From: GNN

The news from Washington this past week had eerie echoes of the lead-up to the war in Iraq. Now that George Bush has been re-elected President what might we anticipate as future scenarios? If the doctrine of pre-emption is followed the next conflict is likely to go nuclear.

One plausible scenario is that the Neocons will stop at nothing to bring the other members of the Axis of Evil to their knees. There has already been considerable talk along these lines following the election. The Neocons have said as much when they have called for imminent regime change in these countries in documents such as the Project for the New American Century.

Syria might be the first step in this plan, accused of harboring the hidden WMDs of Saddam Hussein or insurgents from Iraq, for example. Cambodia or Laos all over again. An “incursion” and then a “popular uprising” will depose the Assad regime, which will then be shown to have colluded with Hezbollah and Iran in supporting “terrorism.” War with Iran will follow and with it the breaking of the nuclear taboo.

Other possible scripts could be triggered by preemptive strikes, the preeminent tool of the Neocons, on either Iranian or North Korean nuclear facilities. The consequences of these strikes would likely lead to the use of battlefield nuclear weapons as well.

In any of the scenarios it is simply assumed that violence is the solution to any difficult problems the US encounters, yet there are simply not enough conventional forces or weapons to adequately wage war, if winning at all costs is the objective. This is despite the fact that Americans are spending $350-400 billion a year on the greatest array of military power the world has ever seen. These resources are being spread around the globe to more than 700 bases being maintained by the American military.

The figure for American defense spending is seven or eight times that of the next highest spenders, Russia and China, at $60 and $50 billion, respectively. The Axis of Evil comes in at less than a billion dollars total, but Americans are still scared. Perhaps what they should really be more scared of is the financial consequences.

The US debt will climb to $7 trillion a year in 2004, five times the entire debt of the third world. Other countries, notably Japan and China, hold one-third of that debt. This is at a time, we might note, that the Harvard economist Jeffrey Sachs has proposed that the world’s poverty could be eliminated with an investment of $150 billion.

There is still the possibility of a peaceful rapprochement, but at this stage how likely will that be? Whichever of the scenarios prevails will depend on the will and direction of the next American government. What will these future scenes mean for the world if they do indeed turn nuclear?

We need look only as far as Hiroshima and Nagasaki for the answers to this question. One of us grew up in Hiroshima in the 1960s, an American missionary child confronted, understandably, by neighboring children and even adults for the devastation that had been wrought by his countrymen. Later, as the principal of the Hiroshima International School and then in schools in Minnesota, he actively supported movements for world peace.

Having brought some consciousness of our culpability in the woes of the last hundred years (and the past several years), we now need to invoke a healing image for the future. We might begin with what Jonathan Schell, in his brilliant book The Fate of The Earth, elaborated as the concept of universal parenthood. After the systematic destruction during the past century of innocent beings in Nanking, Guernica, Auschwitz, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, My Lai, Israel, Gaza, Iraq, and now Fallujah, among others, including the World Trade Center, the very idea of human extinction makes all of us, whether we have children or not, parents of the next generation.

First we need to remind ourselves of the messages of World War II holocausts, then by the past and present threats of nuclear extinction, and finally when human beings glimpsed a holistic image of the Earth as seen from the moon. At that time we saw a world increasing interdependent, complex, and changing: technologically, economically, culturally, ecologically. The sheer beauty of the living reality of Earth itself, devoid of political boundaries and cultural landscapes, conjures up a new sense of hope and urgency that acknowledges and yet transcends cultural, racial, religious, and civil differences.

The image is one of the whole of humanity in interdependent relationship and intertwined with the whole of nature. It is a spiritual view of the world that radiates the interconnectedness of life. In this context Hiroshima’s and Nagasaki’s spirits remind us of the fragility of human and natural ecosystems and of the fact that the apocalyptic problems our planet faces, other than natural disasters and direct encounters with physical fragments of the universe, are specifically human problems.

What also characterizes the past hundred years is a paradox of the human spirit and human conduct. Hope remains. Through an image of Earth as seen from the moon to planetary satellites, global communication, ecological and economic interdependencies, and through organizations like the United Nations and our fragile Universal Declaration of Human Rights, we have a greater sense of the interconnectedness of the world’s people and places.

In the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, days before his 1968 assassination, “The world is more and more of a neighborhood. But is it any more of a brotherhood? If we don’t learn to live together as brothers and sisters, we shall perish together as fools.”

I don't believe in nuclear extinction. It has never been proven that it is possible. Yes you could theoreticly kill every person on earth with nuclear weapons, but they would have to stand in big circles and the device dropped in the center of each circle.
Now granted nuclear weapons are bad news, just not as much as the media would have us believe.
Hopfully it is understood that a bomb twice the size of the ones dropped on Japan, would not do twice the damage.

iran's not the villain most assume to be. now north korea, i have no idea about and other than pumping out electronics they didn't invent and good cars-asia does some weird and clueless shit in general. other than inventing gunpowder then getting fucked up with their own invention, asia sans japan has a history of not "getting" things like disease control, food distribution, and more notably moral things like infanticide and evil, brutal governments not being cool. that inscrutable guy with the bad hair scares the fuck out of me, nobody should have missiles if they don't have style, even if just a little sense to change barbers. he scares the fuck out of me.

i was lumping all of asia together, then excluding the japanese for having some clue despite liking strange, totally unsexual shit in porn and killing themselves a lot.

OK you had me worried there for a second.

You know why KIAs have heated back glasses?


To keep your hands warm while you push them in the Winter.

you don't think hyundai puts out timeless stuff?

the only cars that really designed to be replaced in 5 years are the volvos designed by volvo, benz e-classes, and anything built off ford gm's timeless v-8s. the first two should be good for 200k easy and the engines in the last don't have the computerized garbage most do and you can find replacement parts cheap everywhere probably including 7-11 and smut shops.