A New START or the Beginning of the End?

I see that Obama and Medvedev are beginning to consider a new strategic arms reduction treaty! Now we can START again where we left off a couple of decades ago. I don't see Israel joining in, however.

We and the CCCP were mutually destroying our nuclear arms and delivery systems. Teams from the opposite country oversaw the destruction of warheads, the filling in of missile silos, etc. It was not a panacea, as the treaty left enough nukes to wipe the planet out twenty or thirty times over instead of several hundred, but it was a start. It was working well. Then Bush made an agreement with Yeltsin, called the START II Treaty. "Let's not destroy our weapons and warheads, we'll just put them in storage,” and so it came to pass.

When we had a Constitution, the President was to follow the "Law of the Land." International treaties, when ratified by the Senate, were part of the Law of the Land. Abandonment of a treaty was breaking the law, a good cause for impeachment, being the violation of the public trust.

Nowadays, under the doctrine of the Unitary Executive, apparently no agreement is worth the paper (or Parchment) it is written on, if it doesn't go along with whatever the Unitary Executive of the day (And his/her master or masters) wants.

I am a nuclear veteran and have spent much of my life working for nuclear disarmament and World Peace. Nothing would make me happier than to see the nuclear scourge removed from the earth.

In 1967, the US Senate unanimously ratified the Outer Space Treaty [AKA Peaceful Uses of Space Treaty] which banned WMD’s in space. This treaty, the Law of the Land, has been derided as "quaint and obsolete" by the US Military Establishment, just like the Geneva Conventions on the Treatment of Prisoners. They were both unilaterally discarded by Bush and his cohorts. The Military has said it fully intends to "arm the high ground” which will allow the United States "Full-Spectrum Dominance," i.e. world control, a PNAC goal for many years.

It would be quite easy to correct all of this, if we still had a functioning Constitution, but alas, that apparently is not to be.

Someday, somewhere, some misguided or fearful person is going to set off one of these damned things, which will trigger a massive response. Before the contrails have had a chance to disperse, the world will be reduced to a handful of hunter-gatherers trying to live on a poisoned planet with a poisoned atmosphere. The gains, the treasures of art and thought of several thousand years accumulation and study, will become ash drifting on the wind.

And on the moon, a pile of junk and some footprints in the soil will proclaim to the universe, "Kilroy was here."

Arms Race and Arms Reduction are Not Identical

Mr President, Building Up the Nuclear Weapons Complex Is NOT Nuclear Disarmament

When the CCCP collapsed and the cold war ended, the MIC was terrified! They were looking at the specter of having to make refrigerators and stoves, perhaps even get into real estate. A guy buys a refrigerator or a stove and he keeps it twenty years. Guy buys a house, he may be in it for many years. One sale! Where is the profit in that?

Guy buys a thousand pound bomb and, BOOM!, he buys another. That, my friends is real profit. Especially when your Corporation can sell thousand pound bombs to both sides of any conflict.

Phasing out nuclear power and coal/gas for solar/wind/wave/geothermal power cuts into huge profits by the associated corporations, heavily invested in by other corporations.

Nuclear weapon development has always been a protected multi-billion dollar cash cow. The SALT talks, the Outer Space Treaty, the Non-Proliferation Treaty, and others; all of these were anathema to those who control us, and the government, through their purse strings.

Bush unilaterally (and illegally) tore up those treaties, restarted the cold war and a nuclear arms race. Obama, instead of pushing for a reinstatement of those treaties, is aiding and abetting the increase of military power at the expense of We the People and the world at large, but at greatly increased profits to the MIC. The bought and paid for Legislative branch goes along with it, and the bought Supreme Court will proceed to make it all legal.

Those few who still read and study history will recognize the parallels with 1930's Germany.

The German people failed to turn theirs around. Thousands were executed for making attempts to do so as Hitler consolidated his power. Millions died because they no longer had any power to do anything but heil der Fuhrer and do what they were told.

Now that the Corporations, the Oligarchy if you will, have consolidated their power to the point where they can come out in the open, we are rapidly finding ourselves in the same position. Our Constitutional Right to air our grievances and demand redress is getting ever more brutally suppressed by police. Heavily armed pre-emptive raids are made on people who are only planning or discussing a protest. Our alleged representatives either ignore our communications, or send us form letters which are puff pieces bragging about inconsequential legislative victories while ignoring our call for a return to the Constitutional form of government we once had.

I am no seer, but I see that the concentration camps built during the Bushwhacking years are still there, maintained and ready. NorthCom is training combat brigades in "suppressing civil unrest," the number of foreclosed, homeless, jobless, hungry and ill people is increasing exponentially. Sooner or later, the kettle is going to start to boil over. They are ready for it.

In ancient days, when Ug and Og went from throwing sticks and rocks to inventing the spear, they did not resist using it. When others developed the same thing, Ug stockpiled spears until his cave could outgun the other. Then someone invented the bow and arrow and so it went.

Hiroshima and Nagasaki showed what could be done. East and West began yet another arms race, which finally stalemated. Now, many of our caves have nuclear weapons, but we have the most and have proven ourselves unstable enough to use them.

Sooner or later, someone is going to try a sneak attack on someone else. That will escalate, through fear (Am I next?) or retaliation. Probably, most of civilization (as we consider it) will be destroyed. Science Fiction is becoming fact far too rapidly these days.

Einstein once said, "I don't know what weapons world war three will be fought with, but world war four will be fought with sticks and stones."

* * *

He looked out of the mouth of the cave at the devastation before him, then, cautiously, clutching his spear, he went out to forage for food for his hungry family...