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So Many Threats - Even Asteroids

Comment by Larry Ross, April 1 , 2007

So many factors threaten human existence. From asteroids on a collision course with earth, to global warming, to the biggest threat of all: immediate annihilation as a result of Bush's planned pre-emptive nuclear war assault on Iran , we are lucky to still be alive. But for how long? Ex-US Defence Secretary Robert McNamara warned that it was sheer luck or a miracle that we did not have a nuclear war during the Cuban missile crisis in 1962. Ex-US Nuclear Chief General Lee Butler said much the same thing during his 1996 talk in New Zealand. These people have been warning us ever since, as has Dr. Helen Caldicott a famous anti-nuclear author and campaigner. Many other famous authors, statesmen and scientists have issued similar warnings. But very few people know of or hear these warnings, remember them, or have done anything about these warnings. In short they have been disregarded, dismissed, denied or whatever. They have not been taken on board and acted on in a significant, continuing way. Powerful organizations to remedy these threats have not been built. These famous well-positioned people have not been able to stimulate much effective remedial actions, let alone organizations of like-minded people to carry on and expand their essential work. That lack conveys a very profound and disturbing message.  One would think that such warnings from top people, who know from the inside, would result in remedial behaviour from rational human beings who wish to live and want their children and other human beings to continue to live on our planet. But it is not so.

It is the irrational side of human beings that rules human behaviour, particularly if it pertains to wars, weapons, and those nations and leaders who our leaders decree as enemies or even potential enemies. We always believe our leaders, even if we know they have lied to us before, particularly if our trusted media keeps repeating their lies. They repeated Bush lies about Iraq threats which were all found to be wrong. Indeed they were deliberate lies to fool the public into supporting his pre-planned war on Iraq. Congress and the public still supported Bush's Iraq war until recently. Now they believe a new litany of lies - this time about Iran. The polls show a majority will approve US military action against Iran. Hillary Clinton and other Democratic politicians have embraced the new lies about Iran as a real or potential enemy. The big lie technique works, and works repeatedly in the US.

Does it matter to people? Will they take remedial action, such as serious attempts to anticipate and correct natural or an induced self-destruction?

On the evidence, the answer is no and it does not seem to matter to most people. At least not enough to take any action no matter how serious the threat may be. It does matter a lot to the Fundamentalist Christian the Americans have chosen as their ruler and arbiter of the fate of humanity.  I am speaking about George Bush who believes the second coming is nigh, and that the Lord will rule earth forever after, and that he, as one of the few true believers, will be raptured directly to Heaven when Doomsday comes. The rest of us - including most of Bush's fellow Americans - will fry perpetually in hell. But Bush is optimistic, Armageddon's coming. With a smile on his face as he articulates new God-approved lies for the media to relay to us as facts. Americans are content with that and rewarded Bush in 2004 with a second term as their accepted war leader and official liar. That Bush may have used criminal fraud to win in 2004, and against Al Gore in 2000, is suppressed by the media. It does not bother most voters, even those who know, or suspect that this is true. They obey and send their children to make war for Bush and that is what counts with a two-term "Christian" war President.

The fact that far fewer Americans believe Bush lies, and that his lies are deteriorating in quality and becoming even less believable, matters not a whit to G.W. Bush. Any lie will do, no matter how fantastically improbable and lacking substance. Bush is proving right what Hitler taught in his book "Mien Kemp" Hitler wrote: "The bigger the lie, the more people will believe it".  People should be constantly reminded and warned about this proven truth of history. That would make them more perceptive, critical and reactive against lies and any tendency of their leaders to use such lies to fool them into wars. But it's not taught in schools and the mass media would never mention it. The mass media expertise is in presenting and repeating the lies of their leaders until the people come to believe these lies.

Famous showman P.T Barnum said in 1947 "A sucker is born every minute"

I think this was never more true than today, and that the sucker birth-rate has gone up to 2-3 every second.

Basically the Administration, and its string pullers, owns and controls the minds and beliefs of the American electorate through its propaganda outlets - which are the American mass media.

There is a sea of suckers out there, waiting and ready to ingest and repeat as gospel, the next lies from on high in Washington.

Of course there are solutions to the apparent human predicaments. We don't have to wait passively for some kind of extinction. We can easily stop our stupid, illegal and unjust wars and settle all differences by discussion and negotiation. We can easily fund the research needed to identify threatening asteroids and then create the means to shoot down or alter the collision course of any targeted asteroids. We certainly have the means to control and reverse the trends producing global warming. We can even educate people on the need for population limitation, and give people the means to limit earth's population. There is hardly any problem and threat to humanity that could not be solved by a rational humanity, led by normal concerned human beings. They would have the resolve to tackle these problems.

But if the problem is embedded in the nature of humans themselves, and has a built-in resistance to recognition, analysis and change, the problems of identification and solution become almost impossible to implement. There is a cancerous growth of an evil, corrupt, criminal administration that has infected US society and Congress. It is trying to control the public mind and dictate its lies as truths. It has its media endlessly repeat its lies to a gullible public.

Add to this the layers of religious superstition, myths, bias and prejudice. The problem of indoctrinated lies and irrationality becomes immense.

There are huge, even colossal forces of wealth and dedicated powerful people, embracing endless "wars on terror" as defined and directed by George Bush and his aides. War on Iraq ? Going as planned. War on Iran ? Coming soon, perhaps with a pre-emptive nuclear strike. Escalation to a nuclear World War III and end to the world? Don't worry, we'd all be honoured to have the Biblically ordained Armageddon in our time. Us true believers would be raptured to heaven. So we don't object to the Lord's work to 'bring on' the final battle between good and evil. George Bush is the Lord's agent on earth. Anything he does has the Lord's blessing. That is what enough Americans believe to actually make it happen. They, with and through Bush, control human destiny and whether life on earth lives or dies today, tomorrow or next year.

They may only represent 30% of the US public, but they are very dedicated, some are wealthy, and they donate much wealth to accomplish their objectives. The 70% who would prefer life on earth to continue are not dedicated and not particularly appreciative of the few that are devoting time and energy and warning about the huge threats today, and the larger threats lined up to happen tomorrow. Most of the 70% don't want to know and don't want to be bothered.  The apathy is astonishing, and all pervasive. It permeates our society like some kind of dead hand.

The Bush regime will never give up their self-anointed 'divine' right to control human destiny through the threatened use of their nuclear weapons. That's non-negotiable or as Bush might say: "That's not on the table". What is "On the table" is Bush's choice to make a pre-emptive nuclear strike on Iran for any reason he and his aides dream up. Any excuse will do and be believed by enough Americans to justify another big war - with the potential to become the biggest war in history. That's one of the mass media's jobs - to prepare the people for a nuclear strike, which the media will portray as a normal, acceptable right of any President of the United States and the fault of those attacked. Neither the media nor Bush Administration workers and followers, nor the US Congress comprehend or care that Bush might be delusional and acting out an insane fantasy urged on him by "End Times" believers and neocon pro-Israeli war enthusiasts. In many cases Bush supporters are fully occupied just enjoying the wonderful bonanza of bribes, gifts and other inducements (and threats for the doubters), that Bush and his neocons were cunning enough to build into the Bush presidential package. Remember Bush warned you "You are either with us or against us". Most people and other political leaders got the message and became even more apathetic toward any moves to oppose or expose Bush lies and criminality in office, or his war crimes in other countries. No way will other leaders open their mouths about Bush's war crimes and war intentions. Except perhaps Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, or Nelson Mandela who described Bush as the most dangerous man alive today.

The wonder is that after some 5,000 wars in human history, we are still war enthusiasts, ready to believe without question, anything that will justify a new war - any kind of war. We have been easily indoctrinated that nuclear weapons are no longer a threat, that they may even be used in 'normal' combat operations. It really seems to have been stupefying easy for Bush's neocon war propaganda team to convert humanity to an 'okay' attitude to the use of nuclear weapons. Stupefying and suicidal but very human. A few years ago humanity viewed nuclear weapons only as a weapon of last resort, only to be used as a retaliation against a real attack, and probably resulting in a general nuclear war that would kill much if not all of mankind. Billions of dollars were spent on the national policies of most governments on steps to reduce these nuclear threats. Today the mass media conditions them to accept Bush's legal right to wage pre-emptive nuclear war on any nation for any reasons he may or may not provide. As he says, he does not have to account for Presidential actions or decisions which must be kept secret for reasons of "national security". That is supposed to stop any questions or doubts. The mass media conditions us to think likewise. Most 'good' citizens think the way their leaders and his mass media want them to think.

Thus however crazy their President may be, and however nutty and dangerous his decisions obviously are, most Americans, and certainly Congress and the mass media, accept that he has the right to impose those decisions. They believe that however delusional and crazy they may be, everyone on this planet must share the consequences of Bush's insane decisions. It is the principle of 'The Divine Right of Kings' carried to its logical extreme in the so-called American Democracy.

In almost any occupation, an obviously crazy person doing irrational things, will be restrained, treated and replaced by his associates.  However there are no such rules for a crazy political leader, whether he is an Adolph Hitler, Mussolini, or what.  If deranged leaders are at least cunning enough to put on a veneer of sanity as a mask, they can continue phoney wars and slaughter indefinitely or until they are stopped, or are stopped by a nuclear World War III. 

All the real threats to humanity shrink away to nothing, beside this embedded threat deep in the psyches of humanity, conditioned by some 5,000 wars over thousands of years.

George Bush threatens to unleash in the near future, his carefully planned pre-emptive nuclear war on Iran. We have allowed this situation. There is hardly any comment or protest. Evil, insanity, greed, deceit and fraud have risen to the top of a corrupted system and normal good people accept that situation without noticeable objection.

There are little or no resources for the few aware individuals and organizations who are desperately trying to educate others to oppose this end for mankind.

People have been trained and conditioned to spend trillions of their taxpayer dollars preparing ever more lethal weapons to make war, and actually making illegal unjust wars based on any collection of transparently absurd lies.

Unlimited resources of human expertise in all fields, and unlimited financial resources fund the Military-Industrial-Congressional-Corporate Complex that was once American democracy.

Those who talk peace and the dangers to everyone of a nuclear war, or a succession of wars based on lies and delusional assumptions are dismissed with a yawn by the majority. They have become acclimatised to Bush's wars, and would prefer to carry on business as usual. Four years ago around the world millions demonstrated against Bush's illegal war on Iraq in 2003. In Christchurch New Zealand we went from 2,000 demonstrators in 2003, to only 100 on the fourth anniversary of the war. That seems to be a proof that people are acclimatised to one of the most brutal, illegal slaughters in history and prefer not to discuss or demonstrate against it. Also, they are indifferent to the prospect of a much greater slaughter against Iran.

Has anyone a remedy for this state of affairs? Or is it too late?

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Will Humanity go the Way of the Dinosaur?

by Robert B. Reich, March 31, 2007

According to a new report from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, some 100,000 asteroids and comets routinely pass between the Sun and the Earth's orbit. About 20,000 of these orbit close enough to us that they could one day hit the Earth and destroy a major city.

But the really worrying news from NASA is that over a thousand of these things are large enough (almost a mile wide in diameter) and their orbits close enough to us as to pose a real potential hazard of crashing into the Earth with enough force to end most life on this planet. Scientists think this is what killed off the dinosaurs about 65 million years ago.

Congress has given NASA a budget of a little over $4 million a year to track these killer asteroids, but NASA says it needs at least a billion dollars more to find all of them by the year 2020. This might involve building a special observatory for tracking them and launching a spacecraft to observe the space around Earth from Venus.

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