Think the Bush Administration is done trying open new fronts in using scare tactics in the service of war profiteering?  Think again.

In yet another display of mindboggling display of fearmongering coupled with greed, the Bush Administration is now now telling Europe that it needs to buy American missile defense systems–or else.  From the Los Angeles Times:

With American officials working to close a deal on a missile defense system in Europe, the head of the U.S. program warned Thursday that Iran was within two or three years of producing a missile that could reach most European capitals.

“They’re already flying missiles that exceed what they would need in a fight with Israel. Why? Why do they continue this progression in terms of range of missiles? It’s something we need to think about,” Air Force Lt. Gen. Henry Obering III, director of the U.S. Missile Defense Agency, told a conference here on missile defense… [snip]

“Our short-range defenses could protect Rome and Athens,” Obering said, but he warned that London, Paris and Brussels would remain vulnerable “against an Iranian [intermediate-range missile] threat.”

That’s right, mes amis, meine Damen und Herren.  Unless you buy our preposterously expensive and utterly ineffectual Star Wars “defense” technology, dangerous terrorist Ahmadinejad and his merry band of clerics will unilaterally start a war with Israel, create a mushroom cloud over Tel Aviv, and use the expanded conflict to send your beloved Arc de Triomphe and Reichstag into the stratosphere.

The proposed U.S. plan is to build the Star Wars interceptor network in Poland (don’t forget Poland!) and the Czech Republic–both part of the New Europe that Bush and Rumsfeld find so much more attractive than dirty Old Europe.  There are two possible reasons the Bushies want to build this silliness in Eastern Europe: either Western Europe will have none of it, or the Administration simply wants to jab a fork in Russia’s eye for the fun of it.  As the L.A. Times says:

Malcolm Chalmers, a onetime foreign policy advisor to former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, said the decision to locate the system in former Warsaw Pact nations may have sparked opposition in Moscow that otherwise “would be much less vociferous.”

“Did we only deploy it there because that’s the only place available?” said Chalmers, who is now a fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, which sponsored Thursday’s conference.

Some Europeans have questioned whether Iran represents a genuine threat to Europe, and have accused the Bush administration of undermining existing arms control agreements by proceeding unilaterally on missile defense.

“This is firstly and foremostly an American choice and should be taken as such,” said Yves Boyer, deputy director of the Foundation for Strategic Research in Paris. “It has not been requested by any European state and . . . it does not answer the critical need for Europeans to process their own assessment of strategic capabilities.”

To say nothing of the fact that the Czech government would be acquiescing to Washington’s request against the protests of its own people.

Congress cut this fantasy plan out of last year’s defense budget because it was such an outrageous waste of money and needless pointy stick in the eye of Russia.  Besides, even if the defense system did work, it would only work against one or two low-tech dumb missiles sent without decoys; who would possibly believe that Iran would attempt such a move and simply wait for the world’s retaliation?  But the Bush Administration was never one to be deterred by facts, and is desperately trying to get this missile shield built regardless of the U.S. Congress, scientific consensus, coherent military stragetic planning, or diplomatic intelligence.  And all for what?

$310 million dollars, that’s what:

The Pentagon’s Missile Defense Agency (MDA) requested $310 million in 2008 for a missile defense site in Eastern Europe, supposedly to defend Europe and the United States from Iranian missiles. However, Czech citizens and the Russian government strongly oppose a Czech Republic site. While Russian President Vladimir Putin proposed several practical alternatives, President Bush is pressing ahead with the European site, eager to pour concrete before his term is up.

$310 million dollars.  At the rate we are spending money in Iraq ($222,222 per minute), the profit from selling this boondoggle to Europe wouldn’t even cover the cost of occupying Iraq for a single day.  But the wheels of the military-industrial complex must be greased, no matter what the cost.

One has to ask oneself what the overall military strategy of the Bush Administration seems to be, even if one grants moral or strategic legitimacy to the Bush Doctrine of pre-emption, torture and abrogation of disarmament treaties.

They invade Iraq ostensibly to protect the world of terrorists’ acquiring control of chemical, biological and even nuclear weapons.  They push for the bombing of alleged Iranian nuclear sites and for the invasion of Iran to ensure that Hezbollah does not acquire weapons of mass destruction.  Ostensibly focusing on the clandestine terrorist threat, they bungle diplomacy with North Korea, allowing them to develop nuclear technology coupled with ranged missiles.  They also allow Pakistan, a country a few heartbeats away from radical Islamist government, to acquire even more sophisticated nuclear missile technology.  But they also want to spend insane amounts of money defending against the very missile-based technology that they have allowed to proliferate while allegedly focusing on clandestine WMD threats–even if it means infuriating the rest of the world, escalating an arms race, and making the planet a more dangerous place from a diplomatic point of view.  Exxon-Mobil doesn’t even get the prospect of more oil out of the bargain.

Call me a conspiracy theorist, but it seems to me that the Bush Administration simply wants to spend money on war, regardless of its purpose, strategic coherence or realpolitik considerations, to further the interests of its corporate cronies in the military defense establishment.

And that’s the problem with laissez-faire government of the corporate interests, by the corporate interests, and for the corporate interests: not even the warmongering makes sense anymore, even from an imperial perspective.  Much as the Bush Administration might try to emulate them in political tactics and warfare technology, not even the Empire from the actual Star Wars movies would be so strategically inept: at least Darth Vader built the Death Star in order to expand Imperial power, rather than as an ultra-expense boondoggle to enrich a few of the Emperor’s corporate cronies.  Anyone who has seen the extraordinary documentary Why We Fight knows that the conservative military-industrial complex in America is too greedy create the military dominance worth of a true imperial regime.

The Bushies just hope there are enough Polands and Czech Republics out there to buy into the game before they figure out that the Emperor has no clothes.

Go confidently in the direction of your dreams! Live the life you’ve imagined. As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will be simpler.

^{Henry David Thoreau}

I’m reading lots of stories about journeys. nlob on his new farm; victory coffee looking for home, Edger filling a friend’s SUV with his belongings to set out on yet another adventure. buhdy left San Francisco months ago, i’m moving to the Netherlands. RiaD just returned to her beloved farm, and H²D is making Portland home. We’ve all lost loved ones to the great field trip that is death. And, it seems, all of us are on some one or another philosophical/metaphysical/existential Lewis and Clark-like expedition.

Here’s to our journeys then… those inward and those outward. Mostly, to finding home::: how we imagine it, remember it, and dream of it.

Don’t rec the pony. But do chit chat and make nice stories… and remember to be excellent to each other.

1. 

   Ruh-roh. The Financial Times reports Bernanke predicts bank failures. “Some small US banks are likely to fail as a result of the housing crisis, Ben Bernanke said yesterday, warning that his country faced a more difficult situation than in the aftermath of the dotcom bust in 2001. ‘There will probably be some bank failures,’ the Fed chairman told the Senate banking committee in his second day of biannual testimony to Congress. He said the banks at risk were ‘small and in many cases de novo [new] banks that are heavily invested in real estate in localities where prices have fallen’.”

   And seven years of conservative economic policies and governance has left the United States in a “weaker position to respond to the negative growth shock today than it was in 2001.” The U.S. had one war in Afghanistan in 2001, it has two today. The dollar was strong in 2001, it is weak today. The price of oil was $20 a barrel in 2001, it is is over $100 a barrel today. George W. Bush, the Republicans, and former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan have destroyed the U.S. ecnonomy. Don’t worry about them though, they’re making out like bandits. Oh, and when those small banks fail, guess who will be doing the bailout? Yup, poor and middle class taxpayers.

2. Another result of conservative military policy under George W. Bush. The Guardian reports that the Afghanistan mission is close to failing.

   After six years of US-led military support and billions of [dollars] in aid, security in Afghanistan is ‘deteriorating’ and President Hamid Karzai’s government controls less than a third of the country, America’s top intelligence official has admitted.

   Mike McConnell testified in Washington that Karzai controls about 30% of Afghanistan and the Taliban 10%, and the remainder is under tribal control…

   A big injection of foreign troops has failed to bring stability. The US has almost 50,000 soldiers in Afghanistan and – twice as many as in 2004 – while the UK has 7,700, mostly in Helmand. Another 2,200 US marines are due to arrive next month to combat an expected Taliban surge.

   Nato commanders paint the suicide bombs and ambushes as signs of a disheartened enemy… But analysts believe the Taliban is successfully adapting the brutal guerrilla tactics that have served Iraqi insurgents so well.

   Earlier in the week Sen. Joe Biden warned of failure in Afghanistan. Biden called on NATO to bail out the Bush administration’s failed policy in Afghanistan. “NATO must be ‘fully in the fight’ in Afghanistan – nothing less than the future of the alliance is at stake, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee told a luncheon crowd at the Council on Foreign Relations. ‘Many of our NATO allies thought they were signing up for a peacekeeping mission, not counter-insurgency operations,’ said Biden, D-Del. ‘Many are fighting with incredible bravery in the south. But the so-called ‘national caveats’ are making a mockery of NATO – and the notion of a unified mission.'” If Bush didn’t have the military distracted in Iraq, things would have gone differently in Afghanistan.

3. The New York Times reports Turkey withdraws troops from Northern Iraq. “Turkey’s military announced it had withdrawn all of its troops from northern Iraq by Friday morning, bringing an eight-day ground offensive against Kurdish guerrillas to a close… Reports differed on the extent of the withdrawal, with an American military official in Iraq and a representative for the Kurdish fighters saying some troops were still in the country. The Turkish military… said that the ground campaign in which 24 Turkish soldiers and as many as 243 Kurdish fighters were killed had simply run its course as its goals had been met.”

There are bonus stories about space soot and Maya blue beneath the fold.

4. The Discovery of space soot casts doubt on dark energy theory, reports The Guardian. “Researchers revealed yesterday that limitless stretches of space are strewn with interstellar soot, making it harder to see very distant objects such as exploding stars or supernovae.

   “The finding, reported in the US journal Science, is more than a matter of cosmic cleanliness. Proof of the existence of space soot raises serious questions about the mysterious ‘dark energy’ that is thought to drive the expansion of the universe… The latest study suggests that space soot might be to blame, at least in part, for making distant stars appear more faint than expected.”

   “We’re not saying this explains dark energy, but we’re saying this stuff is out there and like dust in front of a lens, it might make these objects appear dimmer than they are,” said Andrew Steele at the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington DC.

5. The New York Times reports on The grim story of Maya blue.

   Here is a swatch of Maya blue: ■

   The vibrant sky color can be seen on pottery, murals and other artifacts produced by the Maya people of Central America centuries ago and the unusual, durable pigment remains vibrant today long after other colors have faded away.

   It was also the color of Chaak, the rain god, and of human sacrifice…

   The composition of Maya blue, first used around 300 A.D. and which is almost impervious to age, acid, weather and even modern solvents, remained a mystery until 1960s when chemists deciphered its chemical components: the dye indigo and a clay mineral known as palygorskite, which can be melded together by heat to produce the pigment.

   What remained unknown was where and when the Maya made Maya blue…

   An answer comes from a bowl that has been sitting in the Field Museum in Chicago for decades, Dr. Arnold and colleagues from the Field Museum and Northwestern University, report in the journal Antiquity.

Here we go again!  Only this time it’s not anthrax, it’s ricin!

Ricin has been found in a motel room in Las Vegas.

Feb. 29 (Bloomberg) — Seven people were hospitalized, one of them in a coma, after a substance believed to be the deadly toxin ricin was discovered yesterday in a Las Vegas hotel room. . . .

The FBI, which is cooperating with the inquiry, said there is no reason to suspect terrorism. Ricin is made from castor beans and has no antidote. Alternative uses include experimental cancer treatments. . . .

Federal officials have warned police departments to look out for ricin, which could be deadly in the hands of terrorists. It may be used to contaminate air-conditioning systems, drinking water or lakes, the FBI has said. . . .

Traces of ricin were also found five years ago in a London apartment during a British-based counterterrorism raid.

But not to worry!  Bush has already taken action!!!!!!

President Bush and Homeland Security Director Michael Chertoff speak in regards to emerging Las Vegas ricin incident.

Washington, DC (Rotters) – President Bush, appearing with Homeland security Director Michael Chertoff early this morning at a White House press conference, officially elevated the national terror alert system to the color code Orange, representing a high probability for terrorist activities. The elevation came in response to the presumed discovery of the highly toxic chemical ricin at a Las Vegas motel late yesterday.

“Perhaps this might turn out to be a case of premature ejac… er… exaggeration,” stated President Bush in regards to the terror alert,” but we have been simply left with no alternative. I take my duties to protect America very seriously. It is possible that the substance in question might turn out not to be ricin, but without warrantless wiretapping thanks to the Democrat controlled Congress’ inability to pass a bipartisan measure, it may be too late to spread panic before we know for sure.”

Homeland security Director Michael Chertoff seconded the president’s concern. “The reality is that we are ramping up for more of these terror warning elevations, both justified and false alarms, because the truth of the matter is we just don’t know.”

Chertoff went on to say that Homeland security had swung into high gear, and would be investigating nationwide every level of America’s castor bean production, and was considering a national recall of castor oil. Tests later today would likely clarify the identity of the compound and possibly its origins, but Chertoff stated that this would come too late to amplify the necessary initial sense of panic needed.

“I think it’s very ironic that this incident surfaced in Nevada,” concluded Bush. “I hope it will send a message to Senator Reid and other like-minded individuals in Congress that the telephone companies must have immunity so that we’re able to know everything that’s going on in this country ahead of time.”

Satire very close to “home.”

[See the website for the real picture shown — it is priceless.]

Strom Thurmond ran for President in 1948 as the segregationist States Rights Democratic Party candidate. The Dixiecrat Party…

a segregationist, populist, socially conservative splinter party of the Democratic Party in the mid-20th century determined to protect what they saw as the Southern way of life against an oppressive federal government.

In other words, blatant racists and righteous believers in the myth of White Superiority to, well….everybody. He did have the decency to become a Republican in 1964. In response, of course to the Civil Rights Act, which he opposed with the longest filibuster in the history of the Senate. He died (finally) in 2003, the year before Senator Obama was elected to the same body.

Senator Robert Byrd, a product of the same southern culture and society still serves, as the longest tenured and oldest Senator we have today. Senator Byrd was once a member of the Ku Klux Klan Unlike Thurmond, though…

“I know now I was wrong. Intolerance had no place in America. I apologized a thousand times … and I don’t mind apologizing over and over again. I can’t erase what happened.”

The span of these two long Senatorial lifetimes encompasses and illustrates the changes that we have gone through as a nation in regards to race. Barack Obama, the only black man in the Senate, and quite possibly the next President of the United States, serves with a former member of the Klan.

As recently as 2002, Senator Trent Lott, recently retired (scandal nipping at his heels) Lost his leadership position for remarks supporting Thurmond:

“When Strom Thurmond ran for president, we voted for him. We’re proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn’t have had all these problems over the years, either.”

It doesn’t get much more blatant than that, in our ‘polite’ society of today, not in public anyway.

.

Major Danby has written about a phone call he received as a volunteer phone banking for Obama, in case we needed any proof that this same strain of racism is alive ad well in these United States today. A line from his essay struck me and inspired this one.

The world is turning, and it’s about to roll over the likes of him.  I know it, and I think he does too.

The question has been asked many times during this campaign…sometimes honestly, and sometimes with less pure motives, if America is ‘ready’ for a black President. Well, as far as I can see….it damn well better GET ready…because from everything I am seeing, as well as my instincts, and haha, my hopes…we are about to get one.

Now, I am not immune to political rhetoric, especially if it trumpets “change,” But neither did I just fall of the turnip truck. My political cynicism is hard won, and I hold it dear. So when Barack eloquently rhapsodizes about “change.” I don’t just drop my knickers. Words are just words, no matter how nicely shaped and intoned. But.

There is no denying …anything Obama says or does or doesn’t do aside…..that having a black President will indeed be a change!

Racism, prejudice, bigotry of any sort….does NOT exist in a vacuum. It is a behavior and a belief that needs some sort of reinforcement or agreement to continue…to flourish. Very few people are completely secretly racist. Racism exists…despite logic and fact etc. …because society, or at least segments of society, or taken all the way to the base level, interpersonal communication and reinforcement……..allows it to exist.

The conditions that allow it and encourage it have steadily changed since Thurmond ran for President on a platform of segregation and white superiority just 60 years ago. The majority of young people today, one of Obama’s main constituencies, are FAR less likely to judge or pre-judge solely on the basis of race. Our society HAS changed, is evolving away from this aspect of its horrid past.

As we prepare to take this next step (hopefully) what do you think the ramifications will be on our society in general….and on the attitudes of the remaining, dwindling, but still large….population of both the casual and the more vehement racists in our nation as….

“The world is about to roll over them?”