. . . such as Gulf War II, and, see below, Election 2004.

plion


September 16, 2001's L.A. Times had a characteristically surprising article by Kevin Phillips, a nominally Republican analyst-journalist who is neverheless independent and almost ideology-free. The entire article is compelling; the concluding paragraphs, below, are especially arresting.

September 16, 2001

COMMENTARY

Can the Economy Survive the Attacks?

by KEVIN PHILLIPS,

His most recent book [at that time] is "The Cousins Wars: Religion, Politics and the Triumph of Anglo-America"

Since the 1600s, each of America's three predecessors as leading world economic power found itself bled—economically, politically and militarily—by a new sort of war that forced it to fight on the wrong battlefields in precarious circumstances at too late a stage in the trajectory of its world leadership. Spain was crippled by the bloody and grotesque Thirty Years War of 1618-1648. The next power to rise up, the maritime empire of the Dutch, suffered a mortal economic and commercial wound in the quarter-century of war that wracked Europe from 1690 to 1713.

Great Britain paid the same price for World War I and II. Within only three decades of its peak economic and imperial splendors of 1910-14, the British empire of 1947, besides undergoing food and clothing rationing in peacetime, was forced to depend on financial loans and hand-outs from the United States. [This helps explain Blair's fawning on Clinton and Bush.--PL]

If terrorists in dingy conference rooms in Tripoli, Damascus, Baghdad, Tehran or Kabul have concluded that the United States cannot maintain its present economic strength through 10 to 15 years of terrorism, attrition, computer-hack attacks, eroding markets and oil and currency crises, they may be wrong—but they may also be correct. Even in 1991, the United States had to pass the hat among other coalition members to finance the Gulf War.

Moreover, just as Britain no longer possessed the cutting-edge technologies in metallurgy, chemicals, armaments production and electrical engineering to effectively fight the First World War—imports from the U.S., Sweden and elsewhere become crucial-—the United States is increasingly at risk in Internet and computer-age technologies. Recent reports have made it clear, for example, that as commercial relationships between Taiwan and mainland China accelerate, some of America's dependence on Taiwan for critical computer parts threatens to pass to China.

None of this is to say that the U.S. should not try to eliminate its terrorist attackers. To maintain domestic and international credibility, it has to. But the three-dimensional game of strategic chess now facing Washington is quite different from the ones American leaders have played before.


[Phillips stops short of asking how the Bush Jr.-fronted administration---determined as it is to resuscitate a more ruthless version of a retro Reagan-Bush Sr. world---will survive this nexorable future-without-precedents.]

Terrorism and international law: why conventions matter:

If the "war on terrorism" truly is a "war," then the laws of armed conflict apply, both to the states combating terror and to the terrorists themselves. These laws, commonly known as the Geneva Conventions and their Protocols, prohibit acts of terror.

http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=10&categ_id=5&article_id=9647
http://snipurl.com/a4w5


From Information Clearing House

During the three years in which the "war on terror" has been waged, high-profile challenges to its assumptions have been rare. The sheer number of incidents and warnings connected or attributed to the war has left little room, it seems, for heretical thoughts. In this context, the central theme of The Power of Nightmares is riskily counter-intuitive and provocative. Much of the currently perceived threat from international terrorism, the series argues, "is a fantasy that has been exaggerated and distorted by politicians. It is a dark illusion that has spread unquestioned through governments around the world, the security services, and the international media." The series' explanation for this is even bolder: "In an age when all the grand ideas have lost credibility, fear of a phantom enemy is all the politicians have left to maintain their power."

Adam Curtis, who wrote and produced the series, acknowledges the difficulty of saying such things now. "If a bomb goes off, the fear I have is that everyone will say, 'You're completely wrong,' even if the incident doesn't touch my argument. This shows the way we have all become trapped, the way even I have become trapped by a fear that is completely irrational."

http://www.infowars.com/print/terrorism/makingofterror.htm


From:
Aftermath News
Top Stories - October 21st, 2004

The Progressive

Neither campaign is discussing real solutions to stopping terrorism.
http://www.tompaine.com/opinion/#002336

Howard Zinn

Monday 10:38 AM

War cannot stop terror—it can only fuel it. Howard Zinn writes in The Progressive that only by scrapping America's policies in the 'Greater Middle East' will we ever deal with the roots of the grievances that fuel terrorism. We're not hearing that in the campaigns, but we better next January.

http://www.progressive.org/nov04/zinn1104.html

Global Agreements Threaten Media, Privacy:

The growing use of international treaties to bypass the will of national parliaments, by bodies waging the so-called "war on terrorism," increasingly threatens civil liberties and freedom of the media, warn privacy advocates.

http://207.44.245.159/article7082.htm

There is an interesting article titled “The "War on Terror" as Defined by 1984's Emmanuel Goldstein”. It contains extracts from the book “1984” by George Orwell, and “Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism” (i.e. Government by a few). It is located at http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/orwell_goldstein_1984.html

Many of the techniques described seem very similar to those currently used. The excerpt below is particularly interesting, and is very close to Bush’s behavior (have they been reading Orwell’s book?) :

"The essential act of the Party is to use conscious deception while retaining the firmness of purpose that goes with complete honesty. To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies, all this is indispensibly necessary."

Shannon