STWR - Share The World's Resources

5th Feb 07 - Christopher Brauchli ~ STWR member

Are the children to receive the arms race from us as a necessary inheritance?
Pope John Paul II, U.N. Speech, October 2, 1979

It was an interesting week. China got Mr. Bush bent out of shape and Mr. Bush got Russia bent out of shape.

China got Mr. Bush bent out of shape because it doesn’t understand why it can’t do what Mr. Bush is doing since Mr. Bush doesn’t even want to discuss treaties that would ban what he is doing. Mr. Bush got Russia bent out of shape by making noises about planting missiles in Poland and the Czech Republic. It started with an innocent experiment by the Chinese. They wanted to see if their anti-satellite ballistic missile could shoot down a satellite.

The Chinese had a spare weather satellite floating overhead for which they had no further use and on January 11 they fired an anti-satellite ballistic missile and pulverized the weather satellite. Though proud of the success of the firing, the Chinese said nothing about it for a few days thus causing considerable consternation and speculation in the White House. The White House was concerned because if the test had occurred and was successful, it demonstrated that China could destroy American spy satellites in low-earth-orbit. Mr. Bush was also concerned that the test might result in starting an arms race in space.

3rd Feb 07 - John Pilger, New Statesman

As opposition grows in America to the failed Iraq adventure, the Bush administration is preparing public opinion for an attack on Iran, its latest target, by the spring. 

A few times a year, thousands of people break out their tied-dyed t-shirts, collect all of their peace buttons, make snarky yet provocative posters, and hop on a bus to what has become a political and social ritual: the protest.

Martin Luther King Jr. once said, “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.” Not being silent has in fact become a staple of the American people’s diet, and one can see that with the consistent anti-war activities that have been organized over the past four years.

On January 27, United for Peace and Justice (UFPJ) is holding a massive protest against the Iraq War in Washington. We (I’m a member of the coalition’s steering committee) will once again not be silent. Buses and vans are coming from at least 30 states and 111 cities packed with people who will bestow a historic welcome to the new Congress that we just helped elect and aim to change the trajectory of this war.

For 60 years, it has depicted how close the world is to nuclear disaster. Today, scientists will move its hands forward to show we are facing the gravest threat in at least 20 years.

The pieces are moving.  They’ll be in place by the end of February. The United States will be able to escalate military operations against Iran.

The U.S.-backed Ethiopian invasion of Somalia and subsequent U.S.val blockade against that east African country mark another dangerous chapter in the Bush administration’s war against Islamic nations. And, despite no authorization from Congress for the United States to become engaged in that country’s civil war and despite the failure of President Bush to consult with Congress as required by the War Powers Act, the new Democratic leadership in Congress apparently has no objections to this dangerous and illegal escalation.

The renewed U.S. military involvement in Somalia must be understood within the context of the U.S. role in Somalia during the cold war, which helped sow the seeds of that country’s subsequent chaos. Like the ill-fated 1992-94 U.S. military intervention, the current U.S. and Ethiopian attacks have done little to bring peace or stability to this impoverished country.

A new front in the “global war on terror” has emerged with its center in war-torn Somalia. The target of the new front, the Islamic Courts Union (ICU), both brought back normalcy to seemingly untamable southern Somalia and anxiously legislated morality to the point of social suffocation. According to the U.S. State Department, its greatest sin was its purported link to al-Qaida.

The military action to crush these “Islamic extremists” is already underway. Washington-supported Ethiopian troops carried out a preemptive attack against Somalia at the end of December. Ethiopian tanks roared all the way to the capital Mogadishu and then on to Kismayo near the Kenyan border. The invasion proved easier than expected. The comparatively more powerful Ethiopian army teamed up with a militia loyal to the Transitional Federal Government (TFG) to achieve their objective of regime change with an ease ominously reminiscent of the entry into Baghdad of the “coalition of the willing.”