The U.S. sithing on planet earth

U.S. Threatens Earth! The Real Star Wars

"Space superiority is not our birthright, but it is our destiny," proclaimed General Lord. "Space superiority is our day-to-day mission. Space supremacy is our vision for the future."

No, it's not more stilted dialogue delivered by a dark figure with an unbelievable name in the new Star Wars movie. It's a straight-faced statement of purpose by the leader of the U.S. Air Force Space Command.

"We must establish and maintain space superiority," General Lance Lord told the U.S. Congress. "Simply put, it's the American way of fighting."

Moreover, as the New York Times reported, billions of dollars has already been spent on space warfare, with little public knowledge or debate. And without public outcry, it will soon become official U.S. policy.

According to the New York Times story and other sources, Air Force doctrine defines space superiority as "freedom to attack as well as freedom from attack" in space. Currently there are weapons planned for attacking earth targets from space (including the so-called Rods from Gods, which would hurl cylinders of metal, including uranium, from space to targets on the ground, with the force of nuclear weapons) and space planes which could strike ground targets from the other side of the planet.

"This is the type of prompt Global Strike I have identified as a top priority for our space and missile force," General Lord said.

General Cartwright of the Space Command told a Senate Arms Services subcommittee that the goal is to provide the U.S. with the capability of attacking "very quickly, with very short time lines on the planning and delivery, any place on the face of the earth."

U.S. planners are also looking at destroying other space targets, beginning with existing satellites of potential enemies but also commercial communications and weather satellites that could aid opponents.

All of this---plus the more publicized "star wars" missile defense--- has been quietly accelerated during the Bush administration, and is one reason the U.S. withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.

The fact that no other nation is known to be designing space weapons is apparently no deterrent. Virtually every technologically advanced nation on the planet has objected to the U.S. plans. But if plans go forward, a new arms race may very well be the outcome, and it will costs horrendous amounts of money.

There are major concerns about the havoc that could be caused on earth's surface even by testing such weapons, especially if nuclear weapons or nuclear powered space vehicles are included.

Groups that oppose this strategy point to the needs on the planet itself, and all the scientists and money tied up in this essentially insane project.

Even some advocates of space travel and exploration point out that warfare around the earth will result in so much debris that vehicles may never get off the planet to explore space.

There are more details on these plans and groups that oppose them here at www.armscontrol.org and this summary of the space command threat.

The reason this is news now is that the White House is considering making this official U.S. policy by accepting an Air Force directive outlining all of this. Bush is expected to approve it within weeks.

What if a really crazy group of people got control of these weapons---you know, religious zealots who want to hasten the Rapture, or political assassins who see the world in black and white, and who bare their teeth even at allies when they dare to differ? Look out France! In 45 seconds you could be French toast, because whoever isn’t with us is against us.

Only a concerted public outcry can save the planet.

Sounds like science fiction, doesn't it?

ever notice how the presidency ages people? 

This Just In--Darth Rove Unmasked

The Sith are coming, or are they already here? Agreeing with that remarkably perceptive piece in the SF Chronicle,
various other voices quoted by the Washington Post:

The Empire Strikes Bush

UPDATE 5/19
from the New York Times:

¶Conservative Web logs were lacerating Mr. Lucas over the film's perceived jabs at President Bush - as when Anakin Skywalker, on his way to becoming the evil Darth Vader, warns, "If you're not with me, you're my enemy," in an echo of Mr. Bush's post-9/11 ultimatum, "Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists."
¶A little-trafficked conservative Web site about film, Pabaah.com - for "Patriotic Americans Boycotting Anti-American Hollywood" - added Mr. Lucas to its list of boycotted entertainers, along with more than 200 others, including Jane Fonda, Susan Sarandon, Sean Penn and the Dixie Chicks.

Lucas in Cannes: " he went on to say that he had first devised the "Star Wars" story during the Vietnam War. "The parallels between what we did in Vietnam and what we're doing in Iraq now are unbelievable," he told an appreciative audience."

In Other New...

Econ for the Future 101 at Books in Heat. Capra's "Lost Horizon" Found at Blue Voice.

Springtime in Canada, without countdown. Photo by Lemmuel Dash. 

Friday 13: And Your Friend the Atom

An Associated Press report, appearing in the Toronto Globe and Mail:

Washington isn't taking “the common bargain” of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty as seriously as it once did, hurting global support for the U.S. campaign to shut down the North Korean and Iranian nuclear programs, former chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix says.

U.S. Undersecretary of State John Bolton, by questioning the value of treaties and international law, has also damaged the U.S. position, Mr. Blix said.

“There is a feeling the common edifice of the international community is being dismantled,” the Swedish arms expert said.

Mr. Blix, now chairman of the Swedish government-sponsored Weapons of Mass Destruction Commission, spoke with reporters Monday in the second week of a month-long conference to review the 1970 nonproliferation treaty.
The Globe and Mail: Blix chides U.S. over nuclear outlook

Joseph Kahn reports in the New York Times that Yang Xiyu, the top China official involved in North Korean nuclear negotiations said in an interview, "It is true that we do not yet have tangible achievements" in ending North Korea's nuclear weapons program. But a basic reason for the unsuccessful effort lies in the lack of cooperation from the U.S. side."

The statement, Kahn writes, is noteworthy "because the Chinese authorities very rarely speak to journalists about the issue. The comments reflect growing frustration in Beijing with the Bush administration." Similar sentiments were expressed by a leader in the Russian legislature.

North Korea announced another step in extracting weapons grade plutonium from its main nuclear reactor, as a move "necessary to bolster its nuclear arsenal," according to an unnamed North Korean official in a Los Angeles Times report.

But several overseas newspapers noted that the U.S. right-rigging media is concentrating on the "Iran nuclear crisis." Reports midweek indicated that Iran is ready to formally end its freeze on nuclear activities, dooming the stalled negotiations with European countries.

The chickenhawks are likely concentrating on Iran because it's not believed they as yet have nuclear weapons, so according to chickenhawk logic, because they aren't a threat---whereas North Korea may be capable of launching an atomic attack on San Francisco--they are the chosen target of the only action the Bushheads are capable of: bullying.

Nuclear Arms Talks Stalled

i-Newswire.com - Press Release And News Distribution - NUCLEAR NON-PROLIFERATION TREATY REVIEW CONFERENCE CONTINUES GENERAL DEBATE AT UN HEADQUARTERS

Canadian Scientists Prove Italians Are Smarter

Hand Gestures Linked To Better Speaking

The Outrageous Skies

It's bad enough that United Airlines asked to be relieved of its pension obligations to its employees, especially after years of convincing many to take early retirement in order to preserve their pensions, and asking, or demanding, other concessions that translated into hardships for workers, while management maybe had to leave St. Bart's a day early.

But what's worse is that a Bankruptcy Court in Chicago granted their request. What this means in terms of money is still unclear---technically it's a transfer to a government agency, but it's likely the benefits will be cut, though so far no one is saying by how much.

Apart from the rank injustice to the rank and file, those of us who depend on United, not as a matter of choice but of monopoly or damn close to it, are not looking forward to the next flight on the "friendly skies." What motivation do these folks have now?

That may sound selfish from those of us who have the choice of flying United or flapping our arms and jumping off a roof, but it goes directly to the logic of being unjust and oppressive to the people everyone depends on to keep things working. Things stop working.

Now that United has gotten away with this so far (we hope it's appealed, all the way up, and let the Supremes tell America what to do with their pensions, before their GOPer brethren get their teeth into Social Security), other troubled airlines won't be far behind. And American workers will find themselves joining the millions of workers in the rest of the world who are hard at work building the pyramids for the Bushfolk of the planet, all for the honor of being bamboozled, lied to, exploited, cheated and scorned.

United workers feel betrayed / Bankruptcy judge relieves airline of pension obligation

In Other New...

Douglas Adams, Beyond the Fringe, Dr. Who, Monty Python and the Beatles at Soul of Star Trek.

Hypocracy in America, Vol. 42,0056: Social Security Scam

Not content with further enriching the filthy rich, many of their fortunes coming at the expense of the future of all life on the planet, the Bushoids feel compelled to drive the hard pressed into an old age of poverty and suffering, for generations to come.

That's pretty much the Social Security plan Bush is offering. Paul Krugman does the math. Quotes from his New York Times column are in itals.

He asserts, as do many who don't fudge the numbers, that if the economy grows as it has, there is no crisis in Social Security for the next half century. The point isn't that there might not be, because if you ask the Dash brothers, and nobody does, it's likely that Social Security will be a comparatively minor crisis at mid century compared with everything else that's falling apart, or else it will already be part of a sensible and comprehensive support package for all, cradle to grave.

Anyway, we've got at least twenty-five years to keep tabs on Social Security before we have anything but fantasy to judge its solvency on. Assuming that government goes on as it has, which is to regularly rob the Social Security trust fund with a boldness that makes Bonnie and Clyde look like a couple of Hollywood actors.

The Bushoids now want to cut benefits for "the wealthy." So they've woken up to the inequity of their tax cut, and are trying in their admittedly stupid way to make amends? Not exactly. Here Krugman finds the exact analogy (which we praise because this is the first thing we thought of, the debates...):

In last fall's debates, Mr. Bush asserted that "most of the tax cuts went to low- and middle-income Americans." Since most of the cuts went to the top 10 percent of the population and more than a third went to people making more than $200,000 a year, Mr. Bush's definition of middle income apparently reaches pretty high.

But defenders of Mr. Bush's Social Security plan now portray benefit cuts for anyone making more than $20,000 a year, cuts that will have their biggest percentage impact on the retirement income of people making about $60,000 a year, as cuts for the wealthy.

In case you're hazy on the US dollar, making 20 thou a year won't rent you an apartment in most of America, unless perhaps you forgo eating, and $60 thou is about the minimum for the middle class "ownership society" or at least a small home somewhere.

But simple cynicism in selling this apparently loopy proposal is just the tip of the melting iceberg. The proposal doesn't just penalize people who are barely making it but it continues to enrich the very rich, through the combination of tax cuts for the wealthy and Social Security benefit cuts for the poor. Here's Krugman's numbers:

Suppose you're earning $60,000 a year. On average, Mr. Bush cut taxes for workers like you by about $1,000 per year. But by 2045 the Bush Social Security plan would cut benefits for workers like you by about $6,500 per year. Not a very good deal.

Suppose, finally, that you're making $1 million a year. You received a tax cut worth about $50,000 per year. By 2045 the Bush plan would reduce benefits for people like you by about $9,400 per year. We have a winner!

So this is the Bush agenda. It's not enough to increase suffering for millions of people while he's in office, by ignoring the health care crisis, bleeding the states' ability to help their citizens, sending the young of lower income families to bleed and die for his vanity war in Iraq, etc., he is going to increase suffering for millions of people well into the future, not just with the effects of his record deficits, nor his refusal to deal with global heating and bungling of nuclear arms control, but by paying off the rich children and grandchildren of his obscene and obscenely rich friends, by stealing even more from the poor and middle class. Now that's vision. Praise the lords, and passeth all understanding.

The Final Insult - New York Times

In Other New...

The political message of Star Wars in yesterday's San Francisco Chronicle.

They All Look Alike

The Bushies were crowing that they captured the #3 man in Al-Qaeda! Well, not them, the Pakistanis. And, as it turned out, not the #3 man, probably after all.

It turns out this is a guy nobody in European or U.S. intelligence heard of. He wasn't on the FBI Wanted list. My favorite part of the story below is the quote from the Bushie official who said he wasn't on the list because they didn't want him to know he was wanted.

But on the bright side he's now the 6th Al-Q. guy to be captured. That's like better than one a year since 9/11! Way to go Bushwarriors. No wonder things are going so well in Iraq, Iran, North Korea, etc.

Captured Al-Qaeda kingpin is case of ?mistaken identity? - Sunday Times - Times Online

we're watching

In Other New...

The definitive essay on Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home is at
Soul of Star Trek...

Bush Fatigue and The Nuclear Madness Update

Yes, things continue to go to hell in Iraq, more death and chaos, and the American public no longer thinks it was such a good idea. And yes, the Brits have a memo that proves the U.S. was determined to invade Iraq and manufacture the reasons to do it.

So why no ranting and raving in your favorite ranting and raving rental on the net? Bush Fatigue has set in. It's brought on not only by endless bad news, but endless totally predicted bad news, bad news that isn't news to us. What would make it news is if anybody actually got held accountable for causing it. But that's what the last election was for, and we see how that turned out.

The U.S. has a corporate news media that is only astonishing in that it gets worse when you can't imagine how that could happen. It's all the same: the Brave New World Network.

Bush Fatigue.

So it is at the anti-proliferation treaty conference in New York. What you don't want to think about is that people can't even get upset about nuclear war anymore.

Here's the update anyway:

While the U.S. media ignores the non-proliferation conference in New York, many outside the U.S. and some in are castigating the Bush administration for threatening world peace and stability with their intransigence and bungling.

On Tuesday, the second day of the four week nuclear non- proliferation treaty conference in New York, Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi spoke. U.S. media uniformly headlined the speech as Iran announcing it would resume nuclear related activities it suspended while in talks with European nations, asserting it had an "inalienable right" to develop nuclear power for peaceful purposes.

Non-U.S. media, especially in the Third World, were more likely to report Kharrazi's strong condemnation of Washington for maintaining a huge nuclear arsenal, and demanding that the U.S. assure Iran it would not launch a nuclear strike on that country.

The New York Times did report this line from his speech, late in their story: "The continued existence of thousands of nuclear warheads in the nuclear weapon states' stockpile, which can destroy the entire globe many times over, are the major sources of threat to peace and security."

This is the stalemate that threatens to sink the conference before it starts. On the first day it was North Korea asserting itself, on the second it was Iran. Neither country was satisfied with what western countries offered in recent negotiations.

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan has pointedly criticized the U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals, while calling for a stronger non-proliferation treaty,that recognizes the rights of nations to pursue peaceful nuclear energy. The U.S. demands concessions---in fact, total abstinence-from non-nuclear countries, but is offering and giving up nothing.

What's behind the U.S. intransigence? In the Los Angeles Times in April, Robert Scheer suggested the relationship to America's ugly dependence on arms sales:

"Trying to follow the U.S. policy on the proliferation of nuclear weapons is like watching a three-card monte game on a city streetcorner. Except the stakes are higher.

The announcement last week that the United States is authorizing the sale to Pakistan of F-16 fighter jets capable of delivering nuclear warheads - and thereby escalating the region's nuclear arms race - is the latest example of how the most important issue on the planet is being bungled by the Bush administration."

Speaking of bungling, Guardian columnist Simon Tisdall went after none other than Dueling John Bolton, head of the rapidly dwindling Bolton gang, for his contribution to screwing things up with North Korea, and making the world a much less safer place.

"Many damaging accusations have been levelled at John Bolton, President George Bush's controversial nominee as US ambassador to the UN.

But perhaps the most serious is that Mr Bolton, as undersecretary of state for arms control and international security since 200, bungled efforts to dissuade North Korea from developing nuclear weapons.

Mr Bolton helped to scrap the Clinton administration's 1994 "agreed framework" that froze North Korea's weapons-related plutonium reprocessing programme. The framework was imperfect - but nothing remotely adequate replaced it.

In 2002, President Bush denounced North Korea as part of the "axis of evil". In 2003, Pyongyang withdrew from the nuclear non-proliferation treaty and traded insults with Mr Bolton. In February, it declared itself a nuclear weapons state.

And at the weekend, on the eve of the treaty review conference in New York, North Korea said stalled regional talks were effectively dead.

The Pentagon's Defence Intelligence Agency conceded last week that North Korea probably now has nuclear-armed missiles capable of hitting US soil. "

As awful as all that is, it is the actual work of the conference that is most endangered right now. This dispatch courtesy of the Institute for Public Accuracy:

"JOHN BURROUGHS, johnburroughs@lcnp.org, http://www.lcnp.org Burroughs, executive director of the New York-based Lawyers' Committee on Nuclear Policy, is monitoring the Non-Proliferation Treaty conference in New York. Burroughs presented the paper "Building a Nuclear Weapons-Free Future" at the January meeting on the NPT at the Carter Center. He said today: "As the four-week NPT Review Conference opened this week, the U.S. is showing no flexibility about arms control steps like negotiation of a verifiable treaty banning production of fissile materials (plutonium and highly enriched uranium) for nuclear weapons. That is a treaty under which international inspectors would monitor U.S. facilities, a prospect not attractive to the Bush administration. In turn, non-nuclear countries are resisting non-proliferation measures like IAEA director Mohamed ElBaradei's proposal for multilateral controls on the spread of technology to produce fissile materials for use in nuclear reactors but also potentially in nuclear weapons."

Translated, nobody is actually negotiating.

And of course, no one is paying attention. Instead we are obsessed with whatever smaller matters of momentary attention get the adrenalin going. Politics-as-usual is becoming the meth of public consciousness.

In Other New...

Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy at Soul of Star Trek...

Anti-Nuke Time in New York City

Nuclear Option Continued

In the 1986 feature, Star Trek: The Voyage Home, the 23rd century Enterprise crew comes back through time to the mid 1980s. For a scene that has them peering at a newspaper, director Leonard Nimoy had to select a headline that would be characteristic but not too dated by the time the movie came out. He decided on "Nuclear Talks Stalled."

"It's a miracle these people got out of the 20th century," observed Doctor McCoy.

True enough, but the real miracle may be yet to come---getting out of the 21st. For one thing, it's 2005, the nuclear non-proliferation treaty talks are just starting in New York, and guess what? Stalled.

After weeks of partisan wrangling in Congress over something called the nuclear option, many Americans who follow politics may be surprised to learn that the real nuclear option is about to be discussed by representatives of 180 nations in New York City, beginning today.

There has been scant mention in the U.S. press of these formal discussions on the 1970 international nuclear non-proliferation treaty. Two events in the hours before it opens have provided some visibility: an earnest if unfocused demonstration in New York, but especially a short-range missile test by North Korea.

The U.S. would like to keep the attention on North Korea and Iran, but other nations are at least as interested in what the U.S. is and is not doing.

While insisting that other nations refrain from obtaining nuclear arms, the Bush administration has withdrawn pledges made by the U.S. at the last conference in 2000 to join the comprehensive test ban treaty, and sign a verifiable treaty banning production of fissile material for nuclear weapons. The Bush administration also has plans for new nuclear weapons systems, and is arguably already engaging in nuclear war in Iraq with depleted uranium weapons.

In addition, other nations believe the U.S. has not destroyed stockpiles of nuclear arms sufficiently nor aided the Soviet Union in destroying theirs. All of this first of all means that after months of preparation, the conference doesn't even have an agenda, because of the conflict between the U.S. and other nations.

"If one state begins to reject commitments it made at past review conferences, other states may start to reject prior commitments. The non-proliferation treaty will quickly erode," said Daryl Kimball, head of the independent Arms Control Association.

The Guardian has a full story here:

Nuclear weapons are not metaphors left over from the Cold War. They exist in quantity, and they are still dangerous. The threats of terrorists with dirty bombs or "rogue nations" with a few true nukes are vaguely recognized. But those huge thermonuclear arsenals have not disappeared. A RAND study says that accidental nuclear arms attack between the U.S. and Russia is not only still possible, it is more likely than it was during the Cold War.

There are numerous very serious problems involved in the existence of aging weapons, of so much fissile material and nuclear waste that will be lethal for thousands of years.

But the Bush administration has stopped addressing these problems, and is moving towards nuclear rearmament, breaking the actual and implied promises the U.S. made in order to get other nations to pledge not to become nuclear powers. Now with the U.S. bullying smaller nations, they have more incentive than ever to acquire nuclear arms.

The North Korea situation is increasingly volatile. According to U.S. defense intelligence, North Korea will soon have missiles capable of reaching the West Coast of the U.S. Others, like former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, claim they have missiles with that range already. It's also believed that North Korea is set to conduct nuclear weapons tests, and again, some believe they already have nuclear capability.

These facts, McNamara says, mean that the U.S. has no military options to deal with North Korea. Yet the Bush administration continues to engage in more recriminations and name calling than negotiation.

Two quotes from another Guardian story:

Last Thursday George Bush labelled the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-il, a "dangerous person" and a "tyrant".

A day later the official North Korean news agency quoted the North Korean foreign ministry as calling Mr Bush a "hooligan, bereft of any personality as a human being, to say nothing of stature as president of a country. He is a half-baked man in terms of morality, and a philistine whom we can never deal with."

The history of the Bomb in America (reported for example in a new book by Gerard DeGroot: THE BOMB, A LIFE) has been characterized by public silence and private dread. Government lies and secrecy, plus the active policy of considering questions about nuclear weapons to be unpatriotic, joined with the natural inability to deal with the enormity of nuclear weapons, to create a sense of political denial for much of time since 1945. Meanwhile, unconscious fears and distrust of government and science found expression in the arts and popular entertainment, from Dr. Strangelove and The Day After to the "bug-eyed monster movies," the alien invasion and post-apocalyptic future genres of science fiction.

President Kennedy's eloquent pursuit of a partial test-ban brought these emotions into public, and for a decade or so, the impetus was on the side of ending the threat of nuclear weapons.

But under the radar and outside the public eye, the momentum may have reversed. It is up to us to pay attention to this conference, as a sign that we still want a world without nuclear weapons.

It's not like we don't have problems enough without them.