STAY within the realm of the "Four Freedoms," those
stated by Jacques Chirac vs. those stated by FDR, which alliteration do
you think Che Guevara would have espoused? Freedom of speech, which all
Swans contributors vehemently defend, is a great, fundamental human
concept, but what good does it do when you are hungry and silenced, or
simply ignored? I recall my economics teacher in high school eons ago. He
would repeatedly remind his pupils that "when one has an empty stomach one
has little time and freedom to think." Whatever Anne Applebaum and her ilk
may think -- correction, believe -- double-correction, neither think nor
believe, but claim out of whole cloth -- and in all due respect, the
[Chirac] freedoms "to be fed, to have health, to be educated, and to be
housed" will always beat FDR's four freedoms for the masses and masses of
people who have an inner sense of what real justice and common welfare
mean. There, in a nutshell, lies the swelling support for that sempiternal
troubadour, a mix of Don Quixote and Robin Hood. Che remains an
inspiration to millions of people around the world, even for those who
consider that his politics were right, yet his actions misconstrued. In
this context, Richard Harris's Death of a Revolutionary: Che Guevara's
Last Mission should be on the bookshelf of all decent human beings that
have a stomach filled enough to allow them to think...and, hopefully, act
accordingly to counter Chomsky's "Fifth Freedom."

WHEN ARE PEOPLE going to at long last get sick and tired, as I am, of the
swelling wreck that a tiny clique of very powerful people and profiteers
whacked all over the world (and in America, our own country) in our name?
When will people rise up and simply say "NO"? Numbers count. Apathy numbs.
Wake up! Wake up! Wake up!

SO, HOW MUCH IS THE IRAQ WAR about the four freedoms and how much is it
about oil? Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan wrote in his
recently published memoir that, "the Iraq War is largely about oil."
General John Abizaid (ret.) -- a Visiting Fellow at the Hoover
Institution, and former CENTCOM big brass in Iraq -- said in a round
table, "Courting Disaster: The Fight for Oil, Water and a Healthy Planet,"
at the Freeman Spogli Institute, Stanford University, on October 13, 2007,
"Of course it's about oil, we can't really deny that." Jim Holt, a regular
contributor to The New York Times Magazine and The New Yorker, submits a
coherent explanation in "It's the Oil" (London Review of Books, October
18, 2007). Writes Holt:
Iraq has 115 billion barrels of known oil reserves. That is more than five
times the total in the United States. And, because of its long isolation,
it is the least explored of the world's oil-rich nations. A mere two
thousand wells have been drilled across the entire country; in Texas alone
there are a million. It has been estimated, by the Council on Foreign
Relations, that Iraq may have a further 220 billion barrels of
undiscovered oil; another study puts the figure at 300 billion. If these
estimates are anywhere close to the mark, US forces are now sitting on one
quarter of the world's oil resources. The value of Iraqi oil, largely
light crude with low production costs, would be of the order of $30
trillion at today's prices. For purposes of comparison, the projected
total cost of the US invasion/occupation is around $1 trillion.

THIS IS THE STRATEGIC PRIZE that has been heralded by Dick Cheney. Holt,
who I suppose could not have had his piece published in the American
media, asserts that from the perspective of this formidable wealth to be
conquered, "The costs -- a few billion dollars a month plus a few dozen
American fatalities (a figure which will probably diminish, and which is
in any case comparable to the number of US motorcyclists killed because of
repealed helmet laws) -- are negligible compared to $30 trillion in oil
wealth, assured American geopolitical supremacy and cheap gas for voters.
In terms of realpolitik, the invasion of Iraq is not a fiasco; it is a
resounding success."

"NEGLIGIBLE COSTS" COMPARED to the potential wealth the war will create.
Americans are known, and often envied, for their pragmatic optimism and
for their ways to devise solutions based on careful cost analysis. The war
has already been a "resounding success" for the
military-industrial-congressional complex whose profits and stocks have
soared in the past six years (e.g., GE's shares have more than doubled;
Halliburton went from $5 to $40; Top executives are paid in the tens of
millions -- our taxes at work, folks). Profits remain the central nervous
system of the American experiment, and for the few who indeed profit
immensely from the policies they put in place and fully control in total
disregard of the well-being of the vast majority, the second Gilded Age
has finally dawned upon them. Ben Stein, who writes the "Everybody's
Business" column in the business section of The New York Times most
Sundays, lamented recently that "socially responsible investors shun
companies that do military contracting." (NYT, September 30, 2007: "Is It
Responsible to Shun Military Contractors?"). Says Stein: "We are currently
in a war that is about creating a better, more dignified planet and we are
fighting enemies who openly say they want to kill everyone who is not
their slavish follower." Apparently, Stein has been drinking the Kool-Aid
that is so prevalent and liberally dispensed in the corridors of power. He
goes on to flatly contradict the assessment of Alan Greenspan and John
Abizaid. It's not about oil. We only import 20 percent of our needs from
the Middle East. We should be thankful for the great prosperity oil has
brought us thanks to the oil companies. His column stirred me enough to
trigger a letter of mine:
Dear Mr. Stein,

I am an avid reader of your regular column in the business section of the
Sunday NYT. I find them often pertinent and quite instructive. They seem
to come from a conservative background, but one that has never forgotten
its human soul, sense of fairness, and compassion.

In your last column, "Is it Responsible to Shun Military Contractors?"
(NYT, 09/30/2007), you asked whether someone could explain why socially
responsible investors refrain from investing in military contractors, and
you went on to brush aside one portent reason behind the current
conflict(s) in the Middle East -- namely oil -- by positing that only
about 20% of the oil we import comes from that region. The vast majority
of our imports, you asserted, is delivered to our shores thanks to the
diligent work of the oil companies, without the intervention of the US
military.

I've worked for many years in the oil industry (France -- my country of
origin -- Bermuda, and the U.S.) and see no reason to bash it, except for
the obscene compensation of its executives (but this latter point is not
limited to that industry). Indeed, as you stated, "The staggering
prosperity of this country, of the whole developed world, floats on oil."

However, I respectfully submit to you that your facts are slightly twisted
and your premises incorrect. You ignore the "staggering" amount of waste
associated with our material prosperity. You appear to disregard the
projections of the DOE that show how much more dependent our economy will
become on Mideastern hydrocarbon resources (oil and natural gas) in the
next two or three decades -- the "strategic prize," according to Mr.
Cheney. Furthermore, you appear to miss the significance of this mere 20%
and its substantial growth in the future (again, please refer to the DOE's
projections). Imagine that amount diverted to Japan, India, and China and
you will quickly measure the negative consequences on our economy.
Finally, you do not even broach the currency issue. What happens to the
value of the dollar if Mideastern producers switch to the Euro or the Yen,
as Saddam Hussein was planning, and Iran is implementing, is another
reason for our military intervention in that region. Black gold and
greenbacks!

Which brings me to your premise regarding the quagmire we have willfully
created: We are not at war with people who want to destroy us and kill us
all. That's an ideological battle that cannot be solved through military
means. A few thousands crazies (if they are) won't defeat the West. Like
all crazies (if they are) they will dissolve in times. Waging war on
flimsy and mostly fabricated evidence can only bring more despair and
devastation. Your analogy with WWII, which mirrors the rhetoric advanced
by the media and government officials, confuses the actualities that
rational and reasonable people must face. There was no Mesopotamian Hitler
and there is no Iranian Hitler. Remember FDR's saying about fear?

Socially responsible investors refuse to support the purveyors of the
industrial-military-congressional complex because we have long reached the
conclusion that war was not the answer to the many challenges humanity
confronts. You sold your tobacco shares long ago, and you note that they
have done very well ever since. I never invested in them, as I have not
invested in the shares of military contractors, which have done extremely
well too in the past six years.

And I am a smoker!

Yours sincerely,

NOW, I CAN UNDERSTAND the profit motive and the alluring $30 trillion
prize, but that someone of Ben Stein's caliber can posit that the Iraq War
is about a "better, more dignified planet" truly boggles the mind. Perhaps
Stein should go and read Bill Safire's "On Language" column in the NYT
Magazine of October 7, 2007, to grasp the meaning of a "willing suspension
of disbelief." What kind of a dignified planet has Mr. Stein in mind? One
that has seen one million Iraqis, half children, killed during a dozen
years of ignoble economic sanctions? One that has seen over one million
Iraqis killed and over 4 million internally or externally displaced since
March 2003? One that cannot even feed its own poor and the wretched masses
-- according to the UN Food and Agricultural Organization, over 854
million people worldwide? Or is it a planet in which the dominant player
cannot provide universal health care to its citizenry and whose president
just vetoed a bill (S-CHIP) that would have insured an additional 5 out of
9 million uninsured American kids -- for whom insurance means a trip to
the Emergency Room, in the thinking of the Decider?

OR COULD IT BE that a "better, more dignified planet" is reserved for the
few who can satiate themselves at the $30 trillion trough, sip a martini
as they refresh themselves in their swimming pool (Mr. Stein lives in a
very nice house in Palm Springs, adorned with a beautiful swimming pool),
or can afford a Hublot $1 million Big Band watch, "the brand's signature
tourbillon with the 44.5mm case and bezel, completely covered in diamonds"?

GILDED AGE, INDEED! As the rest of the world is drowning into penury, I
had a brief conversation with a friendly local contractor. He is a good,
honest, hard-working man who won't hesitate to give you a hand (he
neighborly replaced a leaking faucet on the side of our house, which --
don't laugh -- I was afraid to replace myself). He is a man of his word,
which I can strongly vouch for, and I suspect that his politics are a mix
of conservatism and libertarianism, a blend that's prevalent in
California's rural areas. We usually talk about the job at hand, and,
after inquiring about the health of the family, we sometimes broach the
economy of the Valley. How's business? is a rather quaint question buried
in the normalcy of one's repetitive daily life. Business is good,
generally speaking, but prices keep going up from gas and diesel (he uses
heavy equipment that requires lots of diesel fuel) to food, etc. I quipped
that for some people life was VERY GOOD. Had he heard, I asked, about this
manager of a hedge fund that had taken home over 1 billion dollars last
year. I'm not sure he knew what a hedge fund was (I'm not sure I know
either!) and whether he believed me (I think he did). I asked him whether
he could visualize that amount of money, and he sure could not (neither
can I). I went on with my usual rant against the obscene wealth of the
very few and how it should be redistributed -- and we left it there.

LATER ON, THAT EVENING, we talked over the phone. He brought up our
earlier conversation. He understood where I was coming from and what I was
advocating, but he was concerned by my approach. In his opinion, and I
paraphrase, wealth redistribution runs the risks of stifling business and
innovation; that people who take risks and "make it" should be rewarded
for their hard work. He did not want, in other words, to straightjacket
risk takers, who should be entitled to reaping the profits of their hard
work -- a familiar argument that's heard in most segments of society, here
and abroad. A correlation to that argument is the old Reagan trickle-down
economy whereby when a few boats lift real high, all boats lift, albeit
moderately. It does not work, of course; and it has never worked. The
stranger part of this argument is that these people by and large
negatively suffer from the consequences of the very argument they make --
which is nothing more than a belief, since all the facts contradict it.
For those of us who endeavor to reason on a basis of specifics, to
recurringly deal with beliefs that are consistently contradicted by facts
can be a frustrating experience, to say the least. And, to add insult to
injury, we are deemed radicals or, worse, commies. However, that argument
did not always prevail. Once upon a time, the views I propound were
actually embraced, even if reluctantly and in order to save the elites, by
the very elites themselves.

TO MAKE THE CASE, let me turn to Sam Pizzigati, the editor of Too Much,
who's long been a bard for income equality in the U.S. Referring to the
recent GM auto workers' short strike, whereby the United Auto Workers
Union was desperately trying to safeguard job security as the work force
was being screwed -- there is no better word -- on its pension and health
plans. Pizzigati had this to say:
In 1942, for instance, UAW urgings helped convince President Franklin D.
Roosevelt to call for a 100 percent tax -- the equivalent of a "maximum
wage" -- on individual income over $25,000, about $330,000 in today's
dollars.

Congress didn't buy FDR's 100 percent plan, but lawmakers did set the
nation's top marginal tax rate at 94 percent, and that rate would hover
around 90 percent for the next two decades, years that would see the
emergence of the first mass middle class the world had ever seen.

In those mid twentieth century years, high taxes on high incomes kept
wealth -- and political power -- from concentrating at America's economic
summit. Charles E. Wilson, GM's powerful president a half-century ago,
took home $586,100 in 1950, the equivalent of about $4.5 million today. He
paid $430,350 of that, or 73.4 percent, in tax.

Last year, by contrast, GM CEO Rick Wagoner took home $10.2 million in
total pay. We don't know exactly how much in taxes Wagoner paid on that
income. But we do know that in 2005, the most recent year with data
available, Americans who reported over $10 million in income paid, on
average, just 20.9 percent of that income in federal income tax.

In short, GM's current top executive is now enjoying, after taking taxes
and inflation into account, about seven times more personal income than
GM's top executive back in 1950. (Source: "The Fault Line: Behind the GM
Walkout," Too Much, October 1, 2007.)

EVEN EISENHOWER, certainly not a radical or a commie, kept the marginal
rate at some 84 percent.

IMMEDIATE QUESTION THAT COMES TO MIND: Does my friendly contractor and
conversationalist enjoy, "after taking taxes and inflation into account,
about seven times more personal income than" his 1950s predecessors? I'll
be glad to bet a good dinner at any one of the fine local restaurants that
bless the Anderson Valley. What's baffling is that so many decent people
have been taken to the Laundromat by the martini-sipping swimming poolers
time and again and have bought the all-boat-lifting Reaganomics and
neo-liberalism PR hook, line, and sinker (how many Brooklyn Bridges can be
sold?) when the facts are indisputable. Income disparities and
concentration of wealth are back to 1924 levels -- Robber Barons, anyone?
According to the latest data from the IRS, and in the words of Judith
Warner:
America's most wealthy earn an even greater share of the nation's income
than they did in 2000, at the peak of the tech boom. The wealthiest 1
percent of Americans, the Wall Street Journal reported, earned 21.2
percent of all income in 2005 (the latest date at which this data are
available), up from the high of 20.8 percent they'd reached in the bull
market of 2000. The bottom 50 percent of people earned 12.8 percent of all
income, compared with 13 percent in 2000. And the median tax filer's
income fell 2 percent when adjusted for inflation (to about $31,000)
between 2000 and 2005. (Source: "The Clinton Surprise," New York Times,
Web site blog "Domestic Disturbances," October 18, 2007)

NOT SURPRISINGLY, as Warner notes, "More and more people are being priced
out of a middle class existence. Because of housing prices, because of
health care costs, because of tax policy, because of the cost of child
care..." THIS IS FACTUAL!

SO, WHAT GIVES? Our elders, like Philip Greenspan and Martin Murie who
grew up in the Great Depression, or in its immediate aftermath, and
vividly saw and experienced the power of the many, would put it in plain
words, seconding Sam Pizzigati: Unions work. People's power works. Cutting
the wings of the greedy works. The Four Freedoms that advance real human
dignity are achievable. The [Chomsky's] "Fifth Freedom" destroys the
fabric of civil societies all over the world and impoverishes the many.
They keep repeating that facts and knowledge will trump beliefs and
ignorance even if it takes so-called radicals to, in the favorite word of
Phil Greenspan, agitate, agitate, agitate.

TALKING ABOUT RADICALISM reminds me of the little comment Rene Stark made
in the early goings of Swans. "Oh sure, he's radical as heck!" bursting
out in one of her laughs for which she was famous. (More about her in
"Remembering Rene Stark.") She knew that I was everything but a "rad,"
only some idiot who very early on in life felt that peace could not exist
without justice, and justice could never happen without a sense of equity.
Too bad humanity must spend so much blood and tears, and steps back, to
make it happen.

AND SINCE I AM AN IDIOT, I'll conclude these blips with Jacques Brel, and
in French:
Les pieds dans le ruisseau
Moi je regarde couler la vie
Les pieds dans le ruisseau
Moi je regarde sans dire un mot

[...]

Penchant mon visage
Au dessus de l'eau
Je vois mon image
Moi je vois l'idiot

(Jacques Brel's song, Les pieds dans le ruisseau, 1955.)

. . . . .

Ç'est la vie...

And so it goes...

· · · · · ·

La vie, friends, is a cheap commodity, but worth maintaining when one can.
Supporting the life line won't hurt you much, but it'll make a heck of a
difference for Swans.

· · · · · ·

Internal Resources

Blips and Tidbits

The Rape of Iraq

About the Author

Gilles d'Aymery on Swans (with bio). He is Swans' publisher and co-editor.

This Edition's Internal Links

The New Obscenities - Charles Marowitz
Après Bush! Le Déluge? - Philip Greenspan
Lying Is Free Speech? - Gerard Donnelly Smith
Lonesome Outsiders - Martin Murie
Emerging Markets For Investing In Human Misery - Jan Baughman
Is It About Why They Hate Us Or About Why We Hate Them? - Carol Warner
Christen
Remembering Rene Stark - Gilles d'Aymery
Halloween Skeletons On The Rocks - Poem by Marie Rennard
Shir Hashirim (Part I) - Poem by Guido Monte & Viviana Fiorentino

Swans -- ISSN: 1554-4915
URL for this work: http://www.swans.com/library/art13/desk060.html
Published October 22, 2007

THE COMPANION OF THINKING PEOPLE THAT TELLS IT AS IT IS
http://www.swans.com/library/art13/desk060.html

==================================

Bush's recent remarks about World War III may be ominous. On NBC's Today
Show, Air America's Rachel Maddow warned against interpreting those
remarks to mean that only the GOP can be trusted to keep the US out of
World War III. Bush may not have been warning of World War III but
threatening it. There is always the possibility that World War III is
already begun.

Iran is slated to become just another front in an Orwellian perpetual war,
perpetually empowering a failed and incompetent administration. Bush may
get by with a little help from his friends –Bin Laden and al Qaeda. It's
no coincidence that only George Bush, the Military/Industrial Complex, and
big oil would benefit from a second terrorist attack. A "second terrorist
attack" on US soil would be entirely too convenient to be credible.

A second terrorist attack would –conveniently –allow George W. Bush to
achieve an agenda communicated to his base in code words. A second
terrorist attack would "justify" the dropping of Nukes on Iran especially
if can be said –true or not –that "terrorists", on Iran's behalf, had
"nuked" a US city or military installation.

A second terrorist attack would complete a coup d'etat begun even before
the tragic events of Sept 11, 2001. I refer to an attack of GOP
"brownshirts" in Florida effectively ending a recount of ballots. The
recount would have spelled defeat for Bush's radical, extremist GOP. It
had to be stopped.

Bush assumed under a cloud of suspicion an office that he said would be
easier had it been a dictatorship. Later, following, the events of 911, he
would quip: "I just hit the trifecta!" Bush's coup was all but complete
when the Fox Network, Bush's propaganda arm, announced for Bush on
election night. Later, September 11 scared the Democratic opposition in
Congress. But as objections were raised to provisions of the Patriot Act,
a second attack, a wave of Anthrax letters, would terrorize the Congress
into submission. One wonders –if Sen. Jeffords had not defected,
announcing his "independence" of the GOP, would 911 have happened?

The Pentagon has become little more than a huge, bureaucratic mechanism by
which your tax monies are channeled into the coffers of thousands of
"military contractors", all of whom would be out of job in times of peace.
A second terrorist attack will keep Blackwater USA employed though they do
a better job of making new enemies for America than they've done
"securing" Baghdad, the scene of bloody chaos!. They are simply a gang of
highly paid cutthroats operating outside the law. Nevertheless, they are
symptomatic of the fact that making war has become America's number one
export. Uncle Sam is hooked on war and Bush needs another fix.

Meanwhile, the dollar continues it's precipitous decline. Those suffering
most from the dollar's decline are the nation's poor and middle classes. A
balance of trade deficit will correct itself, but Bush is content to let
those who can least afford it pick up the tab. His elite base have already
moved their assets. They will watch the dollar fall from afar.

At some point, the middle class will fall off the ladder, leaving an
increasingly tiny and absurdly rich elite to rule over or warehouse a
growing throng of those who can no longer afford to live in gated
communities, who can no longer afford even a modest apartment, who can no
longer afford a modest car, let alone an SUV.

The utter collapse of the dollar means that everyone who works for a
living is vulnerable to incarceration in a FEMA "work" camp! During Ronald
Reagan's "depression" of some 18 months, many middle class families found
themselves out of work and out of their homes. They slept under bridges
and overpasses in Houston. Did the GOP learn all the wrong lessons from
that experience? Did they learn only that people can be warehoused? Is
this yet another lesson Bush learned from his Grandfather Prescott Bush
and Adolf Hitler?

Of all the charges that may be leveled at George W. Bush and his Nazi
gang, it cannot be said that they did not plan ahead. There will be a
place for those who cannot afford a chemically induced happiness in Bush's
Brave New World. The fate of New Orleans is the nightmarish vision of
America's future. There is no relief for those who will most certainly be
left behind to escape as best they can the streets, the gangs, the back
alley shelters. The alternative is a gulag of hideous camps.

The origins of Bush's utterly failed regime are economic. Not only is
terrorism always worse under GOP regimes so, too, the economy. The GOP
response to America's declining industrial base made the problem worse.
Reagan, for example, all but destroyed the labor movement even as American
"high tech" was exported in lieu of cars and steel. US jobs went abroad;
US workers stayed at home to get shafted by Bush Sr and, later, the Junior
Shrub. For a very brief period in Clinton's second term, the widening
chasm between rich and poor abated. Alas, the reprieve was too short to
undo the harm done by Reagan, Senior and now the defective sprout.

It is no coincidence that the fall of the dollar coincides with a rise in
the price of oil, the new "gold" that Bush has gone to war to control. As
a result, the business of the US has become war. It has become the means
by which the GOP makes payoffs to its minions in the
military/industrialist complex. It is no coincidence that as the dollar
falls, the Bush regime ratchets up the rhetoric. It is no coincidence that
as the price of oil goes up, so do the fortunes of those hoping to gain
control over the world's supply of oil.

As long as the world believed that the US economy was fundamentally sound,
it would support the dollar as a convenient international currency. After
all, businesses in Europe and the Far East wished to sell products to
Americans. They could do so only if the dollar were, in fact, worth
something. The cracks in the dam began to show by the time Nixon took the
US off the gold standard, in effect, a promise to redeem paper with gold.
Clearly, if the US were suddenly expected to "cover" every dollar with a
gold coin, Ft. Knox would arm itself against a run on the bank not seen
since the Great Depression.

The magnitude of this slow but growing crisis did not become apparent
until the Arab's called attention to the US weakness with the oil embargo
of the 1970's. It shook the world and traumatized the US. Nothing was
learned. The Ronald Reagan administration exploited a sense of malaise
with an Orwellian term – stagflation. It was perhaps the creation of yet
another but more recent addition to the GOP-speak lexicon: Islamofascist
or al Qaeda in Iraq!

A second terrorist attack would breathe new life into Bush's quest to gain
control over the world's oil supplies and thus, the price of oil. The
Joint Chiefs of Staff, in fact, conceived and approved a heinous plan to
launch a secret war against our own country, a ruse to dupe Americans into
supporting a war of aggression against Cuba.

Code named Operation Northwoods, the plan, which had the written approval
of the Chairman and every member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, called for
innocent people to be shot on American streets; for boats carrying
refugees fleeing Cuba to be sunk on the high seas; for a wave of violent
terrorism to be launched in Washington, D.C., Miami, and elsewhere. People
would be framed for bombings they did not commit; planes would be
hijacked. Using phony evidence, all of it would be blamed on Castro, thus
giving Lemnitzer and his cabal the excuse, as well as the public and
international backing, they needed to launch their war.

The idea may actually have originated with President Eisenhower in the
last days of his administration. With the Cold War hotter than ever and
the recent U-2 scandal fresh in the public's memory, the old general
wanted to go out with a win.–Body of Secrets, James Bamford, Doubleday,
2001, p.82 and following, Scanned and edited by NY Transfer News.

More recently:

"There is only one politically serious explanation of this
now-indisputable fact: powerful forces within the US military/intelligence
complex wanted a terrorist incident on US soil in order to create the
needed shift in public opinion required to embark on a long-planned
campaign of military intervention in Central Asia and the Middle East.
Whether or not they knew the scale of the impending attacks and what the
precise targets would be, they acted in such a way as to block the arrest
of known terrorist operatives and allow them to carry out their plot."–Lt.
Col. Anthony Shaffer, Army intelligence officer

To the degree that our own government contemplates anything of this sort,
it is illegitimate. To the extent that Bush is involved personally, he is
to be considered a traitor, a self-declared enemy of the people. Indeed,
Bush has claimed that he has the authority and the power to wage war on
Americans.

Because the bill was adopted with lightning speed, barely anyone noticed
that it empowers Bush to declare not just aliens, but also U.S. citizens,
"unlawful enemy combatants."

The Military Commissions Act of 2006 governing the treatment of detainees
is the culmination of relentless fear-mongering by the Bush administration
since the September 11 terrorist attacks.

Because the bill was adopted with lightning speed, barely anyone noticed
that it empowers Bush to declare not just aliens, but also U.S. citizens,
"unlawful enemy combatants."

Bush & Co. has portrayed the bill as a tough way to deal with aliens to
protect us against terrorism. Frightened they might lose their majority in
Congress in the November elections, the Republicans rammed the bill
through Congress with little substantive debate.–Bush Claims Power to Wage
War on American Citizens, Marjorie Cohn, Professor, Thomas Jefferson
School of Law

These are the acts of a tyrant. None of the "powers" Bush has assumed are
legitimate; none are granted him in the Constitution. Nor has Bush
demonstrated that the alleged terrorist threat, having grown worse
statistically as Iraq descended into chaos and civil war, is anything more
than a creation of US imperialism, blow back as a result of CIA bungling
or, in fact, direct actions by the CIA.

It must always be kept in mind that there is a necessary minimum without
which the establishment and consolidation of the first center is not
practicable. People must see clearly the futility of maintaining the fight
for social goals within the framework of civil debate.
When the forces of oppression come to maintain themselves in power against
established law, peace is considered already broken.–Guerrilla Warfare,
Chapter One: General Principles of Guerrilla Warfare, Che Guevara,

By that high standard, the regime of George W. Bush is illegitimate;
Bush's occupancy is thus impeachable and prosecutable. Bush's occupancy of
the Oval Office is a Constitutional crime.

Che was not so "revolutionary". Our own Thomas Jefferson anticipated that
principle in 1776 when he, Samuel Adams and a band of "revolutionaries",
"conspiracy theorists" and "liberals" accused the regime of George III of
waging unjust "war" against his subjects in the colonies.

That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it
is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new
Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its
powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their
Safety and Happiness.–Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson

In other words, the peace had already been broken. What was, in fact, a
colonial war of separation became revolution in the world of ideas.
Jefferson's ideas influenced an entire generation of French
revolutionaries who dared to take up the cause of freedom. [See: The
Influence of American Ideas upon the French Revolution, 1785-1800. by
Conor Cruise O'Brien, Author(s) of Review: David A. Grimsted]

It is a lesson that George W. Bush, the CIA, the Pentagon never learned.
Bush, his Neocon friends, the robber barons of big oil and the CIA are
increasingly counter-revolutionaries. The word conservative does not mean
the conservation of American freedom. It means, rather, the conservation
and acquisition of obscene wealth by means of aggressive war. The word
"liberal", by contrast, means "free" or, more precisely, "pertaining to a
free person". Never run away from the word "liberal" again. Rather, stuff
it up the GOP's fascist ass!

The proposition that terrorism is the inevitable result of imperial
aggressions explains Bush incompetent economic policies as well as
America's fascist tilt. That terrorism is always worse under GOP regimes
is a demonstrable, statistical fact. The CIA creates terrorism two ways by
indulging it as a tactic and by inspiring it with its excesses. The legacy
of Blackwater USA, an international terrorist organization, will have
inspired generations of "terrorists" resorting to a tactic against which
top down fascist regimes are impotent.

It's time to fire the Bush administration, his supportive gang, and his
army of militaristic bureaucrats for whom keeping their jobs is their only
job. This government remains illegitimate until a fair and unfettered
election can be held. I am not optimistic that that will happen in the
foreseeable future, or even our lifetimes. Until then and for as long as
Bush wages war on the people of the US, it is the right of the people to
abolish this government.

Thomas Jefferson, were he alive, would agree. The body of the Declaration
of Independence is a laundry list of crimes and abuses attributed to
George III. The Declaration of Independence is an indictment of a king. A
similar indictment of the current George will be even longer and will
include even more heinous abuses. It's time for Bush to go! He must submit
to arrest and trial for capital crimes. There is a cell awaiting him in
the Texas prison system, the hell holes that most certainly inspired Abu
Ghraib.

Bush gave the game away. Americans were told that the attack on Iraq was
about "terrorism", nevermind that "terrorism" is both created and made
worse by US imperialist policies and CIA skullduggery. The rest of the
world knows the truth of it. As Rome attacked Dacia for its gold, the US
attacked the world for control of its oil.

George Galloway Takes on the US Senate and Wins!

Additional resources
James Jeffords
Six years on: Amid a failed war and invasion, only 3 percent of Americans
believe the US will bring Democracy to the Middle East
Iran/Contra Redux: How Bush May be Financing al Qaeda and Other Terrorist
Organizations
The L-curve
The Heritage Foundation Picks a Fight with the Cowboy
Terrorism is Worse Under GOP Regimes
Americans Have Lost Their Country
A List of Right Wing Traitors Wishing for More Terrorist Attacks Against
the US
Bush Claims Power to Wage War on US Citizens

Discoveries
Talk by Naomi Wolf - The End of America
A Crude Awakening: The Oil Crash
Snowball - Our Dancing Cockatoo
Concerto pour trompette en mi bémol majeur, de Joseph Haydn
Eric Clapton - Reptile
Glenn Gould - J.S. Bach's Goldberg Variations

http://existentialistcowboy.blogspot.com/2007/10/how-second-terrorist-attack-will.html

False Flag Section has more related reports

http://rinf.com/alt-news/911-truth/how-a-second-terrorist-attack-will-benefit-george-w-bush/1524/