Not With a Bang, But With a Whimper

This is How The World Ends - Part IV

If, as I have contented in the first three parts of this series of post, the following is true -

1. We Americans are woefully ignorant of our rights, our Constitution and political philosophy in general
2. Our Constitutional Republic from those nice stories in history books is long dead
3. Our election process is completely incapable of fixing any of this (or our other massive problems of wars, failed economies etc. etc.)

Then what does the future hold and what are the solutions (or coping mechanisms if no solution is apparent)?

Some talk of a revolution in our future - but revolutions are a complicated business. Middle classes do not start revolutions or even participate or support them until they are well under way and almost over. Sure the middle class often provide the intelligentsia of a revolution but that is a small part of the bigger requirement. The rich do not start violent revolutions - they buy what they want in influence and power. The true foot soldiers of any revolution are the dispossessed, the poor and down-trodden.

Therein lies the fix, the poor and downtrodden in the US are riding pretty fat and happy (by relative standards of poor and downtrodden) on a US government gravy train. There are enough people within government that are capable of reading that understand the key ingredients in civil discontent. So long as a willing and compliant middle-class exists to consume and pay taxes the government will be able to buy the happiness and contentment of the poor. It is as simple as that.

In any event, no sane man looks to revolution with glee. Anyone that believes the War of American Independence was a revolution simply does not understand what the term really means. It was a separatist, nah a secession movement, not a revolution.

The foot soldiers (those poor and down trodden) are apt to follow the banner of any fool with a plan and a promise once the shooting starts. Change for the sake of change is something rationale people fear, particularly considering the history of revolutions.

No, the government will keep the poor placated, and in the event they occasionally rise up in violent riots the government will put them down and the middle class will rejoice that their welfare was protected.

There are probably many in the middle class that would like the idea of change, even if it involved violence. They probably also have a solid idea of what they would do to put everything back the way it was meant to be. But, when the rubber hit the road as they say the mad middle class guy has a house, a mini van and he really does not have time to start a revolution because he has to be at work by 9am in the morning. Middle-classes almost always trade safety and security for rights and freedoms.

Secession then you say. Well as an strong advocate of the legality of secession and a proponent of states' rights you might think I would say this is the solution...I doubt it.

First, if we are honest about it there is but one government now. Our states have lost all of their rights and all of their will to attempt to assert any rights. Government down to the local level is intertwined via federal grants and regulations. In cases where the federal government has not overtly asserted some control or influence many of our state and local government officials deffer to the question of "what is the national standard".

Second, our states no longer have any semblance of a heterogeneous culture or common polity. A woman from Arkansas can be a Senator from New York for goodness sakes. People move, leave familial and cultural bonds in pursuit of paper money and trinkets. A secession movement would have a very hard time in any state with such a mix of people.

Third, the middle class is bought and paid for just as the poor - it is called social security. Until it fails people expect to get what is coming to them - secede and lose that...never. A soul sold for 30 pieces of silver.


Pretty grim stuff and I am simply not wise enough to see a way out of this. Early on in this series of post I used comparisons of the German people from 1933 on to relate to some of our traits. We talked about the coup attempts on Hitler's life and the fact that a real revolution was never a possibility in Germany. Hitler may have died in one of the coups but nothing essential would have changed. The undoing of the Germans had already occurred, they were powerless (I did not say blameless) to alter their fate. I fear we are in the same boat. We cannot vote our way out of this mess now (too may accommodations in the past), revolution is not a realistic possibility and neither is secession.

I like optimist, they inspire people. Doomsayers just scare the heck out of folks. Yet, I find it difficult to muster optimism about our future.

I will now do something I have never done in my life, quote Martin Luther King Jr.

I call on the young men of America who must make a choice today to take a stand on this issue. Tomorrow may be too late. The book may close. And don't let anybody make you think that God chose America as his divine, messianic force to be a sort of policeman of the whole world. God has a way of standing before the nations with judgment, and it seems that I can hear God saying to America, "You're too arrogant! And if you don't change your ways, I will rise up and break the backbone of your power, and I'll place it in the hands of a nation that doesn't even know my name. Be still and know that I'm God

This was from a speech called "It's A Dark Day In Our Nation" explaining why he opposed the Vietnam War but the words are applicable for any number of events in our recent and not so recent history.

We have done wrong. We have allowed greed, lust, gluttony, sloth, wrath, envy and pride to rule us. We have even turned those vices into virtues of sorts. We have abandoned the wise teachings, learned through history, of our forefathers in preference for our perceived enlightened wisdom of modernity. We have traded liberty and freedom for safety and security.

Commenting on the American experiment Alex de Tocqueville said, "America is great because she is good. If America ceases to be good, America will cease to be great." and "The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public's money."

Pretty astute for a Frenchman in the mid 19th century but correct nonetheless.

And thus the world we thought we always knew, in the final analysis, ended not with a bang but with a whimper.

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Trade in the Americas: The Conspiratorial Urban Legend of the Evil NAFTA Superhighway

Harvesting the Enemies of America Series

*** DISINFORMATION HIT PIECE *** from: World Trade Magazine

[snippet]
Trade in the Americas: The Conspiratorial Urban Legend of the Evil NAFTA Superhighway, by Clay Risen The questions surprised even a presidential candidate as poised as Mitt Romney. A bespectacled, matronly woman at the back of the audience in Story City, Iowa, had heard news about an enormous highway being built between across the Midwest, linking Mexico and Canada.“You can find it on the Internet, a Security and Prosperity Partnership that’s been working for a while to join the United States, Canada, and Mexico, and part of it is a NAFTA superhighway,” she explained.She rejected Romney’s dismissal that the story was make-believe. “I don’t think they’re talking about it,” she retorted. Rather than argue, he offered a vague promise—“if they are building it, I’ll stop it”—and quickly took another question.The “superhighway question” recurred often on the GOP campaign trail. Rudy Giuliani got it in Concord, New Hampshire.

In Cedar Falls, Iowa, John McCain was asked what he knew about secret plans for a highway “to unite the three nations together.” According to libertarian Rep. Ron Paul, a conservative Republican Congressman from Texas running for president (and a firm opponent of the superhighway), the plans to link Mexico, the United States and Canada by a monster highway will be the sleeper issue of the 2008 election. The Concord Monitor (New Hampshire) agrees: “The road comes up at town meetings second only to immigration policy.”Reality is there’s no such highway in the works. “The U.S. government is not planning a NAFTA Super Highway,” reads a Commerce Department web page. “The U.S. government does not have the authority to designate any highway as a NAFTA Superhighway, nor has it sought such authority, nor is it planning to seek such authority.”But that inconvenient fact hasn’t quelled populist unrest.Riding well below the mainstream media’s radar, the highway is just one of the many real and imagined cross-border programs—the Security and Prosperity Partnership (real), the North American Union (imagined), the “amero” currency (also imagined)—to draw the attention of conspiracy-theory mongers over the past year. It is all over the right-wing blogosphere. And, it is the reigning issue in newsletters put out by fringe groups like the John Birch Society. Asserted CNN host Lou Dobbs last year, “The Bush White House, supported by corporate America and special interests, [is] building a
superhighway dividing this country, a superhighway that will run between Mexico and Canada.”Politicians are stoking the flames. In January, Virginia GOP Rep. Virgil Goode introduced a bill—which quickly gained 27 co-sponsors—“expressing the sense of Congress that the United States should not engage in the construction of a North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) Superhighway System or enter into a North American Union with Mexico and Canada.”

Nor is this a partisan issue: In July the House approved, by an overwhelming 362-63 vote, a ban on funding for a “NAFTA superhighway.” Most recently, Goode joined 21 fellow representatives in a letter to President George W. Bush warning of “serious and growing concern in the U.S. Congress about the so-called Security and Prosperity Partnership.”Bush, speaking at a meeting with his Canadian and Mexican counterparts, laughed it off. “I’m amused by the difference between what
actually takes place in the meetings and by what some are trying to say takes place,” he said. “It’s quite comical actually, to realize the difference between reality and what some people on TV are talking about.”Such talk would be comical—superstates, evil corporations, a continental currency—if it weren’t also a potential threat to trade and economic growth. Tri-national trade has reached $700 billion annually, with the value of goods moving through the Laredo, Texas border crossing alone exceeding that of all goods coming from Great Britain. Economists predict those numbers will increase dramatically as U.S.-bound shipping moves from overburdened American ports to new and upgraded destinations along the Mexican and Canadian Pacific coasts. Indeed, tri-national trade has tripled since the signing of NAFTA, but cross-border infrastructure spending has been nearly flat. “The entire U.S. economy is going to be more and more dependent on the strength of its multimodal system,” says Frank Conde, spokesman for the North America’s SuperCorridor Coalition (NASCO), an infrastructure advocacy group. That means more efficient border crossings, regulatory harmonization, and bigger and better infrastructure projects, which will take significant political and fiscal commitment at all levels of government.So while it’s one thing for blogs and newsletters to hype the latest conspiracy theory, it’s a serious concern when politicians start listening, and advocate legislation to block needed government investments. “Everything they say about an NAU, the SPP, and a NAFTA superhighway are falsehoods,” says Conde. “The confusion caused by organizations like that harms our ability to improve trade links.” At the precise moment when we need to be moving forward as quickly as possible on international infrastructure, the conspiracy theorists are threatening to push us backward.

This latest surge in conspiracy theorizing draws on a long-running thread in American culture.“Historically, there has always been a feeling among some in the United States that we could be more secure and prosperous if we separated ourselves from the world,” notes Robert Pastor, director of the Center for North American Studies at American University. Conspiracy theory mongering around NAFTA has been churning since President Bill Clinton signed the treaty in 1993, with the John Birch Society and other far-right groups declaring it a threat to American sovereignty and jobs. But a variety of trends have combined to both ramp up the volume and spread it closer to the mainstream.The most obvious factor is a general turning away from free trade on both the right and the left. Populist politicians in both parties have lashed out at international trade deals as the product of undemocratic plutocrats and their allies in the federal government. After her anti-superhighway bill passed in July, Ohio’s Mary Kaptur declared “a victory for openness in trade negotiations, highway safety, good wages, and fair trade policies. The grip of global corporations was loosened last night.”As conservative commentator Phyllis Schlafly wrote in a recent syndicated column, “Now that the game plan is laid out, we can connect the dots: the North American Free Trade Agreement; the admission of Mexican trucks onto U.S. highways; the contract to build the TransTexas Corridor and the plans to extend it into a NAFTA Superhighway; making Kansas City an international ‘port’; the ‘totalization’ of illegal immigrants into the U.S. Social Security system; and the recently defeated Senate amnesty bill.”Ironically, many free trade advocates say that when you look at the actual state of cross-border cooperation, the problem is not that we’re doing too much. It’s that we’re not doing enough. Take the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP), an ongoing dialogue begun in 2005 and designed to coordinate cross-border regulatory and security policies. While conspiracy theorists depict the SPP as a way to weaken American laws, in fact it has no authority to make any changes one way or another to the regulatory regime. “The SPP conforms with existing laws,” says David Bohigan, assistant secretary of commerce for market access and compliance. Instead, he says, the goal is to harmonize existing laws and regulations between countries. Think of it as a matter of translation: Far from forcing everyone to learn Spanish, the SPP is like a Spanish-to-English dictionary, allowing English speakers to understand their neighbors without ditching their own language. A typical initiative under the framework calls for the three nations to “develop a common approach to standardize the regulatory measures taken in response to Phakopsora pachyrizi (soybean rust).”

If this is a conspiracy theory, it’s hardly the stuff of aliens and x-files. The SPP actually has a number of critics on the other side, people who say it does not go far enough in establishing a framework for discussion. “If there is anything wrong with the SPP, it is not secrecy, but the fact that it is a mishmash of disconnected and mostly trivial initiatives, lacking any organizing vision or direction,” wrote Roland Paris, a former Canadian foreign policy adviser, in the Toronto Globe and Mail.“The SPP is an important initiative,” says Pastor. “My fear is that it is too timid and too fearful of criticism from the right.”Wholly separate from the SPP are efforts to expand the transportation infrastructure that carries goods into and around the country. Rather than links in a conspiratorial plot, in fact they are uncoordinated, unrealized, and in most cases unlikely to be built. First, there is North America’s SuperCorridor Coalition, a Dallas-based nonprofit. Despite its imposing name, NASCO is nothing more than an advocacy group for better use of current trade corridors, in particular the routes running from Mexico to Canada. “What we’re trying to do is push both the private sector and the public sector to maximize the efficiency and security of the existing transportation infrastructure,” says NASCO’s Conde.Even NASCO admits that improving the efficiency of existing corridors is hardly a solution for the long term. Between now and 2025, Texas alone will see a 132 percent increase in traffic, with 260,465 trucks using its highways every day. In response, Texas Gov. Rick Perry has been pushing for what comes closest to an actual NAFTA superhighway: a new, 1,200-foot-wide toll road running from the Mexican border to Oklahoma, the centerpiece in a collection of projects known as the TransTexas Corridor (TTC).

Because the highway, estimated to take $180 billion and 50 years to build, would cut through numerous Texas communities and displace up to one million residents, the plan has drawn a fusillade of public criticism, particularly from farmers who stand to lose valuable land to the project.Handing over infrastructure management to the foreign private sector is nothing new—French firms run numerous American water districts, and an Australian-Spanish joint venture manages the Chicago Skyway. Nevertheless, the possible role of foreign business in the TTC’s construction and operation has given an added twist to fears of a NAFTA superhighway. Such opposition has already throttled Perry’s momentum toward approving the TTC, and observers say it looks increasingly unlikely that the project will get built. The controversy over the “superhighway,” the SPP, the TTC and other efforts exposes a harsh truth about the future of the American economy. While free trade agreements and World Trade Organization negotiations are vital, the means by which trade actually occurs—or, increasingly, is impeded—are the everyday pieces of the continental transportation infrastructure: highways, rails, port terminals, and regulations. And, while the United States has maintained a global leadership on writing and expanding trade deals, it has done a poor job of expanding its infrastructure to meet the demands of the resulting increases in cross-border trade.All of which means that the more the conspiracy theorists on the Internet, in the media, and in government frame the issue on their terms, the less the country will be able to make the sorts of investments necessary to assure its long-term growth—and therefore the long-term prosperity of the continent, and the world. [end snippet]

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FEMA's Softball Team

WASHINGTON — No one had any hard questions for the deputy administrator of FEMA, an agency deeply tarnished by its delayed action after Hurricane Katrina, when he held a news conference Tuesday to talk about the California wildfires.

"Are you happy with FEMA's response so far?" someone asked.

Indeed, the deputy administrator was. "I am very happy with FEMA's response so far," responded Vice Adm. Harvey E. Johnson Jr.

The news conference looked like a success in the Bush administration's effort this week to demonstrate it could respond competently to a disaster.

On Friday, however, the agency admitted that the softball questions were posed by FEMA employees, not reporters.

My goodness talk about propaganda and dishonesty. Surely these bureaucrats knew that there was something morally wrong with conducting a news conference, answering questions and such sans real reporters. Then again probably not - they thought this a good way to "get out their message" tot he American people - who needs anyone asking hard questions? This idiots just don't understand how hard it is to squander millions of taxpayers dollars. "We are the government and we are here to help."

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A Bit More about That B-52

If the "mistake" was deliberate, it means that somehow the normal chain of command was bypassed. I've heard two theories about how this might have happened.

The first- the Chinese supplied key components of the computer systems that control our military command structure, and built in a "back door" route, by which they can override any orders in the system. They tricked the people at Minot and Barksdale with false orders, in order to demonstrate to the US military that orders cannot be trusted. This paralyzes the chain of command. They wanted to demonstrate their ability to do it in a peaceful way, so as to forestall an attack on Iran.

The other, more sinister theory is that Dick Cheney, who Bush put in charge of such things early on, has a separate override system which was in effect that day, and that all participants are sworn to secrecy. The cluster of violent deaths of young airmen and one woman from Minot and Barksdale AFB's from June-September- 6-7 young people in good health, and not in combat zones, makes one wonder.

If it's part of a Bush/Cheney plot, what's the plot? Normally, nuclear weapons are not loaded onto airplanes at all, and flown across the country, for fear that a crash would spread radiation around. These weapons were on top of cruise missiles, armed, under a wing of the plane, in firing position. (OpEd.News)

Warning: break out your tin-foil coated Armadillo helmet, we are entering deeply into the cavern of conspiracy and speculation.

That is the point, however, is it not? Government lies beget conspiracy theories - when the people (or at least enough of the people) know that the government routinely lies we are left with speculation when events that simply do not make sense occur.

I have read a little about the first possibility presented above - it is not that it is not plausible in some very remote way, that is not why I do not accept it. I reject it because it is based upon a set of assumptions that do not hold water in my view. To be certain we rely heavily on computer systems to accomplish everything. However, people still have a role in events like this. The degree of infiltration required to achieve a coup like this using only computer systems would be tremendous, and it would involve more than just hacking the system itself. It would involve a lot of real time human intelligence, as well as human agents within the system working to pull the plan off. I could go on and on about why this Chinese scenario is implausible but suffice it to say I just do not buy it.

The second scenario - i.e. this was part of an administration approved mission gone awry - is infinitely more plausible than the accident story or theories about Chinese involvement. Of course this scenario brings up its on list of questions:

1. To what end, what purpose, did this weapons serve?
2. If it was in fact part of a plan to attack Iranian nuclear facilities with some degree of "plausible deniability" that is ludicrous logic. The world would blame a) the US or b) Israel and no matter who the blame ultimately fell upon the result would not be good.
   
3. The Air Force I know does not routinely produce officers capable of thinking outside the rules - if this was part of a secret mission I still find it difficult to accept that anyone in the Air Force would have resisted ( an important assumption that one must accept if we are to tear down the accident story).
4. Are these deaths at Minot AFB related to this? We will never know and that is the problem with conspiracy theories and government lies.
   

I would like to know specifically how this entire event unfolded - i.e. how the nuclear ordinance was "discovered". If I had to venture a guess, based upon the second conspiracy theory and the limited amount of truth that one can garner from existing stories I would say this. The "fall-guy", the hero of the mutiny story is the Colonel that was relieved. Those more junior officers that were relieved and the enlisted ground crews that received reprimands are merely collateral damage. If there was a mutiny I suspect it occurred at the O-6 level and below (if anyone with a star was involved in a secret refusal to a secret and illegal mission it would be kept quiet, his punishment will come in a different form).

Perhaps there was authorization to load the missiles at Minot, perhaps this all occurred a little outside of the normal chain of procedures but that is not unusual in a "special and very classified mission". After all if you really have to do something secretly the less people that know the better. Perhaps only when the plane arrived at Barksdale did those involved really begin to understand the nature of the mission and maybe that is when people began asking questions. Once people began talking the secrecy of the mission was spoiled and an explanation of what had occurred was necessary. Thus exist the need for a fall guy and a cover story.

The fact of the matter is we will just never know. I think a lot of people realize something is wrong and incidents like this only highlight the degree of mistrust. The saddest part of this all is that we are forced to even ponder items such as conspiracies and government lies. This is the paradigm in which we live, the system we have in place. Things should change but unless more people ask tough questions and refuse to accept the status quo this is the government and the system we deserve.

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Re: Dr. Strangelove

I believe that it is a crime against humanity for anyone to own and assemble nuclear weapons.

I tend to agree, in retrospect, looking back at the Cold War era it seems like a disturbingly weird mindset.Mutually assured destruction certainly does not meet the criteria of jus ad bellum.

I have not given this incident a lot of thought nor have I read a whole lot about it before today. My initial impression was "no way", "no way something like this could possibly occur as an accident". I know you might say that humans are fallible and mistakes happen but items like nuclear warheads involve a tremendous amount of checks and balances. Things like this are nearly impossible to occur as mere accidents.

I recall reading a few headlines soon after this event on obscure sites that mentioned that something more nefarious had occurred. I am summarizing because I did not dig into these stories at the time but essentially the idea was that these warheads were intended for the Persian Gulf and that the Air Force had rebelled in the middle of the mission.

This is a plausible explanation even if it is difficult to accept. I actually find this possibility much more believable than this all being nothing more than a mistake or accident. I cannot possibly imagine that nuclear armed ordinance was loaded on a plane and nobody questioned it. Heck, at the very least the pilot had to notice during his pre-flight inspection. For an event like this to occur as an accident a whole bunch of folks would have to be ignoring basic, fundamental parts of their jobs.

I know, if we apply Occam's Razor it seems to easy to accept that this was just an accident - albeit a nearly unbelievable one. Lex parsimoniae dictates that too many assumptions must be accepted to believe any other version. Yet I am not convinced. Something is rotten in Denmark and the accident story has its own list of assumptions - more assumptions than other possible scenarios.

I will tell you what I know about devices like this and their safekeeping, storage and handling (what I can tell you). These things simply do not move without being tracked, numerous levels of approval are required, an enormous amount of paperwork completed and an inordinate amount of security present. You cannot just "accidentally" drop by the warehouse, pick up a few of these things, load them on a plane and take them for a joy ride. It cannot happen - if you believe that it can I have real estate I want to sell you!

Update: I did a small search and found a few sites discussing this (well there are plenty but most are just scratching their heads about the "accident" story). Read on and please discuss if you find anything more telling - I really believe there was a lot more at play here.

It's About That Mutiny: Air Force Covers Its Tail With Transparent Feathers

Nukes Over America: Just a Stupid Mistake. Sure It Is By Dave Lindorff

B-52 Nukes Headed for Iran, Not For Decommissioning: Airforce Refused!!!

B-52 Nukes Headed for Iran: Air Force refused to fly weapons to Middle East theater

Update II: I see from further reading that these stories are from almost a month apart - however I do not think that discredits the possibility that this second incident is not related to something more nefarious than a mere accident.

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