Suicide by President, Follow the Leader...

    

        graffiti:  totenkopf

…lemmings off the cliff, sadly after we have killed millions.  Again.

Preparing for National Suicide:  What “all options on the table” really means

For more than a year, the USA has been openly threatening to bomb Iran. Some scenarios see the use of nuclear bombs. “All options are on the table” says Bush, Cheney, Rice, and most of the candidates in the 2008 Presidential race.

The reason? They say they feel threatened by Iran’s pursuit of nuclear power technology, although they formally granted Iran that right when they ratified the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in 1968. The IAEA has found no evidence of a nuclear weapons program. They say they feel threatened by Iran’s support of the Shia militia, especially those in Iraq and Lebanon. Iran has traditionally played the role of defending Shia communities, even in the Ottoman era. They say they feel threatened by Iran’s opposition to Israel’s expansion and Israel’s oppression of Palestinians, which is against international law and many UN resolutions. The say they feel threatened by Iran’s energy exports and its ability to influence world prices.

In general, they feel threatened by an independent nation in an oil-rich region they wish to dominate. Therefore, they threaten to bomb Iran. “All options are on the table.”

[...]

One consequence of these threats is that Iran must prepare to defend itself. On Oct. 20, a top Iranian military commander announced that Iran is ready to retaliate with 11,000 missiles in the first few minutes after an American surprise attack. The missiles are aimed at the military bases, ships at sea, and economic assets of the threatening nations. To launch that many missiles AFTER a shock-and-awe surprise attack means that Iran must have distributed the ability to launch missiles. There is not one launch button and one commanding finger on the button.

There are many buttons and many different fingers on them. War is now on a hair trigger, and the risk of accidental war is now very, very, very high. War might be started by an Iranian religious fundamentalist eager to go to heaven, or patriot eager to defend Iran, or a traitor eager to destroy Iran, or someone depressed or bored or simply misreading a radar screen and thinking a flock of birds are an incoming attack.

The USA has over 300,000 military and support personnel in the region around Iran, all of them now the target of 11,000 missiles on hair-trigger. That is what repeated threats of war have achieved.

[...]

 War seems inevitable. With war will come thousands of deaths, maybe millions, and whole economies will collapse, the first being that of the USA since it is most dependent on imported oil.

[...]

 But the USA and other belligerent nations have decided to act contrary to international law and in violation of the United Nations, with the consequence that their military forces and economies are now in jeopardy.

Among all of the options on the table, the most likely are self-destruction and national suicide.

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There is a lovely interview with Studs Terkel in the UK Independent… days old, no doubt everyone has read it, nevertheless:

“It’s true what you say. I can’t deny it. At the same time, I once wrote a book called Hope Dies Last. I believe that. I might feel hopelessness, except for one thing: the young. I don’t mean the young as they’re portrayed in TV commercials: whores, bimbos and dummies. There are many who do not fall into those categories. The big problem is that there’s no memory of the past. Our hero is the free market. People forget how the free market fell on its face way back in the Depression. And how the nation pleaded with its government and got help. Today, all these fat CEOs say we don’t need government. And these fat boys get away with it, because of our collective Alzheimer’s, and the power of Rupert Murdoch and CNN. There is despair in this country, sure. At the same time, we are waiting.”

“For what?”

“For new voices.”

“Fat boys”… there you go… yes, we have too many of those.  We lack for new voices…

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Couple of grafs from a new article from Gore Vidal, at TruthDig…

Not since the glory days of Watergate and Nixon’s Luciferian fall has there been so much written about the dogged deceits and creative criminalities of our rulers. We have also come to a point in this dark age where there is not only no hero in view but no alternative road unblocked. We are trapped terribly in a now that few foresaw and even fewer can define despite a swarm of books and pamphlets like the vast cloud of locusts which dined on China in that ‘30s movie ”The Good Earth.”

And, really, there is nothing to add to this:

We live in an impermeable bubble without the sort of information that people living in real countries have access to when it comes to their own reality. But we are not actually people in the eyes of the national ownership: we are simply unreliable consumers comprising an overworked, underpaid labor force not in the best of health: The World Health Organization rates our healthcare system (sic—or sick?) as 37th-best in the world, far behind even Saudi Arabia, role model for the Texans. Our infant mortality rate is satisfyingly high, precluding a First World educational system.

Also, it has not gone unremarked even in our usually information-free media that despite the boost to the profits of such companies as Halliburton, Bush’s wars of aggression against small countries of no danger to us have left us well and truly broke. Our annual trade deficit is a half-trillion dollars, which means that we don’t produce much of anything the world wants except those wan reports on how popular our Entertainment is overseas. Unfortunately the foreign gross of “King Kong,” the Edsel of that assembly line, is not yet known. It is rumored that Bollywood—the Indian film business—may soon surpass us! Berman writes, “We have lost our edge in science to Europe…The US economy is being kept afloat by huge foreign loans ($4 billion a day during 2003). What do you think will happen when America’s creditors decide to pull the plug, or when OPEC members begin selling oil for euros instead of dollars?…An International Monetary Fund report of 2004 concluded that the United States was ‘careening toward insolvency.’ “

Meanwhile, China, our favorite big-time future enemy, is the number one for worldwide foreign investments, with France, the bete noire of our apish neocons, in second place.

I noticed an odd thing at TruthDig just now (sometimes I neglect to look around, but today I did)… the Blogroll lists all the Dkos affilated “blue” franchises and the assorted sponsored blogs similarly inclined [cough:  roped in] that do not use “blue” in the name.  Then I noticed the site adopts the “Advertising Liberally” blogroll.

Oh well.  Tho one would think that Sheer or his son would be aware of online political astroturf.  Prolly something to do with [drumroll]  electing Democrats…

It is possible to be very heartless in viewing America.  It preaches “Wake Up” from the various pulpits… but nods off in place.

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