From: Archibald Scatflinger (TransdimensionalElf@hawaii.rr.com)
Date: Sun Sep 22 2002 - 18:38:50 MDT
----- Original Message -----
From: "Jon Marshall" <jmarshal@OL.COM.AU>
To: <CYBERMIND@LISTSERV.AOL.COM>
Sent: Friday, September 20, 2002 4:18 PM
Subject: Re: news, news
> Ok so let us admit the real thing behind all this is that George Bush
> wants to be the new Augustus, and found the world spanning American
> Empire. Let's hope that he does not do for the US Republic what Augustus
> did for the Roman Republic.
>
> Basically the Bush document which is now present at
>
> http://www.whitehouse.gov/nsc/nss.html
>
> Is his blueprint for the future. As John might say, one has to read it
> carefully without being distracted by propaganda.
>
> Basically it announces that the US will strike whenever it wants, at
> whoever it wants and will not be held responsible for its actions.
>
> I need hardly point out that this will drive anyone who has any doubts
> of US intentions into making weapons of mass destruction in order to
> have some defence against an unprovoked attack sometime in the future.
> It is clear from the Bush Admin's style that you cannot negotiate with
> them - whatever the document says 'diplomacy' is unlikely to be
> important in the new order.
>
> China, which was threatened by Bush during the election, must think that
> it has to develope its nuclear and biological capacity in order to be
> safe. This will force India to do likewise, which will force Pakistan
> to do likewise, which will spill over into the Islamic world in general.
>
> Furthermore, potential victims of US policy have to get poisons and
> germs on to US soil to make sure of delivery when the crisis occurs. As
> the US cannot stop the drug trade it will not be able to stop this trade
> either. Having the material on US soil means that it is more likely that
> these weapons will be used by random terrorists, or activated by
> accident. Thus the risk to US citizens is heightened. The only way this
> can be fought is by total surviellance, citizen spying and so on.
> Increased use and funding of 'intelligence services', and its
> integration with domestic police, is one of the central points of the
> document.
>
> The document also states that to acheive its aims there must be more
> American bases overseas in more countries (another break with
> conservatism)
>
> One of the few facts that you can get from the social sciences is that
> this kind of unilateral action will push moderate opponents of the US
> into extreme positions (probably in secret). It will not cause them to
> think how safe they are under US first strike capacity. This will
> polarise the world, and lead to a much greater likelyhood of attacks on
> the US or on US citizens.
>
> Allies of the US will tend to define any internal opposition as
> terrorism, and use the Bush Admin logic to suppress them. This will
> drive many pro-democracy groups to have ties with real terrorist
> oppositions. This may also happen internally to the US - some argue that
> it is already happening with the increasing violence used to supress
> demonstrations against global injustice.
>
> The document has much about increasing freedoms, but as we know Bush has
> ignored Law (first strike, indefinate detention without trial or charge,
> tearing up treaties, telling the UN they have to agree with him or else,
> opting out of the International criminal court etc) we can be pretty
> sure that all freedoms which depend on democratic law will be sacrificed
> to the cause of his Empire. The vulnerability of US freedoms is perhaps
> not so much dependent on external forces, but on internal restrictions -
> (people have already mentioned the Bush admin's politicization of
> science. For this admin, poltical truth must outwiegh mere epiricism).
>
> At every step, when the Bush admin has been able to go for international
> justice, or international law, or to building the voluntary cooperation
> of nations they have gone for force alone. US superiority to Law, or to
> other people, seems to be the only thing that matters.
>
> Furthermore there is no evidence that the economy can actually support
> the kind of spending he is talking about here. This kind of policy is
> quite likely to take the US from defacto global head, to disaster - and
> I'm not quite sure what kind of world will result after that.
>
> This is a really sad week.
>
> jon
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Wed Sep 25 2002 - 13:28:59 MDT