It certainly would not hurt to do the information campaign.

Better would be to point out the folly of pursuing arms to the businessmen. Let the quick buck crowd try that and they will kill your future markets. Cut off the massive military budgets at their knees by having the private capitol flee those places that pursue such militant action and make long-term business impossible.

It has been said, in The World is Flat, that an arms buildup along the India - Pakistan border was averted by having the businessmen in both countries point out to the 'leaders' that economic opportunity was going to be crushed by further militant actions, indeed the private capitol markets had already downgraded both regions for long-term investment because of the increased tensions.

Why not use these same market forces to prod the three boggest holders of 'buckets of sunshine' to stop getting ready to incinerate everyone?

The first major step towards this would be to privatize 'money'.

Interesting point, murdock.

I've been working my way thru Philip Bobbit's The Shield of Achilles: War, Peace and the Course of History

He outlines in detail a future paradigm for the "Market-State" which I think you're suggesting, and which will incorporate its own incentives for peace which are largely absent among nation states.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0141007559/026-9017662-3474022

I think it's going to be the dynamic flow of money, rather than nation-state policies, that ultimately is going to keep the peace (if the peace is, in fact, to be kept).

It's sad to admit, but such macroeconomic forces are more stable and reliable influences on policy than whimsical electorates, who can be panicked into going along with anything. Mel Hurtig's optimism in the effectiveness of internet information-dissemination campaigns is misplaced. All that work will easily be dislodged and wiped away by the first crisis or overseas challenge to the status quo. And if that doesn't happen, a crisis can always be engineered to stampeed a recalcitrant electorate.

Forces for peace and stability must become instrinsic to the international system if they're going to work. National electorates actually have very little influence on international developments - next to nil, actually...but consumer populations and shareholders of all stripes certainly do, and are not clustered along the traditional fault-lines of the nation-state (language, ethnicity, religion, culture).

Problem is, nightbloom, share ownership is often not widely enough distributed to have sufficient influence upon corporate decision makers - at least in the short run. Witness the reluctance to actually democratize international trade and level the tariff (and non-tariff) barriers that are and always have been erected against emerging nations' prosperity. Remember the Doha round?

All I've time for today.

Now that fantastically foolish belief is exactly what is wrong with the whole body of neoconservative thinking. It goes to the root of its stupidity, and it explains why there is such faith among neoconservatives in the rule of elites and in the notion of the "noble lie".

Macroeconomic forces are not independent of electorates. Macroeconomic forces are anything but stable and reliable.

Electorates certainly can be greatly affected by the quality of information they receive, and that in turn can be affected by their level of understanding of the world (which includes experience of the world's breadth and depth, not simply book based education). The goal should be to provide the electorate with information that is as accurate as possible, so that they can make informed decisions.

Our current marketplace, however, is structured to do exactly the opposite. Advertising, marketing and public relations are all about lying in order to evoke an emotional reaction that creates the desired behaviour in the target audience; whether that be desire to provoke consumption, or fear to instill passive acceptance of murderous leadership.

Nightbloom, you might want to try and read a few more books.

So garbage harper is announcing that instead of addressing real problems facing us he and his fascist cronies are going to be dumping 15 billion of our hard earned tax dollars on the f'n war machine.
I guess there's no money for responsible government when you're busy exterminating people.
p.s.-rona kissma

If the US does not weaponize space, who really believes that China and Russia will not weaponize space?

LOL - cripes, JW - how many books does it take to qualify on your opinion-barameter. You might want to recalibrate your definition of 'valid opinion' to include those which don't happen to coincide with your ideology.

And you totally missed the point. Electorates influence governments. Consumers and shareholders influence markets. Government is receding right across the board; markets are expanding and (slowly) uniforming. You can propagandize the electorate all you want. National electorates can't touch the inaccessible pockets of power that are emerging. That's the nub of the argument behind Bobbit's "Market State" thesis. You might want to give the book a whirl. I've got a few more volumes to recommend, JW, if you want to beef up your summer reading list, O Great Wise Reader of Many Books ;-P

Steve P
That has to be the worst argument for weaponizing space I've ever heard. You must be able to come up with something marginally better than that. China and far eastern investors now own about 28% of US international indebtedness now. Why would they bother fighting for what they will soon own outright anyway?

The Americans want space weapons as a means of extending their failing hegemony in the military and geopolitical sphere and as a method of furthering their neo con agenda, nothing more.

Not very different from Reagan's ‘ideas’ when this hobbyhorse was first bruited during his presidency…and from ostensibly the same mindset.

Hm. On one hand I completely agree with Mel Hurtig. I don't want the USA to mine the spaceways.

On the other hand, I think that it is sensible to have some sort of planet-to-space weapons capacity to shoot down big meteors, or the forces of Xenu. And the United States has the technical lead in this area and will be prominent in any effort.

Is this kind of thing something the UN could administer on behalf of all of us?

Alcibiades, you haven't actually countered Steve P's assertion that weaponization of space by other powers is highly likely, if not inevitable, even if the U.S. does not.

Don't mean to 'police' your posts, but I just thought I'd finally return the favour ;-)

Weaponization - there's no such word. For that matter, there's no such thing. Spy sattelites, communications sattelites - that's different. Besides, we Canadians make those things, therefore that's ok, right?

Irrefutabel evidence: a New York Times article?????????

"the principal reason the U.S. invaded Iraq: oil." - ok, so what did the US want - cheap oil or expensive oil? Canada is the main supplier of oil to the US, fyi Mel.

c'mon Mel. You've watched way too much Buck Rogers in your day.

btw, Another waste-o-time Tyee article. The demography is the message.

Point me to one concrete indication that you know what the hell you are talking about here Steve, if you will please.

Who knows the sky is not going to fall in tomorrow morning?

Duhhh!

That is just another apologist for the US Empire argument, of which we hear them all here, sooner or later.

The fact is, anyone with any understanding of what is going on in the world today and the role of a hyper-aggressive US Empire building policy set in driving it, knows that everyone concerned with their own state's safety in this environment, from the US "throwing its weight around in the world", as Putin put it, is being forced to develop nuclear weapons. It is the behaviour of the US in the world that is driving it, and providing it with a Mad Hatter rationality.

That said, this is the world all the "capitalisms" of the same world are about to bring us, with their built in global competition for resources, cheap labour, markets and hegemony/control, be it US, Russian, European, or Chinese capitalisms. They are ALL in on The Game now, and it has only increased the danger to the world and its peace since the end of the Cold War, not reduced it.

And the facilitators of this process, the "enablers" if you will, are such as yourself here who pose such a silly question, such as to attempt to justify US imperial policy.

It is "The System" itself that is hitting the wall of all rationality with its internally competetive "greed drives" and excesses, led by Amerikkka, but followed by everywhere else throughout the global empire system of capitalism.

And it is Amerikkkan policy in the world that is making it increasingly "necessary" that everyone else follow it into rapid nuclearization and accumulation of Weapons of Mass Destruction. (Assisted and apologized for here as well, by our own Stephen Harper.) Otherwise, it is the US Empire alone who will have a complete monopoly-, which is no less absolutely unthinkable to most of the peoples and nations of the world. That is even a no less desirable nightmare to myself, as a left-nationalist Canadian

And such a developmentt, short of a great rising of all the worlds people, against this "System scenario", which I certainly cannot see any emerging sign of, means only that there must be some kind of military system of "mutually assured destruction" globally in place, to keep a rampaging US Empire under control, and even a "fragile" and "relative" peace in place.

It is a madness, for sure. But then capitalism in these Neocon, drifting towards fascism days, everywhere it holds sway, is in a place of being totally bonkers and driving everyone so.

Excellent piece and set of observations, James.

He certainly is living proof that there is more to intelligence and understanding than simply reading, or at least attempting to impress us with the titles of weighty sounding tomes. :-)

Coyote, you and Alcibiades have both failed to address the point you claim to be refuting: that other rival powers will do it if the U.S. doesn't. Your fulminations merely skirt around the power issue in order to flog the morality issue (and not very effectively at that - the best argument against such a venture is a cold hard cost/benefit analysis).

Whether or not the U.S. is good or bad is another question entirely. I see no "apologetics" for American imperialism in Steve P's straightforward point. The point he mentioned is the fundamental reality with which U.S. decision makers must grapple one way or another. You have the luxury of ignoring such considerations.

And this assertion is just plain insane. "Silly questions" as a root cause of American global hegemony - good one, Coyote. You're forgetting the first rule of any grade 1 classroom: there are no silly questions. And I seem to remember something about free speech, open enquiry, and the free trade of ideas...

BTW, on totally unrelated topic, the UN just posted its 2006 World Drug Report. Canada now leads the world in Ecstasy seizures, accounting for 19% of the global total.

http://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/world_drug_report.html

Almost ashamed to say it, but there was a time when I would have welcomed a U.S. space buildup.
It seems that the Republicans have created a change in America starting with the time Reagan took office.
It's ironic that a republican president (Eisenhower) warned of America's industrial military complex - and it is that element which is the real danger to world peace.

Should I assume from your non-answer that you believe that China and Russia would not invest in weapons in space if the USA did not?

As Nightbloom pointed out, I wasn't defending US imperialism with my question -- I asked how you felt about Russian and Chinese Imperialism. Do you believe Russian and Chinese imperialism to be imaginary? I don't believe Russian and Chinese imperialism will go into decline if the US stopped building weapons tomorrow. I think optimism for peace needs to be tempered with sober realism.

China has a very ambitious space program right now, and wants to put a human on the moon soon. Their space program includes military applications.

http://www.space.com/news/china_space_020313.html

http://www.fas.org/spp/guide/china/index.html

Russia's involvement in space has been well-documented since the Cold War, so you can do your own googling.

Nightbloom...
Credit goes to the Vancouver police for making a national statement.

I've long been an admirer of Mr. Hurtig's, but that aside, this has to be the most important article (based on Hurtig's address to the Peace Forum) that The Tyee has ever published.

How can you possibly read this and still argue that there is anything even remotely redeemable about the weaponization of space? The future scenario that the military/industrial complex is now scripting into place is sheer madness.

But I think there is a more important question that Hurtig is proposing? Can we prevent it?...when we are surrounded by governments that no longer function in the best interests of the people, indeed when they have become the enemy within our gates now. And could the internet be a valuable tool, "a weapon for peace" in a citizen's revolt...that Everything hinges on?

As a woman, I really don't give a damn about fighting for some high gear career in some high-rise that demands a pair of high heels...nothing against high heels..I've done my share of prancing about in them...just not a priority...or my definition of Life.

Anyway, if I was stupid enough to define that as fulfillment...I'm sure I could pull it off all by myself...

But this I deeply care about both as a woman and as a mother...and this will take a mass movement of people to counter what is clearly mass suicide. How can you bring kids into this world and not feel this way? This has to be the worst kind of betrayal...to have children and then leave them only ugly darkness...and utter hopelessness.

You cannot read the above list of horrendous weapons being produced (on all sides) without thinking that we are now living midst the horror and chaos of a Pynchon novel.

So if we can use the internet to make our voices heard, to organize and educate...to change the tragic direction we are headed.....hell, nothing can be more important than this...

What we are now facing demands a truly evolutionary leap forward in our way of thinking and acting...if the internet holds within it even a chance of helping us do so...of pulling this off....well, really, is there a choice?

Let's hold on tight and go for it.

Alcibiades wrote:

I agree that our best long-term prospects for peace comes through interdependence and trade. The question is whether our increasing interdependence will strengthen our commitments to peace, or whether (like Karl Polanyi argues) interdependence and freer trade will exacerbate frictions that could lead to war.

Where we disagree is in our level of optimism about altruism in humanity: I don't think competitors in the global power game will stop preparing for war if the lead player stops making weapons.

Steve P,

I am saying that we will never know-, because the US is already there and indictating that it IS prepared to further nuclear arm space, and raise the stakes qualitatively, forcing those as can to do likewise. Indeed, all from Iran to North Korea to the new bloc of Russia and China would now be fools to their national interest NOT to do so, at least as much as lackey Canada. All else you suggest is pure conjecture, which should not be taken as factual evidence of anything.

And I certainly do know that there is Russian and Chinese imperialism, it is part of the historical record of all major capitalisms, at an advanced stage of their development. And they, Russia and China are capitalist systems no less than the US, with the same aggressive and imperialist instincts, which still is not, in and of itself, evidence of their intent to arm space for the forseeable future certainly, nor have they made such statements or are we aware of such plans, beyond what the US has already or long ago done, were it not for the threat emanating to themselves and all of us, from an out of control US Empire. Indeed, at this point in their still relatively early development, at least of their current models of capitalism, with the problems they have with the dissatisfaction levels and restiveness of their populations, they likely view the costs that must now go to arming space with some alarm. (That is the same game that US imperialism played on them, when it broke the old state capitalist system of the USSR. Now the economic indicators are that the US is as likely to break itself.)

So again, conjecture should likely not be presented as though it were the same thing as fact.

Certainly, if an ambition to put a man on the moon were evidence of an intent to "arm space", the USA would have been viewed as the enemy of all mankind long ago. As it almost certainly should have been, in my view.

Which leads yet again to the "suggestion" that one should likely not assume from one set of facts, an entire other conjecturous conclusion. For which you are beginning to display as marked a propensity as Pope Nightbloomers.

Albert Einstein

I thought that weapons in space were verbotten by the UN some time ago .
So much for de-escalation .
How do we know that space hasn't already been weaponized ?
Seems to me there are a couple of dozen ,so called, satellites that don't have a purpose .
Could be armed with powerful lazers or are just killers waiting to be deployed.
Floated up next to a Russian or Chinese satellite and then exploded bling the enemies capability .
Mel is correct though the best weapon we have is the internet .
Harpo's Addy

Gordon O'Conner's

Entirely right, woman. The madness of all this is at the level of complete madness, and yet there are those here who would suggest that it is entirely appropriate.

If you don't see that, that which you do that is threatening will be countered and raised by others, then you are young and foolish and weren't around through the madness of the Cold War and its many hot wars.

The US Empire assumes its "special right" to nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction. Well, others will now assume, and are, that they too have no less a "right". And they do.

And so it goes.

Hang on, indeed. What is taking shape, in my view, is even more scary than that which shaped the Cold War. The madness escalates by leaps and bounds.

PM's email.

Just can't get the image of Peter Sellers ,as Dr.Strangelove,out of my head.
It is sooo appropriate .
This film reasonates even louder today than when it was made almost forty years ago .

So far Yammer is closest to a valid reason for sending arms into space.

Yammer, where is planet Xenu? How big is a Xenubian?

And why is it neccessary for the USA to assert dominance over the Xenubians ?

Mel has been paranoid & delusional for many years. I guess this article is proof he has not, contrary to much common sense advice, sought out professional medical treatment.

This article will, however, play out well with the international moonbat brigades currently attending the world peace forum and Israel bashing fest going on in Vancouver. Might buy Mel a little street cred and get him on the international tour with Cindy "Queen Bush Hater" Sheehan.

Have a nice conference.

Now you are indulging in the stupidest part of classical Marxism -- i.e. the argument of historical phases and inevitability of certain types of social transformation. This is Hegelian crap that most practicing Marxists don't even believe anymore. News flash: communism did not grow out of advanced capitalism (where Marx predicted), communists took power in weak peripheral regimes with "early capitalist" economies.

Imperialism predates capitalism, so to interpret Russian & Chinese imperialism as outgrowths of capitalism is ridiculous.

I'm not celebrating the reality of American power here, Coyote. I'm asking you if you truly believe that Russia and China would not develop weapons in space if the US did not. I don't believe this is silly conjecture -- it is a question designed to elicit more of your world-view re: peace and conflict.

War and conflict have been with us throughout recorded history, and likely before. The problem of arms races will not end with the destruction of the USA, so I don't believe that weakening the USA will end arms races, on earth or in space. Unfortunately, this is a feature of the human condition. I do not think that, in our important struggle to promote peace, we should neglect the arts of war and their important role in maintaining peace.

That's not what you said in response to Steve's assertion. What you actually said was this:

And then you produced this fallacious little gem:

Before inflicting us with this amnesiac eruption:

Before concluding with an illogical statement that succeeds in mischaracterizing the statement you were originally opposing while doing nothing to support your own non-argument:

So let me pose your own question to you, Coyote: "Point me to one concrete indication that you know what the hell you are talking about here .... if you will please."

And why is it neccessary for the USA to assert dominance over the Xenubians ?

Um, because the only thing scarier than the USA is the Church of Scientology?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenu

That third Coyote-quote - Coyote's "fallacious little gem' - should have read thus:

"Free the Xenubians"

Our only chance at saving this planet is by colonizing space - just ask Stephen Hawking.

First weapons, then outer space condominiums.

Ok, now I see, this is an entrance strategy for an interplanetary holy war between the Evangelicals and Xenubians.

I expect that soon, we will hear of Xenubian's trying to purchase aluminum tubes of a quality that could only be for WMD.

Smae old, same old.

Yea, does anybody take Hawking seriously ?
Colonize the Moon and Mars.
Yea, that'll happen .

I expect that soon, we will hear of Xenubian's trying to purchase aluminum tubes of a quality that could only be for WMD.

Smae old, same old.

ROTFLMAO
Too funny Jstewart .
Xenubians already control Kitimat they have their ships hidden in the aluminimum mines .

Wouldn't surprise me that a disproportionate number of Canadian seizures would have occurred in Vancouver. If it weren't for the construction boom, the drug trade would be the only thing keeping the city moving. I think they missed a few though, cause it certainly hasn't dented supply in my demographic group.

Indeed, imperialism does predate capitalism. We are, however, though you here again attempt to move the goal posts, talking about the current age, in which the particular form of imperialism we encounter grows out of capitalism.

If you want me to address the larger issue of "imperialism across history", you must make that clear to me. I naturally assumed we are talking about the here and now.

And one feature that emerges out of the particular class and global relationships which "capitalism" establishes is a propensity towards wars of imperialism and colonialism. The history of capitalism is in fact replete with many, many examples coming from very many capitalist countries, from the time of "the system's" founding in the overthrow of Charles and the creation of the Industrial Revolution in England down to the present US Empire.

And so, there is indeed much self-indulgent crap being slung around here, but I would suggest that the petty sloganeering and throwing around of meaningless phrases comes from quite other quarters closer to yourselves and the fallacious bloomers, than here.

Is not the history of capitalism, casting back upon it now, replete with examples of a marked tendency towards imperialism in its major examples?

You might want to consider carefully. :-)

While I do not really review it as my responsibility to defend Marxism per se here, I would say that, in fact, the evidence is, on this particular News Flash score, that Marx has actually been been proven correct in his original thesis. :-) Think about it now.

Communism did not successfully emerge in "backward" societies, as later Communists and Marxists came to predict. As for whether or not the other part of Marx's contention or hypothesis, which is different from fact, that communism would more than likely develop out of "advanced" capitalism, the evidence is still not in< I would say.

(Now, it is even possible, because of all the negative conotations that have come to be associated with the concept of "communism", that is it to actually emerge, it may not even be called "communism"-, though it may yet have every other characteristic of the concept that much predates Soviet Russia, or even Marx for that matter.)

Continued next post...

From previous post...

That many Communists and/or Marxists in the period after the October Bolshevik Rising came to think that "communism" would more likely emerge out of the great anti-colonial struggles of the Third World and against lingering feudalism is another matter. They may have indeed even assisted that particular liberation process, history will be the future judge of that. What is clear by now though, on the score of those societies proceeding directly to communism through a "socialist" period of development did not come to pass. Indeed, the "communism" that came out of that process, of which China is an example, as is Russia, in fact, had much more in common with Capitalism, and indeed did morph into outright "classic" Capitalism. (Whether that was the intent of the original "Communists" who fought the revolution of that period "going in" or not, is quite another matter for a future discussion perhaps.)

You do not know nearly as much about Marxism and the fine points of the debates that have gone on therein as you might think, Steve P.

Keep trying.

And you make a presumption that I am a Marxist per se, my friend. I have not specifically considered myself a Marxist for a very long time. The degree to which my ideas do have a Marxist bent or base, and I acknowledge they certainly do have that influence, they are also much modified by the history that has passed since the time of Marx and my own experience with the Russian Revolution, and by the details of my own life and experiences.

Now, I really must do some real things. The Nightbloomer is much ado about nothing. A waste of time. Maybe another time I will feel more like slapping him around some. :-)

There is a tendency for very many folks to equate Marxism with being a kind of religion. Indeed, it has been so, even for very many proclaimed "Marsists".

Which may be why at one point he echoed Christs anguish, in wishing that he could be saved from the Marxists.

I have never viewed "Marxism" as a kind of religion, though there were certainly many even in my own experience within the Communist Party who did, but just a set of ideas that have some accuracy and "analytical tools" usefulness, and its own particular fallacies which time has served to make clear.

Marx was just a man, and a flawed one at that. Not unlike myself in some modest regards. :-) (I only "appear" to be perfect. :-)

Indeed.

I didn't presume you were a Marxist -- I identified your argument as being Marxist and fallacious. Inevitable phases of economic development is false, and I thought you were arguing that the imperialism of today was the inevitable result of advanced capitalism. Since your argument contained a false premise, your conclusion is false. You are, of course, still entitled to hope for a future communist transformation of society, but let's not pretend that this is an inevitable outcome of advanced capitalism.

Coyote, I am pleased that you are not a Marxist. Marx made many important contributions to social science (the most important, imho, is emphasizing material conditions when studying political economics), but the predictive power of his "scientific history" (or "historicism") has been roundly debunked by Karl Popper and others. And this criticism hardly includes communism's dismal record on human rights and the environment.

I was not moving goal posts, I was debunking your assertion that imperialism stemmed from capitalism, which I took as a ploy to ignore Chinese, Russian and other imperialist regimes.

At best, capitalism is a sufficient, but not necessary, condition for imperialism. Especially since, in our current age, Communist China indulges in imperialist practices. You may dither over definitions as to whether they are "real" commies, but I think this is splitting hairs: communist states (as they call themselves) have actively engaged in imperialist practices since they seized power, no different from any other state-building system.

In the case of the most successful empire in history -- the British empire -- colonial policy and imperialism arose from monarchy and mercantilism, not capitalism, which came later. So capitalism does not have a special role in the promotion of imperialism.

I don't know what you are talking about here. Communists did not seize government in London, France, or Germany, as originally predicted by Marx. It did take hold, however, Russia, China, and in the post-colonial world in general.

Back to the point:

I argue that preventing America's involvement in the space race would not prevent the space race from occuring by other competing powers. I have been villified for writing this, but the argument has not been debunked.

But I think that you already believe my argument, but may not be prepared to admit it. What you wrote supports my argument:

"As it certainly should have been" indicates your support for viewing mere exploration of space as tantamount to its militarization, which is much more extreme than my own view, which would include only weapons (i.e. excluding communications, labs, and habitat).

Thanks Alcibiades =^)

I'll put you down as a "no", you do not believe Russian & China would militarize space if the USA did not arm space.

Do I need to come up with something better than that? Not really -- sadly, humans require little reason to distrust their neighbour and march off to war. For the record, I want peace -- I'm not convinced that disarming or not arming would create a more peaceful world.

Good grief - just look at this guy. I've seen real coyotes and they don't yap this much.

Coyote, I had to scroll for half an hour to confirm what I already knew: that you weren't actually saying anything. Can you backpedal any faster?

And after all that typing you still haven't justified your initial response to Steve P's simple question in a manner that stands up to even cursory scrutiny. (And neither have you, Alcibiades).

Your posts don't even stand up to a basic reality test - No one here is defending U.S. imperialism. If you could set aside your hidebound knee-jerk Red Guard indoctrination you'd see that. We're questioning the viability of the proposed antidote. Certain strategic realities must be accounted for before a credible solution can be proposed. I'm sorry if you find that inconvenient, but too bad.

This is an interesting subject, but the ability to deploy weapons in orbit, satellite based weapons and ground based anti-orbital weapons is nothing new.

The Soviets were capable of deploying nuclear weapons into low earth orbit from the late 60's, designed to attack the US from the South Pole away from the bulk of the warning systems. They tested the system without a warhead but tests were successful enough that the system was deployed. In 1984 a Soviet ground based laser at Terra-3 targeted the space shuttle Challenger and caused technical malfunctions and temporary blindness to some of the crew. Terra-3 was a test bed for a more powerful laser capable of destroying incoming missiles, but was of sufficient power to blind optical sensors and cause some damage to equipment. The Soviets also attempted to deploy an anti-anti-satellite, the Polyus, but it ended up failing to achieve orbit. There were also plans to attach a module called "Spektr" to the Mir space station. Spektr was to be a self contained orbital ABM system, capable of tracking, discriminating and targeting multiple re-entry vehicles. Deployment was planned for the 1990's but the end of the cold war saw the module re-configured as a civilian laboratory partially, funded by the US, and the module joined with Mir in 1995.

There is little doubt the US was in the deployment stage by the 1980's. There was work on orbiting platforms for ASAT missiles, intended to destroy Soviet satellites, as well as low-power lasers designed to impair optics. The odd thing is that, in a bi-polar conflict, the development of anti-satellite systems becomes a zero-sum game foreshadowing the ultimate zero-sum game. In a manner similar to the mobilisation snowball of WW 1, the very act of destroying an opponent's ability to prepare for an attack almost forces the opponent to launch everything.

Putting weapons in orbit is expensive. One of the biggest financial black holes the Soviets faced was their own Star Wars program. The program pre-dated Reagan's pet project, but was ramped up when the US announced their plans. The current debate seems like so much BS: the US and other powers will do what they want to because policing such weapons is beyond any opponents. The technology to deploy and use space based and anti-orbital weapons already exists: the cartoonish depictions of advanced space weapons are intended to make us believe this stuff is all somewhere down the road. The existing systems were designed to target relatively easier targets than incoming ballistic missiles, but the basic concepts are beyond the prototype stage.

But there is a big difference between having a military... and sheer madness, which is what the weaponization of space represents.

So the above quote by Steve P on the art of war in maintaining peace, trembles on the abyss of anachronism. Where once we could have spoken of the art of war and pondered it as "a feature of the human condition"...like armchair philosopher/generals chatting about its compelling implications over cocktails...we need chat no more nor no longer.... the weapons of war have simply out-run our ability to survive them.

This is a profoundly different situation than we have ever faced before...and one that the world is largely in denial about. In a time of rampant government corruption on every level, lies, secrecy, disguise, and terrorism on all sides... does it actually matter anymore "Who" has the nuclear weapons...or which Enemy...either inside of our borders... or outside of our borders weaponizes space.

It doesn't...face it...we live on limited terra firma...inescapably so...we either solve this dilemma or die.

Thank you for the fascinating, instructive and worthwhile post Gerhardius.

Steve P,

The very important qualifier in this statement, which you too quickly slide over is "...IF an ambition to put a man on the moon..."

You really do need to read more carefully before spieling off. That "if" changes the entire meaning of what I have said over your "declarations" about it. :-) You are too amusing. Read it again, only a little more thoughtfully.

I certainly do not see anything otherwise wrong with space exploration. Though I am not particularly enamoured with it either.

Take a deep breathe and slow down. Everything becomes clear in the fullness of time.:-)

And secondly, before I must again rush away-, because "The Communists" succeeded in taking "formal" power and leading successful anti-colonial liberation movements, it does not necessarily mean that they similarly succeeded at establishing "Communism" per se, at least as I understand the meaning of the concept of "communism".

You are a victim of a kind of mechanistic thinking, I think, that because "Communists" took formal power, that the historical ideas and proposed system of communism was then also presumably established. I would say, in fact, that the one did not unfortunately follow the other, could not, because, likely, not absolutely conclusively, but as a single hypothesis possibility, the needed "advanced capitalism" preconditions did not exist. Indeed, these Communists actually fell into all the traps and excesses of "absolute power" as might, nay almost certainly befall anyone who sets themselves up as a "vanguard elite". In the end, they but laid the foundations for capitalism, whether that was their intention or not. It is not unusual in history for one to set out to achieve something, only to secure a thing entirely different, even its antithesis. (And Fait has some interesting things to say on that score, in my view.)

But now, like I say, whether or not Communism emerged in Germany or any other "relatively" advanced capitalist country during the time of Marx or not is really quite irrelevant to me, except as a historical note. But it most certainly did not, as you claim. In regards that particular instance claim or "speculation" he was simply wrong. One can be right about many things, and still be wrong on any number of others. As I have already conceded, Marx was just a man, no less so than any of us, warts and all. He was not some alleged prescient biblical prophet, such as nightbloomers might faun over.

And which still does not mean that over the long pull of history regarding capitalism, that a "kind or form of communism" or "co-operatism", whether it be called by that name or not, will not yet emerge out of advanced capitalism. History and the history of capitalism is yet far from over, and what Marx perhaps perceived as "advanced", we now know was really yet quite "primitive". It is the content of a thing that is important, not the terminology applied to it. :-) Hopefully, I haven't lost you.

So long as capitalism continues, it is my "contention", that all the evidence on this score, and whether Marx was fundamentally right about it or not, is not in yet. We shall have to wait and see what kind and manner of social arrangement yet finally emerges out the demise time of capitalism. And it is irrelevant whether or not I hope for it. :-) This plays no, or should play no part in this conversation.

I shall be back to you later, my friend. For all your inaccuracies and misrepresentations, in my view, you do provide the basis for a good discussion. :-)

And I know that I have not dealt with all of your points. So many demands on one's time, and so little time into which to do them all. :-)

lynn, you write clearly on your belief, but your apocalyptic outlook is very similar to that which was induced at every other revolution in military affairs, from the development of artillery to bust into the walled city-states of 16th century Italy, to the development of mountain-&-ocean leaping aerial warfare, to the rise of nuclear weaponry and intercontinental ballistic delivery systems. The weaponization of space represents a logical and consistent outgrowth of these developments. I'm not saying it's right & beautiful or anything....but it's the way human societies have always behaved. It's reality.

The fundamental wisdom of successful peacemaking (keeping) is that if you want peace, prepare for war. That doesn't preclude the positive effects of diplomacy, trade, cultural exchange, soft power, mutual understanding and all that. We are social creatures, but we are also jungle creatures, and I see evidence of both the virtue and the vice all around me. Unfortunately, the international arena brings out more of the latter than the former. It's an anarchic system, and the international legal frameworks we've constructed are a thin overlay disguising the balance of power (tipped in our favour for more than our fair share of history) that keeps us safe, fed, and (relatively) comfortable. We're civilized beasts, but jungle creatures nonetheless.

Climb down of your high horse Bloomers you ain't so phuquing smart .

Oh, so that makes it okay.

I'm glad I don't live in your neighborhood! Truth is, this is dangerous misinformation, used by control freaks and those so insecure they "need" draconian measures (both physical and psychological), to protect themselves from the rest of the world.

nightbloom, I don't think I have an apocalyptic outlook... I think I'm being very much the realist here.

In fact, it would seem to me that quite a few of the comments have tended to ignore or deny Hurtig's proposal... about the active role (through the use of the internet) that each of us as citizens could play to bring about change at this highly critical time in the world.

I'm just trying to make clear (perhaps, not very well) that all our over-intellectualized thinking on war and peace...the precarious balance that exists between the two...beliefs that once may have held true eg. "the art of war's role in maintaining peace"...the "if you want peace prepare for war"...no longer hold.

Yeats' Vision.... "Things fall apart"...and all of us, strangers in a strange land now.

Does this article not invoke in you, nightbloom, a visceral, physical response?

And I'm being very serious.... what does your heart, nerve and sinew say about the Strangelovian scenario Hurtig says is looming before and above us all?

Perhaps neocon hasn't been paying atttention. The US has had anti-satellite weapons systems under development for years, and has tested them.

The US Space Command authoritively announces its mission is to "control space", and deny it to anyone they wish.

It's all more of that control-freak, Stranglovian death-wish crap again from the paranoid-conservatives.

Lynn, the desire to eliminate war and weaponry is noble. But nothing here addresses the fundamental issue that even if "we" don't do it then someone else will. I don't see any way to stop it, even for electorates of first-world nation-states who become mobilized by a well-organized information campaign over the internet. There are ways to pre-empt the future you fear, but this is no the way. It's a diversion from the reality of the situation. I'm just cynical enough to trust that any such campaign would dovetail neatly into the election platform of a political party that has no more power to halt the inevitable than you and I as individual citizens. Where will that get us? We need to stop demonizing Americans and face a few elementary realities, chief of which is that all nation-states (least of all China, Russia, Pakistan and Iran, etc.) don't conduct their foreign relations according to genteel liberal middle-class values governing inter-personal behaviour within civil society. It's an anarchic system resting on force and influence, not legalities. We have to seek real ways to translate our ideals into reality within the context of this essentially inhuman framework. Otherwise it will go nowhere.

Steve P and nightbloom

Your logic implies that one should always push the envelope in order to maintain military supremacy over possible rivals. It means that you do not believe in treaties or disarmament because all they do is allow an enemy to take advantage of your diplomatically-imposed weakness.

Based on your logic I assume you are an advocate of "first-strike" theory, decapitating the enemy ability to make war in a Pearl-Harbour scenario. That you support Pearl Harbour strikes as realpolitik because to not do so would simply allow an enemy to do the same to you.

Its an interesting point and it certainly has its proponents but I would prefer that we leave von Moltke and von Schlieffen theories on the importance of constantly living on a hair-trigger alert where mobilization cannot be stopped or slowed, behind.

I would say that the old adage "if you want peace, prepare for war" has not served humanity well. The concept of Mutually Assured Destruction worked only because each side could still retaliate after an enemy attack. If one side could have launched first and won the cold war with no repercussions the history of the last 50 years would have been different.

Peace flows from demonstrating you will match what your enemy does. Peace will not come by threatening your enemy as you jump from one position of perceived superiority to another.

hannibal - you consistently produce low-quality and thoughtless posts on these threads, as your latest vulgar one-liner demonstrates. You're the blogger equivalent of white noise. If you're not going to at least make the effort to present a real argument, like Lynn, Steve P, Gerhardius, etc. then take a hike and stop spamming the threads.

Actually nightbloom, if this was 1914 you would indeed be defending a policy of getting a mobilization jump on your opponent even though it means your enemy will have to respond in kind.

I'm sure you're well-read on the period so I assume you know that this sounds like the generals advising the Kaiser.

The US does not have to lead the jump from one position of superiority to another because if they don't someone else might. First, it should be necessary for someone else to actually show they might surpass your technology before you up the bet yet again.

I find the historical analogy of the inflexible mobilization plans of the First World War to be highly specious in this case. That was actually caused by a breakdown in civil-military relations right across the board (but especially in Austria, Germany and Russia), with mobilization schedules as a further (but secondary) complication. In any case, Moltke the Younger could very well have pulled it off had he remained faithful to the Schlieffen Plan and not weakend the enveloping right flank by redeploying troops to the centre. But all that is academic now.

Electorates have little or no influence on these developments, unfortunately. Space will be weaponized, if not by the Americans then by the Chinese. I make no value judgments on this unavoidable fact. It could very well be an awful thing, but it's going to happen whether we like it or not.

As for your internet campaign, it'll garner a few more votes for the NDP and Liberals in the next election, but that's all it will do. Mel knows the game.

I disagree on the Schlieffen Plan nightbloom. The flaw was the plan itself. Schlieffen couldn't figure out how to get the necessary troops to the front in time and went over his plans and march rates day after day even after he retired,trying to square that circle. Even if Moltke hadn't diverted a few troops from the right wing the fact is Schlieffen's plan couldn't have accomodated them although he himself said he needed a bigger army. Blaming it on Moltke was like the Canucks blaming their season on Crawford. The army's plan had failed and the guy in charge had to take the blame.

I also disagree with you on the relevance of 1914. It was not a breakdown in civilian-military relations any more than the current situation is. The military culture of 1914 overruled the civilian leadership. Military superiority was seen as the necessary precondition for peace. The parallels are obvious. If the civilian leadership in any country does not want to become a military rubber-stamp then it has to assert its power and not bend to arguments based on "this is reality, anything else is wishful thinking".

Nightbloom, Steve P
The point, quite simply, is that the mutually assured destruction of the Cold War did not, repeat did not, make the world a safer and more peaceful place. In fact, quite the contrary; and, in my view the exact same calculus applies to space weapons. You are both, evidently, too young to have experienced the true frisson of being told that the atomic clock has struck eleven seconds to midnight.

The argument that someone else - the Chinese, the Russians, the North Koreans, the French, the Indians, the Israelis, the Pakistanis (why leave out all the others?) might one day have the capacity to weaponize space is a non sequitur of the most profound kind.

At the moment only the Americans have the capacity - and apparently the paranoia (dementia if you prefer) - to consider the economic and technical challenges might be worth the candle. That one can believe nothing the Americans say in any case – as is clearly proved by mountains of evidence – is simply a fact of life. They will undoubtedly go ahead with the monstrous undertaking – one only hopes they will ruin their economy and return to some form of truth and sense in the event, but that’s another argument.

The point, as was the case with every other ground-breaking weapons system in history from the trebuchet to the tank, the dreadnaught to the atom bomb, is that if one country (whether the US, or someone else from the list above) makes the first move then others will follow. Therefore, the only sane stance is not, ever, to begin the same old insanity again.

lynn: i hope i am not being to presumptuous here.... but is it just me or are these tyee-types being condescending, shush-shushing and patronizing towards you?

i have recently been picking up on "leftie" patriarchal glitches, and trying, not too successfully, to eliminate them from my existence...
whatever
peace out

Yammer, the missles and lasers will all be pointed straight down at earth. It's not like a hollywood movie, they wont be able to turn them around and shoot them way out into space!

I mentioned WW 1 mobilisation simply because the strategic thinkers of the day viewed the act of calling up reserves as a de facto indication that war had begun. Failure to mobilise would guarantee defeat, especially against a fully filled out Russian Army...or so the theory went. The thoughts of a German officer in 1914 hearing about the Russian mobilisation would be similar to that of a Russian or American officer's thinking when there is a sudden loss of orbital assets: war has begun. Their actions would differ: one would start the ball rolling on mobilisation, while the other would be getting involved in WW 3. In the mind of that officer is a zero-sum equation where the failure to act in the "correct" manner will lead to defeat. http://www.egwald.com/operationsresearch/chickengame.php

Regarding the German strategic plans of August 1914, years ago I read a piece by the man who was head of the German rail system at the beginning of the war. He contested Moltke's claim the that transportation plan was inflexible regarding the direction of the deployment. Ultimately the failure of Moltke's version of the Schlieffen plan was not accounting for the friction of battle. The failure to allow for errors, over-confident planning estimates and poor leadership at the top doomed the plan. It is interesting that the concept itself was the reverse of what previous German plans had been vis a vis a two front war following the victory over France in the Franco-Prussian war. Moltke the elder planned on holding the Alsace forts against the inevitable French assault while using the bulk of his forces to defeat Russia in Poland.

The Cold War was essentially a 2 person game, China not having a truly strategic attack capability until late in the era and never having global military projection capability. The US and Soviet Union (and their clients) had 2 concerns: survival and victory. Survival was simple as long as neither side tried for victory. The key was to determine when the other side was going to "go for it" and beat them to the punch or have enough survivable weapons to make MAD relevant. In a 2 person environment this is relatively straight forward but make it an N-person environment and it gets a lot more complicated.

The Soviets faced such a crisis when the Sino-Soviet split reached the level of border clashes in the late 1960's. The traditional Russian fear of "the yellow wave" coupled with the instability of Cultural Revolution China led the Soviets to more than double their manpower along the border and bring in over 1000 aircraft by 1969. The Soviets feared the Chinese nuclear program and wanted to launch a pre-emptive nuclear strike against Lop Nor, and probably would have if they were the sole nuclear power in the World. The existence of a 2nd strategic nuclear actor prevented the use of weapons against a 3rd party that was only a budding regional nuclear power. In a nutshell, MAD did prevent at least one use of nuclear weapons.

One of the keys to MAD is that launches and trajectories can be recorded as quickly as possible. The real threat from space weapons is the potential to undermine MAD, either by avoiding early warning systems or by interfering with the enemy's warning system. The Soviets deployed a system designed to do the former, and both sides experimented with and deployed the latter. MAD is undermined by any defensive measures taken by the opposition, like an ABM system, and the choices are to either match the technology or build up forces to overcome the new system.

Yes, Moltke the Elder even at one point contemplated allowing the French onto German soil to fight them along interior lines while the real offensive was carried out in the east. That was long before WW1 however and many changes were to take place. Fighting a defensive war in the west was seen as militarily prudent but politically unthinkable.

Schlieffen has become a bit of an evil icon for progressive critics in the same manners as, say, Robert McNamara has become today. Not saying he's a model or anything, but there needs to be balance. These people and their plans are the products of their times. Yes, it was inflexible, and didn't account for friction in battle (Clausewitz's "fog of war"). But Schlieffen (and his plan, revised and updated on a continual basis) has been misrepresented by the likes of John Ralston Saul and others who have attempted to draw spurious analogies with present day politics. That the Plan would be stopped dead at the banks of the Marne was by no means a foregone conclusion, and let's remember that the Plan was a spectacular success in the east. I'm not defending its rationale or upholding the viability of inflexible war plans...but the Schlieffen Plan was archetypal of the military planning of his day. It was the state of the art at the time.

This is inaccurate. He continually updated the plan to account for advancing technology and more efficient ways of moving troops, railway development, etc. He had it worked out like clockwork - too much so in fact.

This assertion isn't supported by the academic literature on the subject.

inkioko - Not sure if you're referring to me. Lynn is being treated like every other poster rather than "as a woman and a mother". In my opinion, the only person who is routinely patronizing towards her is that obnoxious Coyote guy, and Lynn seems to encourage him, so I assume she doesn't mind.

Alcibiades - You're jumping ahead. The argument hasn't even been allowed to progress to the question of deterrence and Mutually Assured Destruction (and its tenability as a doctrine in this instance). You and Coyote got us hung up on the basics at the get-go, and now we're on a tangent about speculative historical precedents.

Yes, Moltke the Elder even at one point contemplated allowing the French onto German soil to fight them along interior lines while the real offensive was carried out in the east. That was long before WW1 however and many changes were to take place. Fighting a defensive war in the west was seen as militarily prudent but politically unthinkable.

Schlieffen has become a bit of an evil icon for progressive critics in the same manners as, say, Robert McNamara has become today. Not saying he's a model or anything, but there needs to be balance. These people and their plans are the products of their times. Yes, it was inflexible, and didn't account for friction in battle (Clausewitz's "fog of war"). But Schlieffen (and his plan, revised and updated on a continual basis) has been misrepresented by the likes of John Ralston Saul and others who have attempted to draw spurious analogies with present day politics. That the Plan would be stopped dead at the banks of the Marne was by no means a foregone conclusion, and let's remember that the Plan was a spectacular success in the east. I'm not defending its rationale or upholding the viability of inflexible war plans...but the Schlieffen Plan was archetypal of the military planning of his day. It was the state of the art at the time. I recommend Der Schlieffenplan: Kritik eines Mythos by Gerhard Ritter.

This assertion isn't supported by the academic literature on the subject.

inkioko - Not sure if you're referring to me. Lynn is being treated like every other poster rather than "as a woman and a mother". In my opinion, the only person who is routinely patronizing towards her is that obnoxious Coyote guy, and Lynn seems to encourage him, so I assume she doesn't mind.

Alcibiades - You're jumping ahead. The argument hasn't even been allowed to progress to the question of deterrence and Mutually Assured Destruction (and its tenability as a doctrine in this instance). You and Coyote got us hung up on the basics at the get-go, and now we're on a tangent about speculative historical precedents.

Let me return to my original point from way back: a far better argument against "weaponization" of space is simply from a cost/benefit perspective. Has a point been reached where the U.S. risks situating itself in the same position as the USSR when it comes to attempting to out-spend rising powers like China while siphoning funds aways from government efforts that promote internal cohesion at home and soft power projection abroad. Having said that, I still think it's only a matter of time before a major power takes this step.

Sorry 'bout the double-posting guyz! ... browser issues...!

Nightbloom
Not at all! It’s you who fiddles while Rome burns.

This is still a nuclear question. All of the players (and potential players) involved are nuclear powers. Consequently, and I think obviously, proliferation and delivery systems possessed by a wide variety of 'states' are not ever going to be stabilizing in the bizarre sense that MAD was. However, that merely begs the question as to why the US should not go ahead with star wars.

It may, of course, still do this because of the hegemony it has (or has convinced itself in its typical fashion that it has) over other states. The fear, pretense, or, frankly, desire to continue to dominate the world scene that led to the original arms race of the fifties will merely, in my view, now be replicated in space - to humankind's detriment. You are still, strangely in my view, convinced that the US possesses rectitude which others here are more or less convinced it either never possessed or has, (in my case), sadly surrendered for a mess of pottage.

I never said this would not happen - merely that there are no good arguments for having it happen. Just as there were no good arguments for the First World War.

This is just another example of greed and power driving rationality from the field - as Lynn has so accurately noted.

There are no good arguments for enhancing ways to kill one another. We have quite enough of those already, as Iraq (among other places) proves every day. Just as the atom bomb, the hydrogen bomb and the ICBM (among technical gizmos) brought us half a century of fear and distrust and thwarted opportunity for good and real general progress, so will this particular version of 'star wars'. No good will come of this!

What's strange is that we could be having this argument at all. And all I can contribute for today as well.

No one said anything of the sort. I'm not advancing a moral argument, I'm simply acknowledging the amoral nature of the anarchic international system. I said the development (weaponization of space) was inevitably, and that curbing its undesired outcomes is outside of the purview of national electorates. The proposed internet campaign can't stop it. The solution (in my opinion) will only emerge gradually, through an evolved marriage of interests that transcends the nation-state paradigm. Those with the money and resources to create such massive systems will be essentially on the same team.

You're advancing a moral argument which ignores history, human nature, and the reality of international politics. Do you really think mass weapons development will stop if the U.S. stops? You still haven't adequately addressed that point.

nightbloom

As usual, you're actually the one advancing the utopian view - to wit that:
an evolved marriage of interests that transcends the nation-state paradigm

is a more likely outcome than the continuing reign of terror big powers (of whatever ilk) exert to advance their interests and condemn others. Typical academic time wasting.

But, I wish you were right. I wish there was some hope. But I think you are the one who tends to ignore history. And you further continue to be an apologist for the US and its corrupt military/industrial/undemocratic government.

I should also point out to inkioko that the individuals - primarily nightbloom and Steve P - who've taken issue with Lynn above here - are not nominally what I'd call 'lefties'. In fact, although I haven't quite decided where Steve P lies in the continuum, nightbloom is certainly not (and I don't think would want to be called) a Leftist.

Whether or not they've been condescending is a question Lynn is more than capable of dealing with. On the other hand, to characterize this as a squabble between leftists would be far from accurate.

Care to substantiate that unfounded assertion? Nothing I said here could reasonably be interpreted in that way. I find this is a consistent patter that is emerging - anyone disagreeing with a posted article or with the prevailing viewpoint on the thread is immediately an "apologist" for something nasty and corrupt. I just don't see any viability in Mel Hurtig's proposal, and I also see the eventual weaponization of space by someone as all but inevitable. All your other conclusions and assuptions about what I've said are totally tangential on your part.

Nobody's "taken issue" with Lynn. I like her posts, and she speaks from the heart, and very clearly at that, without ever indulging in ad hominem insinuations. We simply have a different perspective. So I don't think Lynn needs to be "protected" by the menfolk on this thread (inkioko, Coyote or yourself), so get over it.

I find you personalize things a little too much, Gwest...much more than I do (although I've slipped a couple times over the months). Aside from Coyote's customary obnxiousness towards me, this has been a rather civil thread. I just wish Alcibiades (and now you) would back up some of your sweeping statements. It's fine to make assertions, but put a little meat on the stick, please.

Oh C'mon nightbloom.

You are the most extravagant apologist for the military I've ever seen on these pages: With the possible exception of Colin.

And as far as personalizing things goes, I'd say you're far higher on that list than I could ever get. I'm not trying to be uncivil; I just like to call a spade a spade. Merely because someone else ‘might’ do a thing is the most specious logic for action I’ve heard since George Bush and Colin Powell last lied on the floor of the United Nations. And I think you know it!

TO my way of thinking, the lie behind this current American effort is every bit as egregious as the George Kennan lie that started the cold war. I expect things to get worse and in the end, alas, I suspect the American empire will collapse from within, just as the Soviet one did. Whether they’ll find a way to incinerate humanity into the bargain is the Faustian question that Hurtig is addressing, in my view.

Do I think protesting Star Wars will stop it?
No.
Do I still think it's the right thing to do?
Yes.

We need more and more efficient ways to kill each other like another hole in the head. Period. That's the one thing mankind has managed, throughout history, to do very well - thank you.

Stars Wars will not bring us peace, nor safety nor sound sleep 'o nights. It is merely another lie promulgated by those with power in their futile attempt to hang on to it despite the march of time.

As to the business with Lynn.
I agree generally with what you wrote. I only took issue with the way inkioko characterized the contest as another example of leftists fighting amongst themselves and being sexist about it. I think that was clear from my post, btw.

If you’re really a closet leftist, I’d be more than happy to have you acknowledge it. Any time.

Patriarchal attitude towards Lynn?

I am a little amused by that observation. I haven’t read everything here, very little of nightbloomer for example, who has begun to bore me to tears, but given Lynn’s outstanding competence over a long time here, I can’t imagine anyone who would dare. My sense is that the poser of the question fails to understand the deep level of respect in fact, which exists here amongst we alleged patriarchs of Tyee . (Assuming I’m included.)

Though it might indeed be interesting to get Lynn’s response to that. She certainly may see and feel something in that regards I am not aware of here. 

But that was just an aside.

Steve P, whom I have some respect for despite our obvious differences, has raised the question of war and the imperial war in particular across history, and I feel obliged to try and address it somewhat, within the limit of this space.

Some usefulness may be gotten from considering it.

No doubt, war has long been with us, from simpler hunting and gathering territorial disputes, through the slave and booty gathering forays across large swaths of the ancient world by Greece and Rome and later the Crusaders and Ottoman feudal empires etc., down to the modern imperial wars for control of large scale resources, cheap labour sources and markets of the British Empire (which did indeed straddle the transition period from feudal monarchy to the rise of the Capitalist) and the current empire control rampage of the US Empire. (Which is not to ignore the Russian and Chinese empire interests either, but more to deal with the issues of our own back yard. For it is what we do again, and do not ourselves, regarding current and future history that needs to be of greatest concern to us. In my view.)

There is a level even at which it is likely that war has played a useful “Darwinian” role in the evolution of the species and its societies, culling the weakest and ensuring the survival of the better organized and equipped, as well as more simply greedy and blood thirsty, and those with the strongest ability to muster and put aggressive empire serving forces in the field. Though there will almost certainly be argument here. But generally wars of the strong against the relatively weaker are the classic modus operandi of all imperialist wars of aggression, ancient and modern, save where there has been a miscalculation-, such as do occur. (Russia vs Afghanistan, USA vs Vietnam.)

And war has even resolved disputes within and between groups, as a kind of court of last resort (US Civil War), that were otherwise apparently irresolvable by other means.

So I concede that war has indeed long been with us, though it achieves a particularly widespread and savage efficiency with the rise of the great class divided societies that begin with slavery and continue with escalating destruction capability to the ultimate sophistication of class society that is capitalism. England, of course, who led the way into capitalism with its defeat of the feudal monarchist system, save for the shadow of it that survives as a kind of historical memorabilia today, and its industrial revolution, was the first and mightiest Empire of the modern capitalist period.

That much is more or less true, if over-simplified for the sake of space.

from previous post...

It is my argument however, accepting the validity of Albert Einstein's observation, that everying changes with the discovery of his simple E=MC2 and the development of nuclear weapons. It signals that a qualitative change has occurred in human’s war making capabilities which requires that we find another way in our relationships, within and external to our national societies.

What was it Einstein said, that after the first truly nuclear war we would all be back to fighting with sticks and stones again?

I accept that as likely being true. Which if it is, to hurry to a conclusion here, suggests to me that we humans can no longer afford the ruling class (of all periods) "luxury" of iimperialist war and the colonial relationships that are established out of that , AND the exploitive, class societies that create them. They are the seedbed source of conflict between us. This ancient relationship and reality needs to change, AND internally within our societies likewise, the class exploitive relationships that come down to us from the time of slavery, at least, and are slavery’s modern manifestation or form, likewise need to be risen above and overcome. It is therein be the set of exploitive class relationships that are carried out into our relationships as well with other people through wars of aggression and imperial conquest.

Where it must end. A much bigger subject than is really intended for this space.

My views are mixed. My background is certainly on the left: ten years of experience working with the handicapped & mentally ill; championing sustainable development through urban planning at my current career; a youth of environmental and social activism while at college, etc.

I have felt very alienated by the left in recent years, at least the "doctrinaire" left that would rather score oral moral victories than real victories. I have similar problems with the doctrinaire right or doctrinaire green crowd, so I guess this makes me a moderate. I'm interested in the details of policies that make them work or fail.

Leftists still need a prosperous economy to pay for social spending and environmental investments, and left-leaning states still need to arm and protect themselves (especially Canada, which has rode on the US's power to the detriment of our own defence forces).

I'm willing to concede that defence policy and deterrence strategy must change with the advent of increasingly powerful (i.e. nuclear) weapons.

But where is the balance?

I still don't think the answer is unilateral disarmament or no longer developing better weapons, for that would leave us too vulnerable.

No, his supporters simply don't like to accept the fact that his plan failed and apologists therefore abound.

No he didn't. It is more accurate to say he indulged in wishful thinking, hoping that a further 8 corps could be added to the decisive point with no real planning on how to get them there. He also ignored the British army and made no contingency plan against it except to say it would be defeated and the advance against the French would continue.

There's been lots of studies done of the Schlieffen Plan and the general concensus is the blame for its failure lies with Schlieffen himself.

He ignored external factors such as the British reaction to the invasion of Belgium and the inability of the German rail network to move and supply the force required by his right wing.

Therefore just as in 1914 the political should never give way to "military necessity" it is just as clear today that there is a big difference between responding to a threat verus tilting at windmills. There is no country on earth that can match the current level of US technology therefore the US desire to up the ante yet again seems to me to be based on the dogma that it can do it so it should do it, not that it needs to do it.

Say what? The Schlieffen Plan cannot take credit for the planning of people like Hoffman which led to Tannenberg.

Nightbloom wrote:

Exactly.

But this is where Machiavelli makes a moral argument. Civil society has law, courts, police, moral suasion, etc to help people behave themselves. Our anarchic world of states has no such binding law.

M argues that it is immoral for a state to behave with the same morality in its relations to other states that one expects in civil society.

Let's pretend that Canada does, in fact, foster in its citizens the superior moral values of peace, freedom and representative government. If Canada takes the moral high ground and does not cultivate the arts of war, it is vulnerable to evil or aggressive states that do not share Canada's civic morality. It would be immoral to leave the Canadian state vulnerable to powers who exercise fewer scruples when governing their people because freedom, democracy & human rights are important to protect in an anarchic world.

Coyote wrote:

You really do need to read more carefully before spieling off

okay, okay, I charged at the red cape =^)

Thanks all (except Hannibal) for the stimulating discussion. It is certainly difficult to think through & discuss these important issues -- somewhere between the doves and the hawks there has to be some pragmatic policy we can identify.

Anyway, gotta get to work here ...

Inioko:

Your moral argument is intrinsic to the rest of your argument. Why else would you want the US to push for an arms race race into space unless the idea of them doing it before some other country wasn't comfortable to you? I'm not calling you a "capitalist running-dog" or an apologist, I'm saying your argument is based on your comfort zone. If you didn't care who was the strongest power on the chess board you would be against the spending of so much treasure across the globe to play in the space race.

Yes, no nation can compete with the US technology and economic strength and you don't have any evidence of the Russians and Chinese leading the arms race. Instead you fall back on the safe ground of declaring the world a rotten place and anything the US does to maintain a military superiority over possible enemies, including creating new arms races, is therefore justified.

Not that I have a big problem with that argument. Anyone here who says they don't want an arms race but if there is one they want the US to win it I don't have a problem with.

But at some point the world cannot simply keep building more powerful and more expensive weapons. What's next a doomsday machine that can destroy an entire planet? Will we justify that too as a mere outgrowth of an anarchic system and therefore justified?

At some point countries that think the Non-Proliferation treaty should only apply to Iran and not itself, that UN resolutions should only apply to Iraq and nobody else etc has to come to grips with the fact that it too should enter into and subsequently obey international treaties to reduce military spending.

Steve, as I said above your logic leads to the obvious conclusion that if Canadians feel the US will one day simply take our resources we should now build nukes and indulge in a first strike against them as soon as possible.

The international system may not have policemen but the answer is not for every country to follow a Machiavellian strategy of ignoring morality and doing whatever it can to further its own interests.

Frank:

Machiavelli's strategy does not ignore morality: it is a moral argument (with which we are free to agree or disagree).

I can see why you say this, but I do not believe it is implicit in my argument. First, we are geographically too close to the US to be an attractive nuclear target -- this calculus could change in a crisis, of course, but it does mean that if they nuked us (at least in our significant southern targets) they'd be peeing in their own pool.

But I do believe that some armed deterrence against US might is a good idea. We probably could not completely halt a US military takeover, but we could make it expensive and untenable, especially if they can negotiate a purchase of the resources they wished to control. If military solutions become more expensive than trade and diplomacy, this gives trade & diplomacy a much-needed advantage.

Your arguments about MAD theory has me thinking, though. MAD "worked" when the players were relatively stable states with a lot to lose in a nuclear exchange. MAD falls to pieces when at least one of the players believes they no longer have anything to lose (e.g. desperate politicians, a crisis, fundamentalism).

In the final analysis, though, I still worry that, whether or not the US builds weapons in space, others certainly will. Negotiated solutions through the UN have been tainted by failure, corruption, and political stalemate, so we have a long way to go before achieving a future confederation of earth states.

Oh I agree they wouldn't nuke us because of the peeing in their own pool analogy. I'm saying if our fears that they will one day come demanding what we have are true then we would be misguided, even crazy, not to pursue a first stike option.

I agree. If Russia and China cannot hope to compete against the US after the deployment of a new space-based system then it would be incumbent upon them to attack before that system is in place. Therefore the US push into space is not going to bring peace, it is instead destabilizing.

As for the international community, there is no better time than at the end of the bloody 20th century to indulge in trying to do things better instead of same old same old which will only bring the same old results.

Steve P
As was pointed out above, because someone 'may' do a bad thing is never a justification for doing it yourself , in fact it amounts to moral bankruptcy, especially in a circumstance that involves nuclear hegemony. Machiavelli notwithstanding And that is, looking back up these posts, precisely where we started.

I distrust American (and probably Canadian too) administrations a little more than you do, apparently. As someone pointed out on another thread here the other day, democracy in America is a joke, with more than 90% of incumbents able to 'buy' their seats virtually in perpetuity. I don't think these people deserve or merit the power they exercise and, in my view, there's lots of confirmation available for that observation.

Let's try a different approach: If democracy doesn't work, then what makes you think an internet campaign aimed at mobilizing the 'progressive' segment of the electorate in time for the upcoming election is going to impact this issue?

That's really what it's about - mobilizing a constituency for electoral gains. Otherwise we'd be discussing more viable means of achieving the proposed ends.

In other words who cares if the city of Campbell River declares itself to be a nuke-free zone, it won't make a bit of difference to the planners in Washington so why bother with an information campaign?

I agree. The left shouldn't waste resources by going out on a big campaign on this issue. This is not a wedge issue that will bring the NDP 20 more seats federally. This is an issue that might sway 7 voters, if that.

The issue is certainly important but it won't make the radar in the next federal campaign. Afghan casualties will be a lot bigger than this issue and the NDP would be wise to adopt a strong, consistent and defensible position on that issue and put its resources behind it instead.

Regardless, health care and the economy is what will decide the election, Afghanistan could be decisive in a close one but weaponization of space won't even be a blip on the radar.

No disagreement there. It is a moral issue, not an electoral one. People should speak out if they feel strongly -but the fact the effort will have little real traction is typical of moral points now and throughout history.

That doesn't mean the points shouldn't be made and the effort expended boht of which frequently seem to be the reaction of the disenchanted and the feckless

Frank - My point exactly.

Interesting argument, although I'll take it a different direction =^)

The current world order has the US on top -- this has generally been the case at least until the end of the Cold War. Anything that upsets US hegemony could therefore be seen as destabilizing the current world order.

China is developing rapidly, and is likely to surpass US industrial might some time in the next few decades. It is in China's interest to postpone a conflict with the US until they know they are mightier.

The US knows this, and wants to use the advantages available: their lead in the space race is one of these advantages. I'll be a perverse devil's advocate, and suggest that, perhaps not pursuing weapons in space could be destabilizing from this perspective.

So it could be a question of which is less destabilizing: the eclipse of US hegemony in the world, which contains hostile human rights-ignoring empires like China; or the US pursuit of advanced weaponry (including weapons in space) which leave other countries scrambling to try and catch up.

We are right to be concerned about violence committed in the name of US hegemony. But I worry that the violence will be far more severe on a global scale when the balance of power shifts away from the US, and ambitious powers who have been contained by the US flex their new-found might. Small-scale imperial wars are certainly tragic, but large-scale world wars between empires trigger bloodbaths. Nature abhors a vacuum ...

How do we protect ourselves, while allowing ambitious states to grow? Is there a graceful way for the US to scale back its imperial activities that won't encourage its opponents to strike at the US' perceived weakness?

Or is it really the US that feels it has nothing to lose?

I referred to myself as a woman and a mother, not to be coyly disarming, but because I feel very strongly that if there if anywhere womens' voices should be heard, it is on this issue.

The above discussion I feel has largely ignored Hurtig's proposal and is a reflection of more where the evolution of man's brain has seriously disabled us ;-) (only partly teasing ya)...endless knowledge of doctrines, strategies, old dinosaur arguments of how preparing for war serves peace...dinosaur views that are no longer applicable but attempting to hold on all the same.

Dangerous anachronisms.

They simply no longer hold. The whole world has changed...we live in a time where missles heads are now tipped with the inevitably of extinction.

In my words, our weapons have simply out-run us. In Coyote's more eloquent words (dare I quote my friend ;-):

"It is my argument however, accepting the validity of Albert Einstein's observation, that everying changes with the discovery of his simple E=MC2 and the development of nuclear weapons. It signals that a qualitative change has occurred in human’s war making capabilities which requires that we find another way in our relationships, within and external to our national societies."

Another way needed... yes. New insight needed...yes. So where is the intelligence of the human body in all this?... now, an animal in nature, (without a book in sight to guide him) would instinctively know what his heart, and nerve and sinew felt when his existence was so dangerously threatened...and he would act...and quickly so.... to save himself and those under his wing.

That's all Hurtig is reminding us of...of the ability to act...if you don't feel it... I suggest you ask yourself why.

The blooming of the present neo-conservative movement... obsolete, insanely dysfunctional, and clearly suicidal, backed by a corporate media that like a red tide, is intent to paralyze us with a sense of disempowerment...in order that statements like
"no nation can compete with US technology and economic strength" become insurmountable obstacle.... immobolizing us before we even begin.

But on another thread on The Tyee, the mayor of Bogota, Enrique Penalosa, when he realized his countrymen could not compete income-wise found another scale on which to measure success by...he changed both the definition and the currency of success into terms the people of his city had a chance to win at...and transformed a city.

That's real human intelligence at work, innovative and original...and courageously human....evolutionary in the best sense of the word.

Hurtig, like Penalosa, is just saying we have a chance to win this...

Perhaps a last chance...

"Chance"...one of the most beautiful of all words, I think, if I had a daughter I would name her that...unfortunately, when it comes to "last chance" its true value, is never felt more deeply than in hindsight.

As for feeling patronized...if there is an attempt to do so...it's not working...nor would I let it stop me, anyway ;-)......love ya ...

Does the US have nothing to lose? Hmmm ...

I think they have a long way to fall if they screw up ... they may be feeling the heat, but I don't think they have nothing to lose.

You're drawing your line in the sand at the point where America became the lone superpower. Has the decade and a half since the fall of the Soviet Union been that great? Is it better than the MAD of the Cold War? Arguments could be made both pro and con.

But since nightbloom won't indulge me and argue the Schlieffen plan for the next week I'll happily take up the contrary view to yours Steve.

Yes it is, but as you say yourself, if the US tech lead is going to widen rather than narrow isn't it in China's interests to attack while they have a snowball's chance? What will be the effectiveness of the Chinese arsenal if the US has control of space and can destroy Chinese cities with impunity knowing it can destroy any retaliation?

If you're a Chinese military planner you would have to look at your current assets as having a shelf life. They will be obsolete as soon as the US controls space. So you either have to strike first before the US has that control or you have to engage in a long and expensive arms race with the US and hope that you can wrestle the tech lead from the US in the not too distant future.

I don't know which way they will go but I assume it'll be the latter. Russia I'd be less sure about since their long-term prospects are not as rosy as China's.

What you mean here is that you prefer being on the side with the pointy stick rather than on the side getting gored. Fair enough. I wouldn't want Canada to be China's "Iraq" either. But unlike the US, China does not have a history of power projection across oceans. Would it be that bad for the world if China supplanted the US in terms of military dominance? Maybe.

The US will not maintain its dominant position forever. In my opinion they would be better to seek out treaties and de-escalation from a position of strength rather than trying to do so after China or whoever has taken that lead. They might look hypocritical at best in such a situation.

Gwest, that's an exagerration.

I still can't make sense of your earlier comments regarding me being an extravagant apologist for the military, any more that, say, Coyote's previous comments (on another thread) to the effect that I'm an apologist for religious fundamentalism. It seems that any attempt to lend balance to the discussion is in some fashion overboard or extravagant to you, and an "apology" for something you morally disagree with. I think that's a programmed response of the doctrinaire Left...they get an "immune response" to opposing viewpoints and automatically begin generating antigens without trying to understand what it is. You're very similar to Coyote & Alcibiades in that you take opposing viewpoints personally and then derive highly personalized conclusions about the poster. For example, I've lost track of how many times some ninny claimed to have acquired deep psychological insight into nightbloom as a result of my (really quite moderate) opinions on everything from the university curriculum to foreign policy. Get off it.

Definitely not. I categorically reject your assertion that I am "far higher" in that criteria. I seldom try to derive personal conclusions from your arguments. I know nothing about you. I should also point out that, of everyone on these threads, I'm the contributor who's targetted the most frequently with mean-spirited comments and slurs on account of my opinions. And you've gotta admit that I generally handle it fairly well - I usually simply try to bring the conversation back to the subject matter.

lynn,

If you won't let me hijack threads to talk about Schlieffen, Bazaine, Bennigsen etc then you might as well drive a stake through my heart :-) What's next, no discussing the battle of Pharsalus on the daycare threads?!?

Damn mothers.

Oh and since you're here I admit I was WRONG about Carole James and you and Coyote were right. Wrong wrong wrong. Oh well.

Agreed.

Frank, you bring up some great points regarding strategy and when a state should seize an opportunity and act. I certainly do not know all the answers & trade-offs on this one. For e.g. my heart is certainly stirred by Lynn's posting, but I'm having trouble getting my cynical brain onside -- although our capacity for destruction has increased, our tendency to act, as groups, in venal, violent and deceptive ways has not changed, leaving the arts of war relevant for peace-lovers today & in the future.

Why did I choose to draw the line at US hegemony re: the importance of stability, and not an earlier world order? Only because that is the status quo today. If another group was hegemonic, I would still argue that shifting the balance of power could lead to bloodbath.

The purpose of my arguments was not to suggest that the US must pursue weapons in space -- my core point was that this is a real debate, and that it is possible to be progressive and still support weapons in space. It is not necessarily stupid or ignorant or reactionary or fascist or immoral to question the "no weapons in space, ever" argument put forward by Mr Hurtig and others.

Goddamned fine bit of analysis and writing, Lynn. I agree with every word.

And you can quote me anytime, though I may not come down now for a week. :-)

The Mrs and I just put up 14 jars of just picked beautiful, plump strawberries as jam, and froze a bunch that were left over. Mmmmm, love strawberries. Drooool.

Now, an afternoon old man's nap. :-)

China won't necessarily have to use military might to dominate the U.S.. The americans keep borrowing money from the Chinese to support their current military but they can't do this forever. The U.S. may have a technological advantage but more and more they lack the manufacturing capacity to build goods.

China and Russia are coming to-gether on a variety of issues while the U.S. is reveling in their stand alone platforms even in alienating longtime friends.

Maintaining arms in space may be something no government can afford but if the americans do, it will speed up their decline and the ascention of China, Russia and India.

I agree with your assessment here, Mel. Individualist Amerikkka's "throwing its weight around in the world", as Putin recently described it, is all fine... until the first time it is in real trouble. And you know that Russia, China, Iran and many other places in the world, biding their time, waiting, waiting for the Great US Empire to stumble-, and everyone knows that their economy as it has evolved in the Neocon period is really a house built on sand, or as Fait says, out of piles and piles of increasingly worthless paper money.

They are ripe for a fall. Then it is that they may wish they has some real, as opposed to intimidated and bribed friends in the world. And this kiss ass Harper lot, are all just so many sychophants who will as well be gone themselves, if not at the next election, at the first sign their reliance on Amerikkka is not going to pay off in the dividends they and Klein in Alberta are hoping for.

All of us should be starting to worry about whether Amerikkka is really going to make good on its indebtedness to us, and in more than up front cash on the barrel, down what may just be a very short road here.

The decline of the once mighty US Empire is already underway, in my read of it. Their bluster is much ado about trying to hide their declining real machismo confidence level-, like the classic school yard bully that has finally gone too far and can read it in everyone's eyes around him. They are all awaiting the first real sign of fatal weakness.

The first time he stumbles, he may just do so amidst a hailstorm of boots from all around him.

Canada really does need to stop backing and apologizing for this loser state. Time we started to tend to our own farm better, and left the prick to fend for himself-, in all regards, like Latin America is increasingly doing.

Maybe we have gravitated too heavily towards the old ideological dividing lines here. 'They' don't do anything that isn't purposeful in the moolah department. So, pragmatically speaking, the market is the turf of the new warfare. Turf is not worth much, if it is half vaporized, scorched and barren and devoid of buyers of widgets. I believe the main idea is to engender a sense of doomsday and devil-may-care in us, so we will live it up (read: shovel more moolah back into those spacious pockets). If we feel too confident about there being a tomorrow and the use of trying to build something for the grandkids, we might just not consume, but actually (horrors) try to save up and consolidate and get to own a little turf of our own. 'They' don't want that, for that translates into money being 'withheld' from them, and there you have it. The space wars serve no other purpose than 1)to finance with taxpayers money the research into blasting technology on a grand scale, grand enough to take out a meteorite or a wayward planetoid that could threaten us, or, who knows, mining interplanetarily for profit, and then 2)put the squeeze on us, so we'll bleed all our dough in our fear of there being nothing we can do to control our own fate. No less dirty than mass-destruction. He who kills the soul is a worse murderer that he who pierces with a sword. Proverb from somewhere, no matter. Think about it. No books yet.

Frank, my friend... Schlieffen, Bazaine, Bennigsen, the whole gang... my comment was certainly not aimed at you...but my apologies all the same. Hi-jack away, I say, your posts are among the finest.... I always read them with great interest. As Steve P. observes you make great points about strategy and most everything else.

I was just trying to point out that with all our sophistication and so-called enlightenment and vast realms of knowledge...something in human beings is mis-firing...we seem unable to feel the profound change enveloping us...the sheer treachery of the moment upon us. An animal would be bristling tensely by now, sensing the danger closing in around him...his every movement cautious and considered.

We, on the other hand seem so remote and removed...so utterly lost.

Think I've said enough on this topic...I wish more women would have responded...redrivergirl, where are you? I've missed you.

Now, the battle of Pharsalus, that is phar, phar, and away one of my favourite topics... ;-)

Thank you, Coyote. ;-)

I enjoy watching German television, and part of the reason for that is, the insights it gives quite often into European/German developments. And if you think it is only the US and Canada, and now becoming obvious Russia and China, that is ramping up arming themselves, you are not paying attention.

In a really excellent news programme tonight DW television had a show segment reporting on the increasing committment the Germans are making to strengthen the "offensive" capabilities of the Bundeswehr, like Harper, with new arms and equipment, also included for their navy. And their navy likewise, is being equipped with new submarines and high seas ships, and being charged with keeping high seas supply lines open for Germany, of raw materials coming from Africa and the Middle East.

With important differences and some new principal players of course, the pre WW2 armed camp world is again reforming itself.

Now it's all fine to be having this academic discussion here, like we were talking about lab rats and lab maze situations, but the reality taking shape out there, as Lynn correctly points out, is familiar to many of us, interesting for sure, but also extremely threatening. There is a deja vu feeling to it all, especially for those of us with some fairly serious historical living memory.

If you ain't worried and motivated to act yet, you don't have a fuking clue as to what is really taking shape out there, in the new world order we owe to these Neocon dinosaurs fast becoming fascists. You are living in some ivory tower, intellectually and physically insular world that allows you to live in a fantasy, an unreal "paper" world of theorem and stratagem.

And that is the really scarey part of all this. It is so goddamn widespread.

sorry nightbloom. I think you completely miss the point I was trying to make. Your arguments are, in my opinion, almost always personal. Almost always an extension of your one or two or perhaps three big ideas. In addition, I do think you are an extravagant apologist for the military. Only last week, for example, you were quoting your own 'personal' knowledge of Andrew Leslie upon his recent appointment as head of Canadian land forces. How much more personal can you get? And that's just one of your big ideas - the other, of course, being your 'discomfort' with what you call the doctrinaire academic "Left" - against whom you marshal all the 'personal' and anecdotal evidence you can bring to bear: From your aunt to your father to your close personal friends – not that there’s anything wrong with that – but still, I’d observe, far much more of a tendency in what you write than anything I've ever penned. In my view.

Need I say more?

Gwest, you make it sound like I should feel guilty about something. I see what you're describing more as an indication of my willingness to "put out" on these forums. I try to be as honest as I can without actually saying who I am and what I do...not that this is particularly impressive or high-and-mighty. But I've made it pretty clear that my opinions are not simply "academic" (unlike what you and others have repeated said) but also the result of personal experiences. This spans everything from my sophomore encounter with the militant Left to my perspective on the gay drug-mill. There is no qualitative difference between me invoking, say, the "gay factor" as there is with Lynn mentioning that she is a mother. I simply do it more often because I post more often, and within a context that usually goes against the grain of the article under the discussion on the prevailing viewpoint of the given thread. For example, I was able to say what I did about A. Leslie (whom you brought up first) simply because I spent a little time with the man during my graduate studies. There's nothing nefarious about that, and I wasn't trying to name-drop. I simply perceived that he was being disparaged unfairly, and responded in a sincere manner that reflected my perspective and personal experience. What more can you ask for on this kind of forum?

What you really mean to say is that my posts are highly personalized, in that they are honest reflections of my personality and experiences as they relate to a given topic under discussion. I don't "play it safe", and I don't weigh into a discussion exlusively to shoot down others and then retreat without presenting my own arguments, like a lot of people do on these threads (Albcibiades does this routinely now, although he used to produce interesting posts. And I certainly don't target other posters with malicious insertions the way Coyote routinely does.

And I've got more than "two perhaps three" ideas in my head, Gwest. That's a little ungenerous on your part. You might not like my perspective, but all anyone is really asking anyone else to do here is to take it at face value.

I was actually wondering that myself. I'd luv to read more women and more gay people on these threads. I've actually be waiting for a good dust-up with another gay man on anything from queer politics to gay circuit culture. I would classify the majority of posters on The Tyee as sheltered, heterosexual, whiney, guilty-liberal "progressive" white males (altho the 'white' part is only conjecture on my part) ;-)

Not at all. I don't think there's anything wrong with personalizing things. Nevertheless, you brought it up as an 'accusation' relative to things I'd written - remember?

By the way, what do you think of Obrador in Mexico?

I think the result of his possible election may be very interesting relative to the reclamation of the left for morality.

As to the big ideas thing. I think that's accurate - and nothing wrong with it either. I don't generally take the time to respond (beyond a few dismissive words) to someone who has no ideas at all.

No intent to be either dismissive or ungenerous in a world where a great many people have no ideas - let alone big ones.

Well I am white with a tan, heterosexual when I'm awake, hmm, okay, heterosexual when I'm asleep too, "progressive" if by progressive you mean want society to progress and guilty as all get-out and I do have a roof over my head so I guess I'm sheltered... but whiney? There are some here who I might sometimes think are whiney but I think they're on the non-progressive side of the equation.

I'll paraphrase :

"Guys, stop it, you're extremists! And that's not true! ... guys... shut up! shut up!! I hate all of you and I hate the Tyee, I only come here day after day because I want to see if you're still so extreme and I only post because I need to tell you how much I hate you and the Tyee so that you'll know that I'm better than you. I watch both the History channel and the Bloomberg channel and sometimes the Discovery channel and if any of you had half as much education on history and economics you wouldn't be communists like that German guy! Now shut up!!"

Okay, maybe that's just how I see 'em.

Lynn, I too wonder what happened to RedRiverGirl, Blonde Pitbull, Fii, Anne Cameron, aalborg etc

Feeling kinda guilty about that (in reference to nightbloom) as I had even promised RRG not to talk about STV till the next referendum and even apologized to anne for what was a misunderstanding.

You, me and JC too! Kindred spirits :-)

Vote Dolphin, you know it makes sense

The only whining I really hear on this site comes from the Nightbloomer. And there is nothing more grating to hetero male sensibilities, like fingernails across a blackboard, than a whining, neoconservative queer male, especially one who actually thinks he is a progressive, all puffed up with his caricature feminized self-righteousness.

And ehh, there are lots of homosexual males here that I do not have a problem with. Thus far, it's just you.

I won't read you when you get too much Nightbloom. You can do the same with me whenever I violate your tolerance levels as well, and I won't take umbrage one friggin' bit.

In light of Coyote's comment on the build-up of arms in Germany...an interesting bit of information from an article on how Dr. Strangebush's gang is moving the hands of the doomsday clock to two minutes before midnight:

"On the other hand, there are 27,000 nuclear warheads distributed among the official and non-official nuclear powers all of which can be launched within half an hour. (IAEA) The American arsenal, the total worldwide inventory of nuclear warheads and the new nuclear weapon’s strategy moves the doomsday clock to three minutes to midnight.

The threat of a nuclear accident is possibly the greatest threat to a nuclear catastrophe. Supposedly, the Titanic would not sink. Compared to the complexity and the number of mechanical, electronic and chemical components in a nuclear arsenal underlying all of which is the potential for human error in addition to the sheer numbers of warheads worldwide, the probability of a nuclear accident is infinitely greater than the risk of the Titanic sinking. Any argument about the world’s success in avoiding a nuclear accident ignores the fact that there have been a frighteningly large number of near misses, many of which could easily have moved the doomsday clock to zero. Consider the following accidents:

* February 1958 at Greenham Common airbase, England, a US Air Force B-47 jettisoned two 1700-gallon wingtip fuel tanks just missing a parked B-47 armed with nuclear weapons;

* February 1958 near Savannah, Georgia, a B-47 armed with a nuclear weapon collided with an F-86 fighter plane and jettisoned its bomb just before making a nuclear landing;

* January 16, 1961, an F-100 armed with a thermonuclear weapon caught fire scorching the nuclear weapon before it was extinguished;

* January 1968, the Defense Department announced publicly that between 1958 and 1968, there had been 13 major aircraft accidents involving nuclear weapons;

* 1973, a Sandia Laboratories report stated that between 1950 and 1968, there had been a total of 1,250 nuclear weapons accidents of varying severity including cases where the bombs conventional high explosives had been detonated;

* November 1977, in West Germany, a US Army CH-47 helicopter carrying nuclear weapons crashed after takeoff;

* since 1988, 96 US nuclear warhead accidents have been reported.

(2006 Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists)

With 27,000 warheads deployed in so many countries, it is virtually inevitable that human or non-human error will eventually be responsible for a nuclear accident. Any nuclear accident would be a catastrophe of major proportions, but an accident that triggers a nuclear exchange could precipitate nuclear winter and would sentence all life on earth to a very painful death. The possibility of nuclear accidents moves the doomsday clock to two minutes to midnight.

Testosterone-overloaded, power hungry, greedy and psychopathic men and a few women have created a world where many if not all life is threatened by nuclear weapons so that their nations will, in a meretricious irony, be secure from nuclear attack. These madmen and women lack any perspective or insight into the long-term amelioration of life on earth as they focus, like little boys, on who has the biggest nuclear arsenal. The tragic commentary of an arms buildup and the nuclear arms buildup in particular, is that leaders in most nations and institutions are immature and lack the ability to transcend the historical tendency to resolve disputes by force to a higher plane where negotiations, cooperation and compromise replace force as the means to settle differences.

It is extremely ironic that Albert Einstein, the man who discovered the theory that led to nuclear weapons, also warned that “The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking and we thus drift towards unparalleled catastrophe."

David Model, Lying for Empire: How to Commit War Crimes with a Straight Face.

Coyote, at the last Lefty meeting next to the Elks hall, in between sewing red flags, storming practice barricades and throwing animal blood on fur coats a couple of the other guys asked me if I could ask you to stop reading Dale Carnegie and being so politically correct all the time. Your sunshine and roses for everyone attitude is kinda bringing people down.

Thought there was an agreement not to weaponize space.
I guess it only apllies to other countries.

Treaty http://www.state.gov/t/ac/trt/5181.htm

More ad hominem venom from Coyote. You really do bring these threads down, Coyote.

Lynn, I don't know why you keep humouring him.

oooh, gives me the creeps. I wouldn't want anyone to take a position on anything I said cathrough gender-biased glasses. Opinions either stand on their merit, or they don't. Prejudices should not come in. Should have used my other name, Theodor. Wait, that's gendered, too, darn....

Point taken, and I naturally agree in principle, but we do gather a greater variety of perspectives the wider you cast the net, so anything that spices up the standard liberal white canadian hetero-boy perspective that prevails on these threads is to be welcomed.

Variety is the spice of life =)

Gawd! Save me from all that "stuff"!

Though the Nightbloom is right about one thing, which annoys me no goddamn end about the arsehole: There are way too many wimp-assed hetero-sexual males out there-, especially on the left unfortunately, who have been so ground down and made frighted of the "political correctness" lash, dotting i's and crossing t's...

Nahhh. No point saying anymore than that. Let sleeping dogs lie. Maybe they'll die in their sleep. :-)

So now I'm an "arsehole".

Good for you Coyote. I'm glad you got that off your chest.

Most of us outgrew name-calling around grade four or five, but you obviously seem to still derive some personal catharsis from the retrograde practice.

Coyote:ROTFLMAO as per usual you made my phuquing day .
Too funny

Oh,man too bad you don't have your own talk show Coyote, a la John Stewart .

Good on you too hannibal - you're clearly a real winner.

Lynn wrote:

In principle, I totally agree with Lynn's perspective. She, has, however, identified the problem with its implementation.

How do we shift from force-based politics to negotiation and cooperation when there is little guarantee that everybody will transcend use of force at the same time?

It seems to me that there is a tremendous reward for those who would pretend to embrace negotiation to woo states into disarmament or not producing more advanced weaponry, and then attack when they are weak. By worrying about such betrayal, am I demonstrating that I am one of those testosterone-laden paranoids? =^)

In any case, Lynn, I agree with what you write in principle, but I am struggling with implementation. It reminds me of "the prisoners dilemma" in gaming theory.

Just let it go, NB -- your protest only encourages further flatulent posts from Hannibal.

What do you expect from somebody who probably thinks his moniker is derived from the A-Team television show? =^)

I really don't think they all have to at the same time. As you suggest its also an unrealistic goal. The USA is not going to dismantle all of its nukes and then ask everyone else to do the same. That would be insane. You need to negotiate, fulfill your obligations and build up your trustworthiness. In my opinion, this is where the US has failed. They use the NPT like a club while conveniently forgetting the promises the powers with nukes were supposed to live up to.

I'd like to see a plan that would slowly reduce weapons by some percentage every year while also increasing safeguards on the remainder.

And just to be controversial, do we want nukes gone? They serve the same purpose as a "Beware of Dog" sign which is that if you attack me my Doomsday machine will go off.

The real problem is not their deterrent capability its the fact you can launch them and destroy your enemy so fast he has to be on a hair trigger all the time.

And that is where I think the energy should be focused. Increasing safeguards against accidents and increasing the ability of countries to retaliate with nukes of their own. An international agreement against nukes that can be used to decapitate enemy leadership bunkers and retaliatory nukes.

If your nuclear assets are safe from enemy first-strike then you don't have to be on a hair-trigger. You have the time to make sure you really are being attacked before counter-launching. You have time to decide whether the enemy is attacking you or an accident has occurred.

Just to continue on this theme and how it relates to the article. If Canada can destroy any missile sent us against us while still being able to hit any target we want are we making the world a safer place by investing in "defensive" technology? Not at all. All we've done is scare the bejeezus out of our hypothetical enemies. What allows them to sleep at night is knowing that they can hit us back if we decide to attack them. Remove that assurance and all bets are off, you will have turned your calm and rational enemies into wide-eyed paranoids and that isn't good for anyone.

Frank,

Loved your last two posts.

This post relates to your second post, about the role so-called defensive arms have in perpetuating insecurity.

It seems to me that MAD theory has been discredited among many, at least in popular imagination. Could a missile shield be seen as an alternative to MAD theory? It seems to me that MAD theory is a fall-back position when defensive technology has not been implemented.

If we don't blow ourselves up people will be gone from this planet because we'll be out of water and food. We will make ourselves extinct and it will be the best thing that happened to this planet.

Steve P,

Just so there is no confusion, the words you quoted were not mine but those of David Model's from an article he recently wrote...though I agree completely with the perspective he has presented.

What he is saying along with so many others is that it the Bush Administration itself that is primarily responsible for the ramping up of the nuclear threat... through their contempt for and withdrawal from some of our most important arms control treaties, for their continual obstruction of progress made towards dismantling nuclear weapons... and especially through their insane program to weaponize space....thus provoking other countries like China, Russia (and as Coyote noted, now Germany as well) to respond in kind, and dangerously up their arsenal as well.

As Model says in his article, the US is also "building smaller but still very powerful warheads is to expand the scope of their usage to any war or pseudo-war waged" by them. Now that is truly scary. We have become a world held hostage.

So I understand what you are saying, Steve...about that issue of trust...but what Hurtig and Model are saying is that most of the leaders of the world and institutions can no longer be trusted anyway...so this has to be a citizens' revolt, led by us, against our own leaders' programs to weaponize space. There is now no other choice.

I really think people think this is some kind of futuristic scenario, when really, the time is upon us...we just aren't recognizing it..as I said some serious mis-firings going on in our ability to act to save ourselves... to pull the back-up parachute as we hurtle on downwards.

We must change our mode of thinking...and acting... or die. It's that's simple.

That's why I was hoping to hear more womens' voices on this thread, not because I think women care more about this issue than men...but rather that the tolling of our inescapable biological clock tolling not just the usual "time is running out" chime.... but now tolling "total extinction" may jar us all awake... it is important we all get this but I hope women "get this" in a way that will set in motion a woman's natural communal ability to engage other women, men and their children...( perhaps that sense of community has been co-opted as well...another anachronistic relic... I don't know)...but how else do we pass the torch from one hand to another...literally... or (as in Mr. Hurtig's proposal)...( once more with feeling)... through the joining of communal hands on the internet as well?

Speak for yourself. Some of like our uncles and aunts, not to mention kiddoes.
It's a cheap shot to be that morose, so that no matter how bad it goes, you are coming up from the bottom. Learn instead to deal with the ups and downs at their real level. In other words, grow up. And if you want to see us extinct (that must be a contradiction in terms, yes?), then you are my enemy, for I want to see us fix our mess and prosper. And what is more, I believe we can do it.

Good for you Dorothy!, but if you watch the politicians here and abroad, it is hard to be optimistic!
I tend to agree that we shall be killing ourselves off, one way or another, because politicians are not interested in solving anything!
They are experts at speaking with "forked tongues", and they do not even believe in their own spin!
No wonder so many are professional actors to begin with.

Every now and then something happens which does begin to inject a little hope into the mix, like this morning's US Supreme Court ruling:

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that President Bush overstepped his authority in ordering military war crimes trials for Guantanamo Bay detainees.

The ruling, a rebuke to the administration and its aggressive anti-terror policies, was written by Justice John Paul Stevens, who said the proposed trials were illegal under U.S. law and international Geneva conventions.

The case focused on Salim Ahmed Hamdan, a Yemeni who worked as a bodyguard and driver for Osama bin Laden. Hamdan, 36, has spent four years in the U.S. prison in Cuba. He faces a single count of conspiring against U.S. citizens from 1996 to November 2001.

Two years ago, the court rejected Bush's claim to have the authority to seize and detain terrorism suspects and indefinitely deny them access to courts or lawyers. In this follow-up case, the justices focused solely on the issue of trials for some of the men.

The vote was split 5-3, with moderate Justice Anthony M. Kennedy joining the court's liberal members in ruling against the Bush administration. Chief Justice John Roberts, named to the lead the court last September by Bush, was sidelined in the case because as an appeals court judge he had backed the government over Hamdan.

Thursday's ruling overturned that decision.

Bush spokesman Tony Snow said the White House would have no comment until lawyers had had a chance to review the decision. Officials at the Pentagon and Justice Department were planning to issue statements later in the day.

The administration had hinted in recent weeks that it was prepared for the court to set back its plans for trying Guantanamo detainees.

The president also has told reporters, "I'd like to close Guantanamo." But he added, "I also recognize that we're holding some people that are darn dangerous."

The court's ruling says nothing about whether the prison should be shut down, dealing only with plans to put detainees on trial.

"Trial by military commission raises separation-of-powers concerns of the highest order," Kennedy wrote in his opinion.

The prison at Guantanamo Bay, erected in the months after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks on the United States, has been a flash point for international criticism. Hundreds of people suspected of ties to al-Qaida and the Taliban -- including some teenagers -- have been swept up by the U.S. military and secretly shipped there since 2002.

Three detainees committed suicide there this month, using sheets and clothing to hang themselves. The deaths brought new scrutiny and criticism of the prison, along with fresh calls for its closing.

Justice Clarence Thomas wrote a strongly worded dissent, saying the court's decision would "sorely hamper the president's ability to confront and defeat a new and deadly enemy."

The court's willingness, Thomas said, "to second-guess the determination of the political branches that these conspirators must be brought to justice is both unprecedented and dangerous."

Justices Antonin Scalia and Samuel Alito also filed dissents.

In his own opinion, Justice Stephen Breyer said, "Congress has not issued the executive a 'blank check."'

"Indeed, Congress has denied the president the legislative authority to create military commissions of the kind at issue here. Nothing prevents the president from returning to Congress to seek the authority he believes necessary," Breyer wrote.

8-D LOL. Well, that was actually the least of what I really wanted to say. Even I am some restrained by political correctness. Some. :-)

Other than that, I don't really wish you your death. :-) Maybe just a prolonged Sleeping Beauty-like coma, to await some way in the future Prince Charming.

Hell, I've even acknowledged you were right in one regards-, about at least a good many candy-ass "leftie" hetero-sexuals. :-)

Other than that little kiss and make up with the Nightbloomer, I'll make just one more wee comment on this main issue the thread has been discussing. (Then maybe a few days break from Tyee. Promise :-)

And for that, I'll fall back on something Marx said at some point, in exactly which one of his tomes I can't recall, in words to the effect that the problem is not so much there is a need to further ad nauseum analyze the world, but that the really great need is to change it. Which, is the main problem of the current period too, I think.

There is still an endless, naval gazing process that goes on amongst even, and maybe even especially "progressives" of discussing and analyzing the minutia of everything, from ancient history to the present. Fun, like game theory which somebody mentioned above, and such things as tend to preoccupy the boyish academic mind, but not very useful to the need and escalating risks of the times I think-, from the economy and the gross inequities there within capitalism, to the growing danger of a world war in our time, to our destruction of the natural environment.

Which is really to make the point Lynn has been making all along here, now that I think of it, that the need which really screams out from the gut of the times is to, "DO SOMETHING ARSEHOLES!"

The time for endless tail-chasing analysis is past, or bloody well should be, except as something that tactically goes on all the time while actually doing something. The real need, it seems to me, is to ACT to change the world. That is the real need, and which gets the least amount of real attention. How we get to that task.

And until that change in emphasis is finally achieved, it is what makes even Tyee here often seem such an ongoing redundancy, be it from me, others or the nightbloomer, and for me, I fear, an escalating bore.

It is time to begin to change the world, not further philosophize about it. It's even more true now than when about equally praised and pooed upon Karl said it.

Now, about that break. Catch ya's down the road hence. A few days Kokanee fishing trip with the son in law will doubtless help to sweeten my baser prickliness.

Yea, and the shrub will just ignore the Supreme Court as he feels he owns it .
After all they are the ones who handed him the reins of power through the hanging chads fiasco in Florida .
I still don't see how anyone can weaponize space as there are treaties specifically outlawing this .
Now they are talking about shooting down a N.Korean missile over the sea of Japan just to prove that it is folly to mess with the US .

Where will it end ?

# The power of Congress and the executive to strip the federal courts and the Supreme Court of jurisdiction.

# The authority of the executive to lock up individuals under claims of wartime power, without benefit of traditional protections such as a jury trial, the right to cross-examine one's accusers and the right to judicial appeal.

# The applicability of international treaties -- specifically the Geneva Conventions on the treatment of prisoners of war -- to the government's treatment of those it deems "enemy combatants."

Hamdan was captured by Afghan militiamen in late November 2001 after the radical Islamic Taliban movement was driven from power in Afghanistan by U.S.-backed Afghan forces. He was subsequently turned over to U.S. authorities, who sent him to the U.S. detention facility at the Guantanamo Bay naval base in Cuba in 2002.

Amen, Coyote. We need to get to that task!

Take it easy on the fish bro.

Coyote - Lynn, Gwest and hannibal may think it's "cute" but I don't. I've tried humouring you in the past, but you keep coming back to the same poison. You can stick in as many of those little smiley faces as you like but you can't hide it - you're still spewing venom and posting malice for no better reason than that I don't share your opinions and ideology.

Marx's Theses on Feuerbach:

"The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it."

Yes, the point is to change the world, but this is no argument against discussion of philosophy, history and the social sciences -- as long as the discussion is kept "real". We ought to keep discussion honed on action points that remember that any idea, however grand it seems, must be implemented in a real, imperfect world with even less perfect human beings.

Coyote, I think you missed the point about the prisoners dilemma by dismissing it as boyish. Here is some info about it, which should demonstrate its relevance to our discussion:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner's_dilemma

nightbloom

I stay out of this because I think you and Coyote actually enjoy the give and take. Surely you know he's not serious any more than I think you are when you start to lay it on fast and thick. Lighten up man; put on that smiley face yourself from time to time. I think I told you once before that your skin was a little thin - I think you need to look a bit more closely at the way you sling the personal critiques too.

I still think you're a closet lefty in the end and I do think Coyote's right above too about it being long past time for talking: We all need to get off our collective Tyee asses and 'do' something more positive and effective. Any ideas? Outside of the ivory tower, I mean.

What do you think of Obrador's chances, by the way?

Still too busy for anything more until late tonight. Further, sometimes I don't post more than a quick few words because I think that's all that's necessary - given the issue (of which this one is an example, in my view) and sometimes I just simply don't have the time. Sorry if you find this a disappointment.

I'm almost never paid just to think - sadly!

"Right Livelihood"

How we choose to make a living makes a difference to the world every day.

But let's not beat ourselves up for wanting to discuss how we ought to proceed -- this is a vital component of any living democracy. This is what institutions like the Tyee is for. It only becomes a problem when we spend too much time discussing and not enough time doing.

Steve,

MAD does have bad press. Also, it can't work once you have more than two playing. If one, let's say Russia, launched its missiles at the US does the US retaliate just against the Russians or against everybody else too before they lose their nukes and cities.

If everyone has defensive technology you get a positive which is that you don't need to be on a hair trigger. Accidental launches can be destroyed and minor countries with funny-in-the-head leaders don't pose a threat. On the negative side it also makes it possible to wage a nuclear war and possibly win it. Would anyone have wanted even relatively sane leaders like Stalin or Mao to think they could survive and even win a nuclear war? Would a small country like Israel feel safe if Syria and Egypt built "defensive" missile shields?

I think "defensive" technology such as missile shields are destabilizing. If only one player, the USA, has them it might seem at first glance to be good for us but as the only way to defeat a missile shield is to build so many nuclear weapons you can overwhelm it I doubt too many would see that as a step in the right direction. Especially as I would prefer to see those resources spent on people not overwhelming the US missile shield.

So one nation with a missile shield produces a situation where other players have to build more nukes than ever plus engage in a race to build their own shields plus puts everyone except the USA on a paranoid hair trigger until eventually the missile shields have become irrelevant and we're back to the starting position but now we have more nukes than ever and have wasted massive amounts of resources.

Going back to the original NPT and actually sharing technology, reducing stockpiles, increasing safeguards, banning decapitation weapons and building trust seems a more sensible approach.

Wrong Bloomers. You started this BS all by yourself by stating that " My views were simplistic in the extreme"
I don't use smileys .
Also that my posts were the equivalant of white noise .
We have,in the past,had civil discussions without all the 'noise' and at times I have agreed wholeheartedly with your position .
I agree that name calling is childish but so is telling someone they create'White noise'which is,simply, name calling by stealth .
I,like,Coyote will not indulge in any further name calling.
If I disagree then so be it .
I will try and be civil in the future as I do appreciate the fact that you read a lot of different materials.
Although I find the incessant quoting to be somewhat wearing at times .
Thankyou

A Pakastani nucular scientist has given out plans to build atomic weapons.
Who did he give them to Osams bin Laden or ?

Terrorists with nukes are indeed an ad for missile shields because normal deterrence theory doesn't apply.

Unfortunately nobody is going to design a missile shield that only works against terrorists. Its pretty hard to build nukes and long range missiles without anyone knowing about it however so I don't see a missile shield as being the first or even second line of defence against a terrorist threat anyway. Besides, if terrorists were going to try and nuke a city I think they would try to get the nuke to that city, not use a missile.

Alcibiades - I'm not buyin' it. It's not "thin skinned" after the 500th time over the course of months & months. You're as selective in your interpretation of subjective elements here as you are in your actual arguments.

But whatever - You can easily say that, because you're not the target. Perhaps I'll start peppering you with obscenity and referring to you as "arsehole" and see how long it takes 'til you get "thin skinned" about it.

Anyway - Something more interesting to chew on, from the upcoming issue of Foreign Affairs journal:

The End of the Bush Revolution
http://www.brook.edu/views/articles/gordon/20060701.pdf

The thing about Coyote is that he's not just on "my side", he also writes real arguments. No one would ever accuse Coyote of being a man of few words.

However, I can understand why the abuse would get to you. I've become annoyed by persons on the right who have done nothing but name call on here for years. The difference is, Coyote will write 10 paragraphs of argument whereas the people I get annoyed at will be lucky if they string together 10 words, all of them an attack. Fortunately the Liberals are high in the polls so they're in their happy place and not sitting on here spewing.

Which is why when the Tyee did the poll I asked for an "ignore" feature so I wouldn't even see the posts of those who never had anything to say.

As for those who name call AND have something to say, I put up with it.

nightbloom
I've only a minute. Thanks for the journal reference - I'll attempt to get to it tonight. I think Frank is correct about what he's said too, just above, relative to Coyote.

As to being selective, as I said above, I'm just too damn busy - ignore that if you wish, but it's the truth. I'm still waiting for your views on Obrador and his little 'revolution' in Mexico.

Later.

Well, if you two want to believe that, that's your business, but that's not my experience with him. Sure, he posts a real opinion from time to time....and I have repeatedly encouraged him to do just that...but if you present him with a counter-argument be prepared for venom. And if he disagrees with your argument, then all you get is a barrage of insults rather than rational counter-points, and those insults then spill over into the next four months' worth of threads.

But this has taken up enough space. Just keep your eye out for the pattern, and you'll see precisely what I'm referring to.

That is insulting !
Just because the majority of respondents here agree with Coyote is no excuse to get your nose out of joint .
You constantly belittle people who do not hold with your opinions .
There are a bunch of right wing websites out there.
If you don't like this one then leave you are not going to sway anyone or convince them to vote for the neo-cons .

...So back to visions of the Apocalypse. Any thoughts on Robert McNamara's late conversion to pacifism? Postmodern peacemaking can make strange bedfellows:

http://cisac.stanford.edu/publications/apocalypse_soon/

I sat in on the first full meeting of the Liu Centre Advisory Council when that outfit was just getting off the ground several years ago (not puffing myself up here - I was just the kid taking the minutes). Robert McNamara was there (with Maurice Strong, Sylvia Ostry, Marc Lalonde, Donald McDonald, Ivan Head, etc.). McNamara was still sharp as a whip. That man must have coffee & ginko biloba for blood. The others at the table couldn't resist getting him off topic from time to time. He said the whole usefulness of "star wars" and the threat of weaponization of space lay exclusively in inducing your opponent to exhaust themselves by forcing them to plan according to their worse-case scenario. It doesn't actually have to work - your opponent just has to suspect that it may work eventually.

Good lord what stupid article, the intent of the article and his argument can be summoned up in one sentence: Arms in space, bad, US at fault for the whole thing.

There is an old saying: Who holds the high ground wins, the saying still applies and directly to this issue.

China is building a deep water navy that will be ready to push its agenda in approx 10 years. In order for it to challenge the US military, they must be able to neutralize or destroy the US communication and surveillance system in space. This is way the Chinese are pursuing a presence in space, it gives them the ability to limit the US advantage.

China and Russia are pushing to shackle the US with the treaty in order to give them time to catch up with their own secret programs, which only China really stands a chance to do so. The Russian economy just will not be able to sustain such a race and they know that they lost the last one. Unless some economic miracle comes along, they will be in a distant 3rd place. China however is poised quite nicely to compete in space, most of the hard won lessons can be bought or acquired cheaply by public or covert means, they also benefit from Asia’s role in electronic manufacturing in that much of the infrastructure will be dual use and therefore not a major drain on the treasury.

Other players will be France and Japan. France will do it out of national pride and hoping to remain relevant, plus some economic spinoffs, Japan will do it for regional geopolitical reasons.

What is “weaponization of space anyways?

Does a high altitude aircraft loaded with bombs skipping along the edge of the atmosphere qualify?

How can you claim that a ground based laser is a “space weapon” If it is , then how do you deal with ICBM’s? or even SCUDS?

Real space based weapons would consist of several different types.

Anti-satellite hunters: these are satellites which track down others and then fire off a large shotgun full of steel pellets to destroy the target.

A kinetic energy weapon delivery platform: A satellite with a accurate aiming system firing steel rods at a ground based target using their velocity and kinetic energy to destroy infrastructure target, no explosives required.

Electronic warfare weapons: a nuke designed to create an EMP pulse to destroy ground based communications systems.

Is space weaponized already?
Absolutely, the GPS, communication and spy satellites are all important weapons to be used in defensive and offensive military operations. To believe that China, Russia or anyone else that can, is not going to be taking steps to deal with these satellites is smoking way to much dope.

The treaty would be even less useful that the Washington treaty limiting battleship size. How do you plan to enforce it? Do you think the various nations are going to let other countries inspect the payloads just before they go into space? Not likely.

The only thing in this article I can agree with is that yes, China will butt heads with the US over oil and that the anti-missile defense using missiles is a waste of money.

Frank some good posts you did here. Regarding MAD did you ever hear this story?

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1545474/posts

MAD worked to limit a global hot war because the results of going to war was just to suicidal for everyone involved. A similar event is taking place between India and Pakistan.

However in both situations the opposing sides continue a form of low key warfare through the use of proxies. In Pakistan case it is the Kashmir separatists.

The problem with WMD’s in states that don’t have firm command and control and a fairly rational government is that the concepts of MAD may not apply, leaving the saner party nervous and considering a first strike option and the nutty side to ignore the consequences.

Also you are correct that a missile defense could only neutralize a small portion of the potential nuclear threat, as the most likely event would be a ship borne nuke hidden in a container.

Yeah, I think McNamara is experiencing some late-life remorse. I watched "Fog of War" and that comes across somewhat, although over all you still get the impression that he's simply to hyperactive brainy egotist who doesn't quite get the whole human equation underlying the whole thing.

McNamara should be in the same jail that has reserved space for that other American war criminal Henry Kissinger. Because he's marginally sorry for his role, I'd be willing to give him a window. I understand they have room for a few members of the current US government too - largely the same ones that expect intelligent people to fall for the same kind of wishful nonsense that Colin still seems to believe in relative to this star wars garbage.

It's interesting that the same company where he got his start and established his reputation as a brainiac is now incapable of competing with Japanese carmakers in the marketplace

I see Ricky Hillier has now got the message and has come out in favour of the acquisition of the same heavy lift aircraft that he was pooh-pooing and saying the forces didn’t need just weeks ago. What a compromised twit!

Nice to see that military intelligence is still a contradiction of terms.

G west
As is: open minded liberal.

And what part of my post is starwar garbage?

McNamara was actually only at Ford for a week before he joined the Kennedy Administration. LBJ joked afterwards that no one told them that detail when they were handed his credentials.

As a 'personality study' McNamara is far more intriguing than Kissinger. Watch his reminiscences in Fog of War, particularly his reflections on his childhood classroom experiences as a nascent 'whizz kid' and then contrast that with the black & white clips of the interviews he did in his office when Kennedy first appointed him. Still the 'whizz kid' persona all grown up. You acually get the sense of a great yawning obliviousness to emotional-spiritual sensibility in his make-up. We've all known people like that - like an unobstrusive peaceable (in personal comportment) softspoken self-absorbed sociopath. Simply no comprehension of inherent wrongness.

They've been talking about more strategic airlift for the CF for years. It's actually pretty embarassing when the only way to move your people & equipment around are the Americans or through private contractors (remember when that cargo ship carrying half of Canada's APCs decided to take 'job action' in the mid-Atlantic a few years ago?). It's been an ongoing issue, not one that's been pulled out of a hat all of a sudden.

nightbloom:
So we can't blame him for Ford's demise - I think I remember that from a biography of Johnson I read a few years ago - another highly complicated figure not very well served by his advisors.

Oh well, he (McNamara) has enough to answer for. I did get that same feeling about him when I watched 'Fog of War'. Several times he tiptoes up to actually accepting some real responsibility, but like the true sociopath (which certainly characterizes him - and many business and government leaders before and since) he can't quite take the necessary next step.

My point about the heavy lift capacity Minister O'Conman announced today was merely to point out what a twit and ass-kisser Hillier is. If we're going to be schlepping around body bags we might as well do it in our own planes after all.

Hardly all of a sudden – the decision I mean - although Hillier's support today is definitely a Paul to Tarsus kind of thing. Exactly what you get when you have a spokesperson who is such a klutz.

Harper is busy cynically buying votes: Exactly as I predicted on these pages in late January if you care to roll on back and check.

Colin: I still think you're a big apologist for the military and the idea that guys in uniform (and stupidity like Star Wars and MAD and strategic bombing and all the rest) are actually protecting us stupid lazy and unreliable civilians (which is exactly what you’ve been taught to think about your civilian brethren) from god knows what terrible fate. That's all! No offence intended, I don't think you can help it, actually, and I'm sure it's not pathological like it is with McNamara and Kissinger and Bush and Cheney - among others.

Jesus Christ Colin can you say redundant ?
We already went through all the various space weapons permutations including hunter/killer satellites .
So ,who then, will patrol outer space ?
Agree that no one will willingly open up their cargo holds for inspection so what is the answer ?
I realize a treaty is only good if the signatories are above board and honest with each other but what of new radical weapons ?
EMP is also a consequence of nucular explosions hence the militaries building the internet to prtotect the worlds info.
The high ground may well be low orbit satellites that can shoot lasers(Rods of God)at communications centers that are earth based .
How do you harden these facilities except build them underground,several stories .

Outer Space Treaty
1/27/67 Opened for signature
4/25/67 U.S. ratified
10/10/67 Entered into force
Prohibits parties from placing nuclear weapons and weapons of mass destruction in outer space.

Gwest, I remember your prediction. You've been proven correct. Don't suppose you've got insight into the next Super7 do you...? ;-)

As the U.S. demonstrated with its abrogation of the START: treaty-shmeaty (pretext: the other signatory to the START treaty - the USSR - didn't exist anymore....even tho we allowed Russia to accede to the Soviet seat on the Security Council without falling back on such a sop). I wouldn't rely on treaties to hold back such a step if the U.S. concludes (1) that another power will do it anyways or (2) it genuinely believes its vital strategic interests are at stake.

I, for one, really appreciate Colin's knowledgeable posts.

My grandfather-in-law, who was involved in bomber command in WWII & the Canadian air force during the Cold War, had a very similar reaction to the no weapons in space argument: that the cat is already out of the bag.

Hannibal wrote:

You are missing the whole point of this web site, Hannibal -- the opportunity to dialogue on topics dear to the progressive community with people who hold a variety of views. I appreciate the challenge of listening to many different perspectives and deciding which to support. I take the views of people here seriously, even if they do not describe my vision of the perfect world. You certainly do not speak for me when you write that Nightbloom does not sway anyone with his views, and calling Nightbloom a "neocon" is, at best, inaccurate. I doubt very much that many of his perspectives would be welcome among genuine neoconservatives.

If you want a private conversation with sycophants who already agree with you, you are free to do so elsewhere. But this site represents an opportunity for a larger dialogue. Restricting oneself only to conversations in which people already agree with you reinforces one's prejudices, encourages groupthink, and are very, very boring.

If you are not interested in listening to other people's perspectives on a relatively open site, how do you ever hope to convince someone who disagrees with you with greater vehemence than what you experience here? Or would you prefer to resort to force to settle disputes?

Dialogue is our best alternative to force.

Steve P, the prisoner's dilemma is intrigueing to read...it certainly is the "real" reality game show of our times...but it, too, is based on out-moded thinking...because the prisoner's dilemma, his main objective, is based on the notion of gain..all decisions and choices revolve around that sacred orb.

There is an old Buddhist saying:

"I gained nothing at all from Supreme Enlightenment, and for that very reason it is called Supreme Enlightenment."

What McNamara forgets is that policy affects those who implement it as well as those on the receving end. Their insane obsession is not a one way street.

Amerika is exhausting itself to feed its rabid militarization of earth...and of space. It is starving its own already fractured social structure... and abandoning its own citizens.

And Harper, our blindered water boy for Team Amerika, goosesteps right behind them.

Have you noticed lately that he has taken to wearing those "phony" eyeglasses everywhere...all part of his PR makeover, I'm sure.....a clever cover.... to hide his stone-dead eyes behind.

I don't know, I think he should have just gone for the Groucho glasses disguise... furry moustache and "bushy" eyebrows.

"My...what cold, scary eyes, you have Grandmother?"

Colin, yes I have read about Colonel Petrov.

I don't need to post this, its too obvious, but I will anyway. I would rather have little proxy wars than big nuclear ones. In fact its why I'm both for and against nukes. I would much prefer a world without nukes but they did prevent world war 3 and 4. Unfortunately if you have even one nuclear war it doesn't matter how any wars they prevented.

Yup

NB,

This example basically sums up McNamara for me. What he sees as the "usefulness" of the thing I see as the problem. Its one, a huge waste of resources and two, makes your nuke-armed enemy more paranoid.

The history of treaty-breaking goes back a long way, as any peoples living adjacent to the Roman empire could attest. But, its the only long term answer short of simply annihlating your possible rivals.

Hannibal the biggest stumbling block for nukes in space is that nukes require ongoing maintenance, and since space is a harsh environment, it is unlikely anyone has one that they can reliable station in space, or at least they ain’t telling anyone about it. Hence the appeal of kinetic and chemical energy weapons, relatively simple and not to dangerous if the space launch fails. I know they use nuclear reactors in space, but I believe the design is significantly different.

Also a country could do all their testing on earth and keep it prepared for a war, I suspect that all three major powers have EMP plans against each other, the difference is that a specific EMP explosion is high altitude burst with a smaller nuke, as opposed to a ground or low altitude burst designed to inflict maximum damages/causalities.

Frank, I remember being in Germany, knowing that any war there would likely go nuclear in 4-5 days. Always a bit of a gut churner when the action alarms (snowballs) went off on the base at 3:00am.

G west

Civilian brethren? Since I am a civilian now I don’t see your point of trying to claim that I have them vs us mentality.

Like it or not, MAD worked, a peculiar and illogical human solution to an impossible situation. It worked because of the small but important contribution of people like the aforementioned officer who did the rational thing in times of great stress. It was a teeter tooter balance between the proof of the determination to do the unthinkable and the desire to live.

Just halfway through but that's a good article by McNamara

This is my point. Getting rid of nuclear weapons doesn't get rid of war and when it exists only as a deterrent can actually prevent large scale war. I know when I was in the army I didn't want a war to start either because I have an allergy to artillery. Even now I would be pretty scared about how to protect my kids if there was a conventional invasion because being on the pointy end of a conventional war is in some ways worse than being on the wrong end of a nuclear strike.

But nukes are not automatically a deterrent either. They can be used to start wars or be the trigger for a war. This is why I think things like missile defence and weapons of decapitation are destabilizing, they give you the possibility of striking first and winning.

And this is where I part ways with the pro-nuke lobby. Building first-stike weapons while bashing a country over the head with the NPT is hypocritical.

So if the USA said it wouldn't build nukes that could knock out deep targets like enemy missiles and command centres and would also stop development on defence shields would that make the world safe? Unfortunately it wouldn't because everyone else has to do the same or it doesn't mean much. The US, Chine and Russia would be a good start though. And this is where things like treaties and verification come in, giving countries the assurance that their nukes will survive a first-strike. In my opinion there is simply no other way to stop the walk towards eventual nuclear war.

Because does anyone seriously think 5, 10 or 50 nuclear powers could point first-strike missiles at each other for centuries and nothing would ever go wrong? I don't like the odds of that.

MacNamara said,

We pledged to work in good faith toward the eventual elimination of nuclear arsenals when we negotiated the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) in 1968.

Good faith participation in international negotiation on nuclear disarmament—including participation in the CTBT—is a legal and political obligation of all parties to the NPT that entered into force in 1970 and was extended indefinitely in 1995. The Bush administration’s nuclear program, alongside its refusal to ratify the CTBT, will be viewed, with reason, by many nations as equivalent to a U.S. break from the treaty. It says to the nonnuclear weapons nations, “We, with the strongest conventional military force in the world, require nuclear weapons in perpetuity, but you, facing potentially well-armed opponents, are never to be allowed even one nuclear weapon.”

We must move promptly toward the elimination—or near elimination—of all nuclear weapons. For many, there is a strong temptation to cling to the strategies of the past 40 years. But to do so would be a serious mistake leading to unacceptable risks for all nations.

Well as is obvious from my postings, I agree with what he had to say on the NPT, hair-triggers in the post Cold War era, first-strike weapons, accidents etc.

Colin
Never said you weren’t a civilian. However, you still possess, in my view, a certain contempt for your fellow man and his/her struggles that seems to me to characterize the military mindset. Like most military, and many ex-military people, you haven't risen beyond that them/us dichotomy that military discipline, (forgive me but I can't think of a better word just now) brainwashing, repetition and general narrow-mindedness seem to impart in many folks in uniform. Look, for example, at the military reaction to the Senlis Council report from London this week. Instead of suggesting he’d read the report and comment later, or refusing to comment at all to the media, the Canadian military spokesman in Afghanistan immediately shot his mouth off and called the report both nonsense and anti-American and implied that the Council didn’t know what it was talking about. In fact, the Senlis Council has dozens of employees and staff in country and probably knows more about the situation on the ground than half the defence department staff in Ottawa. Instead of being thoughtful and analytical though, the military mouthpiece – not unlike that idiot Hillier – immediately shot his mouth off in an us vs them diatribe.

This kind of them/us esprit de corps kind of thing is not just a military thing. It exists in paramilitary organizations like the police too and often contributes to poor, if not disastrous policing. Anyway, that's what I was talking about. Please don’t take it personally; like Steve P I frequently appreciate what you have to say and I value the perspective you bring. I just think you’re horribly wrong in the approach you take to many issues and I think you need to develop a little more empathy

As to the dubious success of MAD, I'm not so sure that had very much to do with the military, in fact, from what I know of the history of the cold war I'd suggest it “succeeded” in spite of the military. In addition, even if your contention were correct and MAD did somehow contribute to 50 or so years of tendentious and fraught peace, one cannot know how much better that 50 years might have been without George Kennan and his lies - which, like the bogeyman of a phony WMD threat from Iraq, provided the intellectual keystone of the whole risky business.

That a bunch of lies (Kennan’s characterization of the Soviets as an evil empire bent on the destruction of the West) led to a marginally positive outcome, as opposed to the horrendous risks the same lies courted, is a facile and dangerous justification for a star wars project that - in a nuclear era where there are more than two actors - is simply not worth the risks entailed.

It would be interesting to know how quickly space based weapons can be deployed .
I believe Colin is absolutely correct in the contention that nucular weapons need a lot of maintainance and are therefor almost useless unless deployed from earth rapidily.
Mutually Assured Destruction does not allow for an easy, fraughtless sleep .
Now that N.Korea has come out to play and their leadership is dangerous what now ?

In April, within 15 minutes of receiving a report that Saddam Hussein had entered a restaurant in Baghdad, a B-1B bomber dropped four 2,000-pound satellite-guided bombs on the place.

It now appears Saddam slipped out of the building by a secret exit. But if one space-based weapon now being researched had been orbiting above Iraq -- and had worked as envisioned -- Saddam almost certainly wouldn't have got away.

Colloquially called "Rods from God," this weapon would consist of orbiting platforms stocked with tungsten rods perhaps 20 feet long and one foot in diameter that could be satellite-guided to targets anywhere on Earth within minutes. Accurate within about 25 feet, they would strike at speeds upwards of 12,000 feet per second, enough to destroy even hardened bunkers several stories underground.

No explosives would be needed. The speed and weight of the rods would lend them all the force they need.

This principle was applied in Iraq to destroy tanks that Saddam's forces shielded near mosques, schools or hospitals. U.S. aviators used concrete practice bombs.

Sounds interesting.

Space planes

Closer to operational readiness is a hypersonic bomber which could attack nearly any target in the world within four hours from bases in the United States.

The FALCON (an acronym for Force Application and Launch from the Continental United States) would be sent into the upper atmosphere by a boost vehicle and cruise at an altitude of 100,000 feet at speeds up to 12 times the speed of sound. The first flight demonstration is scheduled for 2006.

Besides being able to engage a target faster than conventional bombers, the FALCON would be virtually invulnerable. No fighter aircraft or anti-aircraft missile could fly as high, and at Mach 12, the FALCON could outrun antiaircraft missiles. No foreign bases would be needed because the FALCON's range and speed would allow it to be based on U.S. soil.

Air Force Space Command in Colorado Springs is already thinking about a follow-on to FALCON -- a genuine space plane that would fly even higher and faster, stay up longer and carry more weapons.

"Once a target is identified, the space plane can respond from the U.S. and strike worldwide targets in under an hour," SpaceCom researchers said in a white paper last year.

A key advantage of a space plane, the writers said, is its weapons could enter the atmosphere over a target, so there would be no need to seek overflight permission from other countries. "Technology exists today to create this capability and evolve it now," they wrote.

Space lasers

The Air Force soon will begin integrated testing of its first Airborne Laser. If it proves reliable, it could be deployed in three or four years.

Housed in a modified Boeing 747, the airborne laser is designed to cruise at 40,000 feet and engage tactical ballistic missiles like the Scud shortly after liftoff. If a missile is lazed for 3 to 5 seconds, its oxidizer or fuel tank would explode, destroying the missile and spreading debris over the launch site.

Lasers that work in the atmosphere would work even better in space. Air refracts and weakens laser beams, and a great deal of power is required to punch through it.

President Ronald Reagan conceived of space-based lasers as a key element of his "Star Wars" defense against intercontinental ballistic missiles, but they have proved difficult to develop because of the need to push their heavy power sources into orbit.

Besides destroying enemy ICBMs, space-based lasers would also be designed to disrupt or destroy enemy satellites and knock out high- flying enemy aircraft or cruise missiles.

Satellite killers, 'bodyguards'

The Air Force has plans for a variety of weapons to protect U.S. satellites, and to destroy or disable enemy satellites. They are known collectively as anti-satellite (ASAT) weapons. Some would be based in space. Others would be on the ground, on ships, or mounted on airplanes. Some would be directed energy weapons (lasers or high-powered microwaves). Some would have explosive warheads, and some would destroy a target by running into it.

An ASAT weapon that could be used for both defense and offense is described in an Air Force 2025 study. "Satellite bodyguards" would consist of approximately five satellites placed in close proximity to the satellite being protected. Some would be decoys. Others would be "hunter-killers," armed with directed energy weapons to blind or destroy enemy ASAT weapons. The "hunter-killer" satellites would be designed to detect space-based threats themselves and receive warnings from Earth.

Alcibiades - of possible interest w. ref. to a previous debate of ours:

Vatican opens inter-war archives
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/5134586.stm

nightbloom

Looks like half a loaf to me:

Still, who knows? I would like to know what happened to the partially completed encyclical (for which drafts do definitely exist) that was in the works before Pius' election in the late 30s.

Still brutally busy. I will get round to reading your reference from yesterday though.

A true hero's tale .
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1545474/posts
Thanks Colin .

I find Colin's comment is both a defence and ultimately an acceptance of the madness of increased miltarization. To accept and defend madness, is itself the height of stupidity.

I accept that some wars become necessary, become in essence, unavoidable...in a fight against tyranny.

And conflict, I think, is ironically, part of the peace process, and at a certain level is to be welcomed...as a necessary balance...to release pressure before small squirmishes become massive wars. Conflict is an inescapable fact of being human...we benefit from the honesty, the political incorrectness of engaging our real feelings, our outrage and our anger. To change anything, first we must have the courage to be truly honest.

(It is one of the reasons I've always respected, enjoyed, and learned from Coyote's posts so much. I read nightbloom as well but I'm not simply humouring Coyote as nightbloom keeps suggesting...I think, instead Coyote's posts are marked by a rare, honest and discerning intelligence that holds little regard for the rarefied air of mere academic b.s. And that is not a slam at education or academia but rather education that has isolated itself at the expense of life itself. Just my take.)

So when I read this list of weapons oh-so-casually mentioned...that conveniently ignores that their intention, their raison d'etre, is to kill millions...(including you and me, and those we love)...with the inherent potential to end all of human life itself... to destroy exquisite nature on this planet without a second thought... I think of my friends, a Czech couple, whom I met in Canada, but who were both living in what was then Czechoslovakia (1986) when Chernobyl happened. A few years ago they left Canada, deciding to return to their home in the Czech Republic... (in their words)..."to die."

They had been beset by a myriad of medical problems...all the result of the radiation from Chernobyl. Stefan was dealing with a number of cancers. Rosee, his wife, was going blind. Her arms would sometimes become numb and useless to her. These, they suffered, among many other ailments. Despite all this, they were a couple in love with life... and each other..but Chernobyl was like a cruel thief that snatched it all way. Stefan died six months after they returned home. Rosee did not return my holiday greetings this year...I have no idea if she is still alive.

And Chernobyl is the smallest of scales, in comparison to what we are speaking of here.

We are not talking about guns and bullets, conventional bombs and warfare... weapons you have a chance of survival against. We are talking End Game. As Einstein wrote “The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking and we thus drift towards unparalleled catastrophe."

I have little tolerance for views that uphold a policy of suicidal madness, for a boys with toys hunger for an ever-increasing arsenal of death...for an arrogance and lack of courage in refusing to even attempt to prevent catastrophe ...and also for a lack of sheer imagination to imagine the world in a different way.

Didn't Einstein also say "Imagination is more important than knowledge"?

In speaking about a possible nuclear threat that loomed over her country, Arundhati Roy said:

"It's not just the one million soldiers on the border who are living on hair-trigger alert. It's all of us. That's what nuclear bombs do. Whether they're used or not, they violate everything that is humane. They alter the meaning of life itself.

Why do we tolerate them? Why do we tolerate these men who use nuclear weapons to blackmail the entire human race? "

Hannibal
Your Google fu is

G west
Well taking recent previous European history as a marker, it was very likely that without nukes being in the equation, that a another major war between the allies and the Soviets would have broken within 20 years of the end of WWII, I am sure you remember the Berlin crisis?

You wonder why the military holds the left in contempt? They have consistently stabbed the soldiers in the back and then expected miracles when the poop has hit the fan. Contempt well earned.

Lynn after you get off your pedestal and re-read what I wrote, I knew that in Germany, my job was to die fighting in the Fudla Gap. We all knew it and that if we weren’t rolled over by a soviet tank division that we would be nuked. The alternative was to allow West Germany to be turned into another Hungary.

Could you please list who are the "sane" parties and who are the "nutty" parties when it comes to WMD"s.

Define "the high ground" of the weaponization of space? Are "Rods of God" the high ground?

I mean, that's both divine and deadly intervention isn't it? Is there a copyright on that name by the religious right? Wow ..talk about Old Testament time with a... whole lotta "smiting" going on.... this time round courtesy of "Rods of God."

Colin, whatever you felt in Germany, your attempt here has been to trivialize and downplay the weaponization of speech. Like G West, I see you as an incessant apologist for the military.

We will all die fighting, Colin, not just soldiers. We will all live in fear of being nuked, won't we?

It's a a major tenet of the PNAC, isn't it? The proliferation (nuclear or otherwise) of Fear and Death. God Bless Amerika...oh yeah....and the Rods of God.

uhhh..Sigmund tells me that should be the weaponization "of space". Though it still works for me...free speech being our finest weapon.

I think we can all agree that being nuked would be a terrible thing, that nukes and "rods of god" are terrible weapons etc and we'd all like to live in a world where they didn't exist.

But the thing is whether they exist or not there's still going to be war, probably more than if nukes didn't exist since we live in a world where populations expand and resources dwindle. And we haven't had wars that didn't hurt (much) the civilian population since Freddy the Great 250 years ago.

The Age of Reason is clearly history :) The age we live in now would I think be even scarier without weapons of deterrence although I think we should do anything we can to prevent new arms races and building new offensive weapons while at the same time scaling back even deterrence WMDs.

If however, the current nuclear powers continue to ignore the Non-Proliferation Treaty and insist on building new offensive weapons then perhaps its time for every country from Andorra to Zaire to build WMDs of their own, including Canada. Because I may like the average American but I don't like the idea of 300 million living beside me, being short of water and other resources and armed to the teeth while we sit here defenceless.

Agreed

I think its always necessary to remember why we have such weapons as well as what they're capable of. The goal is not to be proud of your weapons, albeit many are, I see it as more, "I wish the world hadn't come to this but this is where we're at"

But that's why they're effective. There is no chance of survival. If people think they could survive a war they're more likely to indulge in it to pursue their goals. The great thing about nukes sitting in a silo is you don't have to have conscription and a bigger population than your neighbour. A nuclear "maginot line" lets you till your fields in peace.

Its when the toys become the end in itself, we have to have bigger and better nukes and have to destroy the other guys nukes as well as his cities that the problems really kick into high gear. Because when nukes can no longer deter they lose their raison d'etre.

And obviously when one power, whoever it may be, decides to up the ante and build defensive shields as well as keep the largest stockpile of nukes and to indulge in WMDs designed to decapitate enemy nukes and command centres then obviously it means that country is moving onto a new field where it hopes it will no longer be deterred by other people's nukes. And I see that as incredibly destabilizing.

Colin
The military doesn't just hold the left in contempt. They hold "all" civilians in contempt, see them as lazy, weak and undisciplined – powerless and able to survive only because of the imagined heroics of boys with guns and bombs. It is what always happens when a group sets itself apart and submits to hierarchical discipline - just like the Church. You know perfectly well the kind of claptrap they're taught and drilled to believen. It has nothing to do with left/right it is all about their perceived and indoctrinated view of themselves as the protectors of civilian society and you know it. TO try and fob that kind of prejudice and history off as a left/right thing is just nonsense.

As to your other contention – baloney to that too. The wars of the last half of the 20th century were primarily either civil wars or attempts by right wing dictatorships, often supported by the US, to gain or hang onto power. You idea of 'what might have happened’ without nuclear brinksmanship is just another fantasy.

For anyone who is not already worried about Canada's decision to join the American crusade in Afghanistan it might not be a good idea to read the following about how the president of the united states prepares himself for the vagaries of each unfolding day.
http://nonzero.org/nytbushgod.htm

How nice to know that he wants to be sure he's 'in the word' each and every day. And some of us were worried about the religious fanatics among the Muslims!

Colin,hunh ?
Not sure what you are trying to say .
But yea, I Google when a subject fascinates me . Trying to add to the dialouge as it were .
Is there a problem with that ?

Sheesh! a daily devotional for the Shrub.
How interesting that he thinks he is a Christian .

Lynn:
I certaily didn't mean to trivialize these weapons in any way,shape or form.
I felt they provided their own context without further explanation .
My intent was to point out the madness inherent in mankind and his ability to build weapons of mass destruction and murder with no for thought or care .
It certaily is quite biblical in its conotation'Rods of God'
It is definitely a first strike weapon as
well .

Thanks for the interesting link, G West, on what GW reads while eating his Fruit Loops cereal each morning. It explains a lot, doesn't it? :-)

I can't agree with you, Frank, in seeing nukes as a deterrent...I might have once but I don't anymore. I think they have reached that point of non-deterrence that you close your comment with. PNAC is just an insane program...and everywhere we have leaders who are false and complicitly corrupt. I can't think of one worth trusting. These are not the men and women Einstein said are needed to save us from catastrophe. They are the ones who will, in fact, ensure it. In the infamous words of Dr. StrangeBush's... "a successful catastrophe." (So I just think it is folly to believe that nukes and the kind of leaders that now ride them ensure security in any way... anymore.)

What they are being designed to ensure and protect is the interests of an elite few of degenerate capitalists who have turned this earth into a death star. What's that old saying "Profits up, morality down..there's no biz like war biz."

I think it is Bush's bon ami, the Carlyle Company, that got the contract for the Rods of God. A trillion dollar contract. Their gain becomes a trillion dollar loss to those who need food, medical care, housing, to survive. The war business is functioning now, through neo-conservative governments to spend vast sums of our money on endless weaponry to protect their interests at the expense of our rights and our services. It only serves to increase democratic inequality all the more...leaving us powerless slaves to a program that could lead to our own extinction.

And we thought Treblinka was a word of the past...it's just been globalized that's all.

I just read somewhere that the US spends more on its militarization than all of the other countries of the world's military spending combined... and what Colin won't admit to in his coy defence of the weaponization of space....is that it is really about world domination (PNAC). Read the US military's "Vision for 2020". I guarantee you will be shocked:

http://www.fas.org/spp/military/docops/usspac/lrp/ch02.htm

Here's two excerpts:

"US Space Command — dominating the space dimension of military operations to protect US interests and investment. Integrating Space Forces into warfighting capabilities across the full spectrum of conflict."

"Control of Space (CoS) is the ability to ensure un-interrupted access to space for US forces and our allies, freedom of operations within the space medium and an ability to deny others the use of space, if required. The ability to gain and maintain space superiority will become critical to the joint campaign plan. With uninterrupted access to space, the United States can launch and reconstitute satellite constellations as required without impediment from our adversaries. Just as dominant battlefield awareness (DBA) is critical to the success of land, sea, and air forces, space surveillance will help us achieve DBA of space. As the US military relies more on space, our vulnerability also increases, so we must protect our space assets and be able to deny other nations from gaining an advantage through their space systems."

An what do you think the rest of the world will do in answer to this madness?

Empires may have risen and fallen before but they did not have nuclear weapons... and they did not envision the glorious heavens above us all in the lethal role of a murderous cupid facilitating Amerikas's love of War for Profit.

..and I apologize for all these long posts and for running on endlessly...nope, actually I take that back....I don't...and I'm not trying to be on any pedestal as Colin suggests...well...maybe..but more like a small, wobbly podium. ;-)

no, hannibal... I wasn't referring to your post. I know you well enough through your many excellent posts to understand the context in which you were using it. I was just referring in general to the long litany of weapons mentioned on this thread...many times as if they were just mere pieces of harmless lego.

Oh that's okay, you were right about Carole James and you might be right about this too :-)

That's the rub isn't it? My view is based on adults acting responsibly and rationally.

Well, my view is that they will engage the US in a very expensive and unnecessary race in order to move to a position where nuclear weapons won't be a deterrent and we will be back in the mindset of 1914 except with nuclear weapons.

I bet the weather is incredible where you are, why are you on your computer? I'm going up to your wonderful town next week and I won't be taking a laptop with me that's for sure.

Kool, Lynn I didn't think so .
I just wanted to expand the info base of these insane weapons.So beware. The ultimate high ground is most perilous. It is a place where even the Pentagon's Angels should fear to tread.

I,totally,agree with everything you have written Lynn.Well done .
I choked up when you mentioned your frinds from Chernobyl.Too sad.

Why am I on my computer? That...and the meaning of life remain a mystery to me. :-)

Oh... but it's a sad, tragic tale ;-)...let's just say I've been grounded by a bad head cold in June. Everything sounds like it is underwater which is where I'd like to be right now on this hot summer's day. Even the blue herons are kayaking by sadistically enjoying my infirmed state, the eagles taunting me as they roast mashmallows on the beach...this could all just be the cold medicine... I'm not sure. :-)

Hope the weather stays like this for your trip, Frank. It really is an absolutely wonderful time of year here....the water lovely, clear and warm.

They played Neil Young singing Four Strong winds on CBC radio this morning...a great Canada Day Song. Everyone said how they remembered that that was the first time (the Tyson version of it) that they had ever heard Vancouver mentioned in a song.

Happy Canada Day, Frank and hannibal... and cheers to the whole Tyee gang.

May we stay strong and free.

Happy Canada everyone !
Hope your feling better today Lynn .

Hannibal, I was trying to say your Google fu is strong, it was meant as a complement. I was interrupted will typing.

Lynn
You tried to claim that I did not think about the consequences and I proved that you were wrong about me and others that served.

G-west
You have a habit of promoting them vs us, when in reality it is all we. I would say that you are guilty of what you accuse me of. Are you trying to say that proxy wars were not fought by the Soviets or the West?

Hannibal
Happy belated Canada day to you also

Colin
Don't think so. I notice you've never actually confronted my contention about military attitudes. My experience, which is long standing, time and time indicates that the military mindset was, and is, extremely dismissive of civilians. This is especially true of members of the military I know who have been in service for more than 5 years. I think your own attitude, an indication of which is your contempt for politicians, civil servants, people who don't own (or want to own) guns (for example) is typical of this. I think such attitudes are neither necessary nor helpful in a real democracy and that's one of the main reasons I object to militarism and the professional military. Frequently many of these people have a vastly inflated notion of their own intellect and ability and have been, in my experience, subject to tendencies which would not be out of keeping in any overly bureaucratized environment – namely, all talk and no action.

The kind of suck holing that is going on currently between the military and the Harper government is a good illustration of why this situation is both dangerous and better avoided at all costs.

Far from being us vs. them myself, I would suggest it is the military/civilian dichotomy that is typical of that kind of thinking.

As to proxy wars, I'd say the Americans were the chief architects of the phenomenon although the Soviets were not immune to the sickness themselves. The American example of Guatemala, El Salvador and Chile are particularly good examples among many of the genre...there are, of course others. The Soviets tended - before Afghanistan - to involve themselves less directly than the Americans did - with the obvious exception (although it never led to actual shooting wars) of dissention in the states within the Warsaw Pact itself.

I really wonder how the post war period would have shaken down if George Kennan hadn't taken the completely disingenuous position he did with respect to his characterization of the Soviet Union post 1945. As the main European victim of the war, materially and in terms of civilian military and infrastructure losses, the USSR was, in my opinion, uniquely subject to the persuasion which western material and monetary assistance could have provided for them – as opposed to the kind of confrontation which characterized western policy from even before the armistice was signed.

Gwest, George Kennan's Containment Doctrine was co-opted by hardline elements and turned into something it wasn't initially intended to be (although it can be argued that Kennan himself was very "late" to distance himself and criticize the uses to which his ideas were put). So your argument is valid, but it has its committed opponents.

They walked out of the Marshall Plan talks. They didn't want American penetration of their economy, and rejected the transparency requirements and the capitalist oversight that was a precondition of all Marshall Plan aid. Of course, like the Kennan argument this argument also has a flip-side (i.e. that the Americans never intended to to bring the Soviets into the Marshall Plan system and structured the oversight provisions to be so invasive as to virtually guarantee Soviet rejection). It is a little galling to contemplate how the U.S. stayed profitably neutral for two years, then jumped in just in time to virtually bankrupt the West with war-debt (and suck the U.K. dry - the only rival imperial power with global reach at that time) and then lend the money back to the Europeans (with strings attached) while simultaneously claiming credit for saving the world.

I hear you on military culture and the problematic nature of civil/military relations. For me, it goes back to pros and cons (advantages and dangers; the good & the evil) of all organized hierarchies. They exist for their utility, not for any tendency/potential on their part to serve as moral or ideological paragons of one sort or another. Organizations seldom acquire those qualities they can dispense with. For better or worse, the professionalized hierarchal military is the indispensable backbone of the nation-state. Fundamentally, the existence of the state (even the democratic state) rests on one essential principle: its monopoly on legitimate violence (internal and external). That's why civil-military relations are so important. Canadians are uncomfortable with the sudden visibility of our military leaders because we've marginalized the military for so long, and historically we've treated the military as a patronage junket rather than an arm of government. Incidentally, this fact is almost never mentioned as part of his leadership record but Pierre Trudeau is the only Canadian Prime Minister to actually go on military exercises with Canadian troops.

Militaries exist in a variety of forms. Interestingly, the Israelis have moved the furthest away from the Anglo-European model in terms of flattening out the hierarchy, although even they have found it necessary to preserve the rank system and the division between NCOs and Officers, while dispensing with much of the protocol associated with the Anglo-European model (a protocol system that cemented in the 19th century). I would be interested in pursuing this topic further with you, because it's not an area that has been looked at very much. Perhaps there are ways to improve civil-military relations in ways that haven't been examined before.

nightbloom
Thoughtful response.

I prefer the Israeli model to the British/American one. However, for me - and for Canada - I think I'd prefer some other kind of compulsory national service for young people. Something integrated with free post secondary education and/or trades training which was far less hierarchical and traditionally military.

We simply don’t need, and shouldn’t support, in my view, the kind of armed forces we now play at having – and the sooner we quit this nonsense to which idealistic young people (and an increasing amount of time and treasure) are being sacrificed in favour of a vision which is both a lie and a form of pandering to others and other visions (that Canadians clearly do not share) the better.

I think we, qua society, need to look far more carefully at how that kind of approach might also provide young people (whom I think we agree currently lack a strong sense of purpose in both a personal and a national sense) with an opportunity to develop a commitment to something a little more meaningful than next weekend.

This should not be, again in my view, any of: a belief in hierarchical and hidebound nonsense (of the Hillier/Harper/O’Connor type); or a sense of being a part of a vision which is neither internationalist (in the best sense) necessarily defensive (in a real ‘national’ sense of Canadian interests – fish, sovereignty, the North); or being independently humane and humanitarian in trade, development and real significant aid (both within and outside the North American context).

I can see no reason to continue with the Victorian Colonel Blimp crap we currently adopt as the military model for our forces and it's long past time to change. It is also long past time when the dominant ethos of training and indoctrination for the military continues to be based upon exceptionalism, fraternalism and a profound lack of real thoughtful respect for the very society that the forces are duty bound to ‘defend’. There should be no more responses as a ready example, to reports from groups like the Senlis Council last week, from junior officers in the field in Afghanistan who clearly don’t have a clue and certainly haven’t read the report or know anything of its contents and genesis. Hearing that kind of thing is both bizarre and disheartening for any thinking citizen.

Anyway, I'm starting another viciously busy week for me so this will tend to be discontinuous on my part - cheers.

Thanks for the response.

Your suggestion above would receive a lot of support from progressive elements within the military hierarchy (although participation would have to be voluntary rather than compulsory for a variety of reasons, some of which are not immediately evident. Universal conscription in peacetime is a dinosaur...even France finally phased it out 1996, effective for any citizen born after 1979 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/1682777.stm ...in addition, one of the reasons Canada has been able to avoid getting into military entanglements abroad is precisely because our military was relatively small..."peaceful by default" as it were. Wilfrid Laurier figured that one out - he knew that if we were to create a sizeable standing force and navy in excess of our immediate, minimal and local security requirements we'd have to pimp our forces out to flesh out the ranks of the British Expeditionary Force during any and all imperial forays). The lesson is very much the same today. Having lots of young people in uniform creates its own pressures in and of itself.

The idea of mixing PSE student financing with some sort of voluntary national service (like the Israelis, it wouldn't necessarily have to be the military...Israeli women are offered other options) would be especially relevant if it could be dovetailed into a renewal of the Reserve branches of the Canadian Forces, the composition of which already contains a high quotient of students. The Reserves have been in search of a new mission & rationale since the end of the Cold War.

Such a proposal would certainly have its opponents, but it's a worthy idea.

I wasn't meaning universal conscription of course and I'd obviously hope that most would not take a 'military' option at all. But I wouldn't rule it out as one of a possible set of alternatives available to all youth say at their 18th birthday. If there's any hope for this country's future it has to come from the young and not the old fellas who've screwed the operation so badly already.

Somehow young people have to find a way to invest (in the loosest possible sense of that word) in their own (and the nation's) future in ways they aren't doing now.

Back to work for me, alas!

Many of you will be pleased to read this:

For the rest of the story:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20060706.wbushharp0706/BNStory/National/home

Steve P
DO you think that'll remain the default position for long? Bush was quoted in the New York Times today, July 7, 2006.

Here's some of what he said:

July 7, 2006
Bush Says Korean Missile Shows Need for Shield
By DAVID E. SANGER

CHICAGO, July 7 — President Bush said today that he believes the nation's nascent missile defense system would have had a "reasonable chance" of shooting down a long-range missile launched by North Korea had it come close to the United States, and he said he was determined to use the United Nations to set "some red lines" for North Korea's future behavior.

"I think we had a reasonable chance of shooting it down, at least that's what the military commander has told me," he said at a news conference in Chicago.

A new "National Intelligence Estimate" of North Korea's capabilities was completed earlier this year, but the Bush administration has declined to publish a declassified version of it. According to officials who are familiar with its contents, it concludes that North Korea has likely produced enough fuel for six or more nuclear weapons from a supply of 8,000 spent reactor-fuel rods that the country boasts it reprocessed after expelling international nuclear inspectors three years ago.

Mr. Bush's discussion of "red lines" — a term drawn from the cold war limits over steps the United States and Soviet Union agreed not to take for fear they could spiral into war — was important because until now his aides have said such limits do not work in North Korea's case. Three years ago, one of the president's senior aides said that it would be useless to declare to North Korea that turning its spent fuel into plutonium was a "red line" because the United States had no effective way to enforce the threat. The North Koreans went ahead anyway, lines or no lines.

It was the ambitious North Korean program to extend the reach of its missiles — along with its work on producing nuclear warheads — that many proponents of the missile defense plan cited to justify the Pentagon's huge expenditures on the new defensive system, which is costing about $9 billion a year and is still in the early stages of a long and complex development process.

But when the subject turned back to North Korea, Mr. Bush by turns argued that Mr. Kim, that country's leader, was untrustworthy — he cited the North's violation of a 1994 accord with the Clinton administration — and that the only path was to negotiate with him. But he rejected conducting those negotiations one-on-one, insisting that he needed China and other neighbors at the table so that Mr. Kim did not make the United States to appear like the blockade to an agreement.

"And sometimes, you see, it's easier for the nontransparent — or the leader of the nontransparent society to turn the tables and make a country like the United States the problem, as opposed to themselves," he said.

But in citing anew the need to team up with China and South Korea, Mr. Bush was skipping past the warnings of members of his own administration that neither country will agree to sanctions. Both are worried about a North Korean collapse, and both have continued supplying North Korea with food, energy and investment — even while Japan and the United States try to cut the North off.

Mr. Bush has been careful never to publicly criticize either China or South Korea. But he seemed to do so obliquely when he said, with some frustration in his voice: "The problem with diplomacy, it takes a while to get something done. If you're acting alone, you can move quickly. When you're rallying world opinion and trying to, you know, come up with the right language at the United Nations to send a clear signal, it takes a while."

You really think Bush won't be asking pee wee to get involved now?

In a word, no. Bush probably hopes Canada will come on side, likely when a crisis pushes us toward supporting ABM technology.

I was just muddying the waters ...=^)