12:30 “The Destruction of the Modern State of Iraq” (audio only HERE)

19:00 “Debris and Diaspora: Iraqi Culture Today” (this post contains 67-minute audio-only version)

I am pleased to make these available at peacecast.us and as a BitTorrent download. DIVX-encoded video of “Debris and Diaspora: Iraqi Culture Today”, packed along with the audio from the noon talk is available in a BitTorrent version. (What’s a torrent? See HERE for information. You must install client software in order to download files shared as torrents.)

This post contains downloadable audio for the 7pm talk only. Downloadable audio for the noon talk is HERE.

The programs both were produced by peacecast.us.

These are gripping talks that paint a devastating picture of what has happened to Iraq and its people. The tragedy of Iraq hits home for Sinan. It once was a country with great potential that has been eviscerated by America and its “student,” Saddam Hussein. It is rare in America to see Iraq from an Iraqi point of view. Sinan Antoon helps us do that. Highly recommended.

SINAN ANTOON is an Iraqi-born poet, novelist, and translator. He studied English literature at Baghdad University before moving to the United States after the 1991 Gulf War. He did his graduate studies at Georgetown and Harvard where he earned a doctorate in Arabic literature.

His poems and essays (in Arabic and English) have appeared in various journals and publications around the world, including as-Safir, an-Nahar, al-Adab, and Masharef, as well as The Nation, Middle East Report, al-Ahram Weekly, Banipal and the Journal of Palestine Studies. He has published a collection of poems, (A Prism; Wet with Wars, Cairo 2003). A translation of his poems appeared in English in May 2007 by Harbor Mountain Press entitled “The Baghdad Blues.”

His debut novel I`jam: An Iraqi Rhapsody (published in Arabic in Beirut in 2003) was translated and published in English in May, 2007 by City Lights Books. It was chosen by Kirkus Reviews for its special edition on debut fiction “2007: New and Important Voices.” His poetry was anthologized in Iraqi Poetry Today. He has also contributed numerous translations of Arabic poetry into English. His co-translation of Mahmud Darwish’s poetry was nominated for the PEN Prize for translation in 2004.

Antoon returned to his native Baghdad in 2003 as a member of InCounter Productions to co-direct/produce a documentary About Baghdad about the lives of Iraqis in a post-Saddam occupied Iraq. He is a senior editor with the Arab Studies Journal, a member of Pen America, a contributing editor to Banipal and a member of the editorial committee of Middle East Report. Antoon is currently an Assistant Professor at New York University.

Sinan Antoon spoke in 140 Little Hall on the University of Maine Orono campus Thursday, April 3, 2008. The program was sponsored by the Maine Peace Action Committe with support from Student Government at the University of Maine and the Dean of Students Programming Funding Board.

The brief music excerpt you hear in the background is from a performance by Iraqi musician Amer Tafiq recorded for the film, About Baghdad.

12:30 “The Destruction of the Modern State of Iraq” (audio only, 72 minutes, THIS POST)

19:00 “Debris and Diaspora: Iraqi Culture Today” (audio & w/video in torrent version)

I am pleased to make these available at peacecast.us and as a BitTorrent download. (What’s a torrent? See HERE for information. You must install client software in order to download files shared as torrents.)

This post contains downloadable audio for the noon talk only. Downloadable audio for the 7pm talk will appear in the next post.

Produced by peacecast.us.

These are gripping talks that paint a devastating picture of what has happened to Iraq and its people. The tragedy of Iraq hits home for Sinan. It once was a country with great potential that has been eviscerated by America and its “student,” Saddam Hussein. It is rare in America to see Iraq from an Iraqi point of view. Sinan Antoon helps us do that. Highly recommended.

SINAN ANTOON is an Iraqi-born poet, novelist, and translator. He studied English literature at Baghdad University before moving to the United States after the 1991 Gulf War. He did his graduate studies at Georgetown and Harvard where he earned a doctorate in Arabic literature.

His poems and essays (in Arabic and English) have appeared in various journals and publications around the world, including as-Safir, an-Nahar, al-Adab, and Masharef, as well as The Nation, Middle East Report, al-Ahram Weekly, Banipal and the Journal of Palestine Studies. He has published a collection of poems, (A Prism; Wet with Wars, Cairo 2003). A translation of his poems appeared in English in May 2007 by Harbor Mountain Press entitled “The Baghdad Blues.”

His debut novel I`jam: An Iraqi Rhapsody (published in Arabic in Beirut in 2003) was translated and published in English in May, 2007 by City Lights Books. It was chosen by Kirkus Reviews for its special edition on debut fiction “2007: New and Important Voices.” His poetry was anthologized in Iraqi Poetry Today. He has also contributed numerous translations of Arabic poetry into English. His co-translation of Mahmud Darwish’s poetry was nominated for the PEN Prize for translation in 2004.

Antoon returned to his native Baghdad in 2003 as a member of InCounter Productions to co-direct/produce a documentary About Baghdad about the lives of Iraqis in a post-Saddam occupied Iraq. He is a senior editor with the Arab Studies Journal, a member of Pen America, a contributing editor to Banipal and a member of the editorial committee of Middle East Report. Antoon is currently an Assistant Professor at New York University.

I spoke with independent journalist DAHR JAMAIL last week and the interview aired Thursday March 20 on Community Radio WERU. You may download or play the 28-minute audio program using the links below.

Dahr will be in Maine March 22 & 23 for TWO appearances:

“Beyond the Green Zone”
Book reading/Iraq Lecture

Saturday March 22, 7:00PM CANCELLED
Curtis Memorial Library
23 Pleasant Street, Brunswick (MAP)

and

Sunday March 23, 4–6PM
Belfast Free Library
106 High Street, Belfast (MAP)

This rocks!

This outstanding podcast and video features a speech given by University of Maine Professor of Philosophy, Doug Allen. Doug’s complete bio appears below the fold.

Doug covers Dr. King’s philosophy, methods, and the lessons we must learn from his true legacy. Unfortunately, a “fake” King is the image typically in use today. Doug also reads the not-enough-read King texts. And he calls us out to disrupt our normal compliance with injustices we see around us everywhere in plain site–as King would. Ending our acquiescence to the litany of war, multi-faceted violence, and economic horrors that especially affect the most vulnerable is the major theme in King’s life and the one that Doug helps us understand is the lesson we should learn when we honor that life today.

The downloadable audio-only attached podcast is basically the same as the video, except included are an introduction by emcee Angel Loredo and additional concluding remarks.

Featured Speaker
Douglas Allen, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Maine, is author and editor of 13 books and 100 scholarly book chapters and journal articles. Dr. Allen served as President of the International Society of Asian and Comparative Philosophy, 2001-2004. He has had Fulbright and Smithsonian grants to India, and he was honored with the Maine Presidential Research and Creative Achievement Award and the Distinguished Maine Professor Award. His most recent books are Myth and Religion in Mircea Eliade, Comparative Philosophy and Religion in Times of Terror, and The Philosophy of Mahatma Gandhi for the Twenty-First Century.

Doug Allen is a scholar of peace and nonviolence and a peace and justice activist strongly influenced by the life and philosophy of Martin Luther King, Jr. This started with Doug’s involvement in the Civil Rights Movement in the South, and he has taught King’s philosophy for a Black Studies program in Illinois and at the University of Maine. King continues to shape his research, teaching, and activism.

Doug’s activism includes the Civil Rights Movement, the Vietnam Antiwar Movement, the Anti-apartheid Movement and other struggles against racism, feminist and environmental movements, and opposition to U.S. global policies since 9/11 and the Iraq War and occupation. A founder and faculty advisor to the Maine Peace Action Committee at the University of Maine, he serves as Education Coordinator of the Peace and Justice Center of Eastern Maine in Bangor. Recipient of Maine’s Hands of Peace Award in 2005, he received The Scroll of Peace International Award for Peace Research in India in 2006. In recent years, he has been giving talks and publishing articles on terrorism, religion and violence, and the war in Iraq. Many of his presentations focus on Mahatma Gandhi, King, and positive alternatives based on a commitment to nonviolence, peace, equality, freedom, and democracy.

“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.”

Martin Luther King, Jr.

Educated in India and an influential figure in the United Kingdom, he is world-renowned author of numerous books. A member of the House of Lords, he is also an influential public figure working on issues of multi-ethnic relations, violence, and mutual understanding.

Please check back for the additional program on Gandhi and Marx…

Arjun Makhijani, Founder and President of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research in Tacoma Park, Maryland spoke on “Achieving a Carbon-Free Society Without Nuclear Energy” on November 8, 2007.

Makhijani, received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley. He was the principal author of the first study (1971) ever done on energy conservation potential for the U.S. economy. This study was even more remarkable as it was published two years before the 1973 oil embargo which was pivotal in our understanding of our dependence on fossil fuels. He has also written or edited four books on energy and the environment.

An edited 26-minute version of this talk broadcast on WERU on January 1, 2008. The full version is approximately 72 minutes.

From the executive summary of Dr. Makhijani’s study of the U.S. energy future:

Central Finding

The overarching finding of this study is that a zero-CO2 U.S. economy can be achieved within the next thirty to fifty years without the use of nuclear power and without acquiring carbon credits from other countries. In other words, actual physical emissions of CO2 from the energy sector can be eliminated with technologies that are now available or foreseeable. This can be done at reasonable cost while creating a much more secure energy supply than at present. Net U.S. oil imports can be eliminated in about 25 years. All three insecurities–severe climate disruption, oil supply and price insecurity, and nuclear proliferation via commercial nuclear energy–will thereby be addressed. In addition, there will be large ancillary health benefits from the elimination of most regional and local air pollution, such as high ozone and particulate levels in cities, which is due to fossil fuel combustion.

For more information, please visit Dr. Makhijani’s organization, the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research at ieer.org.

Incredible coverage in the October 1, 2007 edition of The Bangor Daily News, please click image for newspaper’s website

Re-raising Lady Liberty

Below is the order of events at the rally with the beginning time of each segment in the 53-minute-long mp3 file. Audio of the eight-minute speech by Gold Star mother Mary Alice Horrigan (discussed in the incredible Bangor Daily News article linked to above) begins at 23:12 with her introduction by Doug Allen.

End the War – Build the Peace

Rally & demonstration, Saturday September 29, 2007 at the “Paul Bunyan” park on Main Street in Bangor

Drumming — Peter Baldwin and Friends Tolling of Bells by area churches (audio not included here)

0:00 Introduction—Doug Allen, Peace & Justice Center of Eastern Maine, Maine Peace Action Committee (MPAC)

10:12 The Economic Costs of War—U Maine Students of Maine Peace Action Committee

17:46 “The Circle is Broken”—David McLean, singer, song-writer with Maria Irrera

23:12 Mourning the Iraq War Dead—Mary Alice Horrigan, Gold Star Mother

31:02 Reading of Names of Iraq War Dead—Members of Military Families Speak Out and Veterans for Peace (participants lie down to represent war dead or stand silently as mourners).

Bagpipe tribute—Peter Beckford, Simon Beckford and Ursa Beckford (audio not included here)

37:23 Mourning the loss of civil liberties—Lady Liberty in State—Peter Baldwin Responsive reading of parts of the Declaration of Independence

42:05 Rise up with signs and symbols of alternatives to war and sing along “Women’s Peace Prayer,” “We are One” “Peace, Salaam, Shalom” Voices for Peace and Women with Wings (end of audio file)

Chain of Concern—line up along Main Street with signs and symbols

My interview with Maine Civil Liberties Union Executive Director Shenna Bellows (recorded Thursday August 30) is available below for direct listening or download. This is a 128 kbit/44 kHz file (53 MB, mp3). The entire program runs about 1 hour.

This program broadcasts on WERU Community Radio, Blue Hill, Maine on the Weekend Voices program for Saturday September 1, 3pm.

Below the fold are additional notes and links for clips and news stories heard or referenced during the interview.

Notes for August 30, 2007 Shenna Bellows interview

Program begins with some excerpts of remarks Shenna gave at the WERU Community Radio Full Circle Summer Fair on July 29, 2007.

Shenna Bellows is Executive Director of the Maine Civil Liberties Union. Shenna is a tireless campaigner for the constitutional rights of all people and has done so from her current position since March 2005. Prior to that, she worked for two years as a National Field Organizer at the American Civil Liberties Union Field Office in Washington, DC. She has been a leader in post-9/11 issues, developing a field program around the Patriot Act, as well as working to defeat several constitutional amendments that would have undermined the criminal justice system, freedom of speech, and LGBT rights.

Shenna is able to give us much more information about recent events in the Verizon phone records case, now consolidated in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals under Hepting versus AT&T, as well as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act revisions passed by Congress after her July appearance at the Full Circle Fair. We conclude with a discussion about treatment of Terror War detainees in US custody and the Military Commissions set up by the government to try some of them.

I began by asking her to explain fully the Maine-Verizon phone records case and describe what is happening with it now…

Hepting v. AT&T U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals; Aug. 15, 2007

Judge won’t dismiss states’ wiretap suits

Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals Hears Important NSA Spy Case Today

“For the purposes of judicial efficiency, all similar cases from around the country were transferred from their original states and assigned to Judge Vaughn Walker in the Northern District of California (district where the Hepting case was originally filed).”

US District Court Judge Vaughn Walker had declined on July to address the federal government’s main argument that the cases should be tossed out because homeland security secrets could be exposed. Instead, Walker said he would wait until the Ninth US Circuit Court of Appeals rules on the issue. That hearing occurred on Aug. 15.

US Deputy Solicitor General Gregory Garre (GAR) summarized the government’s arguments against this case going forward, using a “state secrets” claim:

(Clip 1) Ninth circuit arguments
http://www.c-span.org/homepage.asp (look for Aug. 15, 2007 program under “America & the Courts“)

The issue at hand seems to be wide-net “dragnet” style fishing expeditions through most if not all people’s communication and records. As part of the case, there is much back & forth discussion about a secret “spy room” where AT&T may be allowing bulk communications data streams into government systems. This kind of activity suggests that more than just “terrorist” surveillance is underway.

Are we just inviting terrorists to hurt us if we even get a clue about what the government is doing with our communications?

Should we be worried that what really is happening here is that framework for a Soviet-style authoritarian state where the government secretly gets to name any of us as enemy, and then use what should be under our Bill of Rights protected political thought & activity against us?

(Clip 2) President Bush radio address 28 Jul 2007:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2007/07/20070728.html

Motivation for FISA reform, terrorism:

The terrorist network that struck America on September the 11th wants to strike our country again. To stop them, our military, law enforcement, and intelligence professionals need the best possible information about who the terrorists are, where they are, and what they are planning.

One of the most important ways we can gather that information is by monitoring terrorist communications. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act — also known as FISA — provides a critical legal foundation that allows our intelligence community to collect this information while protecting the civil liberties of Americans. But this important law was written in 1978, and it addressed the technologies of that era. This law is badly out of date — and Congress must act to modernize it.

Today we face sophisticated terrorists who use disposable cell phones and the Internet to communicate with each other, recruit operatives, and plan attacks on our country. Technologies like these were not available when FISA was passed nearly 30 years ago, and FISA has not kept up with new technological developments. As a result, our Nation is hampered in its ability to gain the vital intelligence we need to keep the American people safe.

Isn’t it a bit disingenuous of him to claim that the FISA Law is so “outdated”?

Clip 3

Four key reforms:

First, it brings FISA up to date with the changes in communications technology that have taken place over the past three decades. Second, it seeks to restore FISA to its original focus on protecting the privacy interests of people inside the United States, so we don’t have to obtain court orders to effectively collect foreign intelligence about foreign targets located in foreign locations. Third, it allows the government to work more efficiently with private-sector entities like communications providers, whose help is essential. And fourth, it will streamline administrative processes so our intelligence community can gather foreign intelligence more quickly and more effectively, while protecting civil liberties.

Wow. If we believe him, it’s all to the good. BUT, there are there any dangers in this legislation that the president isn’t talking about? What, from the MCLU/ACLU perspective might those dangers be?

Now, James Risen and Eric Lichtblau reported last Sunday in the New York Times, there are questions about whether this FISA re-writing will open the floodgates of all sorts of new domestic surveillance:
Concerns Raised on Wider Spying Under New Law

… allow the Bush administration to conduct spy operations that go well beyond wiretapping to include—without court approval—certain types of physical searches on American soil and the collection of Americans’ business records” …legal experts said that by redefining the meaning of “electronic surveillance,” the new law narrows the types of communications covered in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, known as FISA, by indirectly giving the government the power to use intelligence collection methods far beyond wiretapping that previously required court approval if conducted inside the United States.”

I heard Republican Senator Kit Bond vehemently deny the new revisions will do anything other than help us monitor foreign terrorists.

Here’s President Bush last year explaining what he wants to get out of the legislation that followed the Supreme Court Hamden decision of June 2006:

Clips: President Discusses Creation of Military Commissions to Try Suspected Terrorists

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/09/20060906-3.html

So today, I’m sending Congress legislation to specifically authorize the creation of military commissions to try terrorists for war crimes. My administration has been working with members of both parties in the House and Senate on this legislation. We put forward a bill that ensures these commissions are established in a way that protects our national security, and ensures a full and fair trial for those accused. The procedures in the bill I am sending to Congress today reflect the reality that we are a nation at war, and that it’s essential for us to use all reliable evidence to bring these people to justice.

We’re now approaching the five-year anniversary of the 9/11 attacks — and the families of those murdered that day have waited patiently for justice. Some of the families are with us today — they should have to wait no longer. So I’m announcing today that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Abu Zubaydah, Ramzi bin al-Shibh, and 11 other terrorists in CIA custody have been transferred to the United States Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay. (Applause.) They are being held in the custody of the Department of Defense. As soon as Congress acts to authorize the military commissions I have proposed, the men our intelligence officials believe orchestrated the deaths of nearly 3,000 Americans on September the 11th, 2001, can face justice. (Applause.)

We’ll also seek to prosecute those believed to be responsible for the attack on the USS Cole, and an operative believed to be involved in the bombings of the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. With these prosecutions, we will send a clear message to those who kill Americans: No longer — how long it takes, we will find you and we will bring you to justice.

These men will be held in a high-security facility at Guantanamo. The International Committee of the Red Cross is being advised of their detention, and will have the opportunity to meet with them. Those charged with crimes will be given access to attorneys who will help them prepare their defense — and they will be presumed innocent. While at Guantanamo, they will have access to the same food, clothing, medical care, and opportunities for worship as other detainees. They will be questioned subject to the new U.S. Army Field Manual, which the Department of Defense is issuing today. And they will continue to be treated with the humanity that they denied others.

Recently serious questions have been raised about the fairness of these Commissions. Lt. Col. Stephen Abraham, a 26-year veteran of military intelligence, Army reserve officer, and California lawyer explains in his affidavit that access to possibly exculpatory information was repeatedly denied to decision makers, who were pressured to find that detainees are “enemy combatants,” anyway, despite the lack of solid evidence. “What were purported to be specific statements of fact lacked even the most fundamental earmarks of objectively credible evidence,” Abraham stated.

Is this justice? Will they be presumed innocent?

July 20 in an executive order, the president gave the Central Intelligence Agency the green light to resume what are called by spokespeople like the president’s Homeland Security Adviser Fran Townsend call “enhanced techniques” when interrogating prisoners at secret prisons overseas. Ms. Townsend, just a few weeks ago, told Wolf Blitzer on Late Edition (http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0707/22/le.01.html)

The order explicitly does ban murder, sexual abuse and religious denigration, BUT it remains silent on the use of psychological torture and specific techniques, such as waterboarding, sleep and sensory deprivation, death threats, stress positions, isolation and use of dogs.

This is a broadcast-quality version (320 kbits, stereo) of the 1/2-hour WERU Voices special for Tuesday, August 14. It contains excerpts of the No More Hiroshimas programs held in Bangor on August 6.

A lower-bitrate version is archived HERE at WERU. If speed or space are a concern, the WERU file is much smaller.

Shenna Bellows, Executive Director of the Maine Civil Liberties Union, gave a talk on October 26, 2006 at the University of Maine in Orono, Maine. This program originally appeared in two parts on the WERU Community Radio Voices programs with Amy Browne. Archives are located HERE and HERE.

The podcast posted today includes an extended introduction with important updates. The continuing hot issues to which Ms. Bellows lends sharp analysis in this program are two of the most vicious assaults on civil liberties in our times: destruction of the 4th amendment to the US Constitution through warrantless government surveillance and indefinite imprisonment and torture of terror war suspects. Discussion of events on these fronts subsequent to Ms. Bellows presentation with links for key news stories appears below the fold.

On the surveillance front, Ms. Bellows explains the background of a contempt citation filed by the Maine Public Utilities Commission (PUC) in order to force Verizon to comply with a PUC order to swear to the truthfulness of Verizon’s public statements concerning the National Security Agency’s warrantless surveillance and data collection program.

Since Ms. Bellows spoke last October, Federal District Court Judge John Woodcock in Bangor, Maine last February granted the United States a preliminary injunction which prevented the PUC from holding a contempt hearing against Verizon.

Just last week, the US Justice Department asked another federal judge in San Francisco to block all state actions attempting to reveal the truth about telecommunications company cooperation with federal snooping into phone records.

According to the Los Angeles Times, during a 70-minute hearing on Thursday June 22, Deputy Assistant Atty. Gen. Carl J. Nichols told U.S. District Judge Vaughn R. Walker that “the actions of the states clearly ran afoul of the federal government’s blanket authority over foreign affairs, military and national security.”

There is yet no indication how the judge will rule.

The major new development concerning handling of US Terror War prisoners is that the US Supreme Court reversed itself on Friday June 29 and agreed to review the onerous Military Commissions Act of 2006–discussed in detail by Ms. Bellows later in this program–that stripped prisoners of their rights to challenge their detentions in a federal court.

A remarkable development preceding this decision was the filing of an affidavit by one of the army’s own officers that the government refuses to take no for an answer during the proceedings–known as Combatant Status Review Tribunals, or CSRTs–when they are asked to determine if a prisoner is to be classified the less-than-human status of “enemy combatant”.

Lt. Col. Stephen Abraham, a 26-year veteran of military intelligence, Army reserve officer, and California lawyer explains in his affidavit that access to possibly exculpatory information was repeatedly denied to decisionmakers, who were pressured to find that detainees are “enemy combatants,” anyway, despite the lack of solid evidence. “What were purported to be specific statements of fact lacked even the most fundamental earmarks of objectively credible evidence,” Abraham stated.

It is in these incredible times, with the world coming apart and freedom under assault from our own government–much more so than any terrorists–that Shenna Bellows helps us to wake up, see what is really happening, and stand up for our county, our constitution, and our liberty.

University of Maine Professor of Philosophy Doug Allen provides additional introduction of our speaker.

“… [The United States] [b]ehaving as a superpower that seeks perpetual dominance, … that considers itself and its allies as exempt from international law, will not make us more secure. It will only provoke proliferation, just as our invasion of Iraq has not reduced terrorism but has instead created new grievances and new bands of terrorists. By trying to reap maximum benefit from our temporary role as sole superpower, our government is acting like the terrorist we fear, and in the process is making more likely the very things we fear the most: nuclear terror and a new arms race.”

The excerpt above is from an op-ed published in the Saturday/Sunday June 30–July 1, 2007 edition of the Bangor Daily News. My friend Mike Howard and I co-wrote the piece. The full text (as submitted) of the op-ed is below the fold. The piece does not yet appear on line at the newspaper’s site. If it does, I will post an update.

Update: Posted at Bangor Daily News, HERE.

Nuclear primacy is not security

The occasion of the meeting between President Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin in Kennebunkport, Maine is a good time to discuss critical unfinished business of the post-Cold-War era concerning the continuing threat of nuclear weapons use.

After September 11, 2001, it is not difficult to recognize the truth of Vice President Dick Cheney’s remark that the death and destruction caused by those attacks “would pale into insignificance compared to what could happen” if terrorists “had a nuclear weapon and detonated it in the middle of one of our major cities.”

Yes, but it should be noted that these fearful nuclear consequences our leaders are keen to emphasize apply not just to the United States, but also to everyone else in the world, because the threat to use nuclear weapons still forms the backbone of U.S. foreign policy. This is the essential background for understanding the escalation in tensions between the US and Russia over Bush’s proposal to deploy missile defense systems in Poland and the Czech Republic.

The U.S. is pursuing an intimidating posture of nuclear primacy. America still has enough warheads to destroy the world, and the Bush Administration has dramatically increased the budget for new nuclear warheads, despite assurances from the Secretaries of Energy and Defense that the stockpile is safe, secure, and reliable. In the most recent Doctrine For Joint Nuclear Operations, U.S. military leaders describe “new thinking for a new era” where a “broader array of capability is needed to dissuade states from undertaking diplomatic, political, military, or technical courses of action that would threaten US and allied security.”

The authors are keen to point out that unlike less-destructive chemical and biological weapons, “no customary or conventional international law prohibits nations from employing nuclear weapons in armed conflict.” This doctrine could lead to use of nuclear weapons in practically any situation because, as explained in another part of the document, “the U.S. does not make positive statements defining the circumstances under which it would use nuclear weapons.”

Actual plans under discussion within the Pentagon have included proposed use of “bunker-buster” nukes against Iran despite the possibility of massive civilian casualties, as reported in 2006 in the New Yorker magazine. The threat of U.S. attack on Iran, ostensibly to prevent its acquisition of nuclear capability, is set starkly against the open secret of Israel’s possession of an advanced nuclear arsenal. Hostilities in Lebanon and Palestine for which Iran indirectly is blamed and in which the U.S. seems to endorse Israel’s strong role raises fears that the violence could possibly escalate beyond all reason. Real progress in averting nuclear proliferation in the Middle East requires a comprehensive solution, including US pressure on Israel to negotiate concerning its nuclear weapons.

Relevant to the tension with Russia, the U.S. has abandoned the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in order to develop Star Wars, a move that appears at first glance as defensive, but that a closer look reveals to be part of a nuclear offensive strategy: an ABM shield is designed to absorb a second strike of remaining missiles from an adversary after a massive U.S. first strike, thus making the latter a more credible threat. These examples indicate why the rest of the world is alarmed by the U.S. nuclear posture, and why Putin sees missile defenses in Europe as an offensive move.

The event that the Vice President provokes us to fear will be possible because of nuclear proliferation, ultimately resulting in a nuke in the hands of a terrorist. Two things need to happen to prevent proliferation: 1. non-nuclear states need to renounce nuclear weapons, and 2. nuclear states need to reduce and eventually eliminate their arsenals. These are not utopian dreams. The Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which mandates these, has been signed by 188 nations, the exceptions being Israel, India, and Pakistan. (North Korea withdrew in 2003 after being put on the “axis of evil” list.)

A group of analysts led by former U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix last year issued a report on weapons of mass destruction stating that, “All states possessing nuclear weapons should commence planning for security without nuclear weapons. They should start preparing for the outlawing of nuclear weapons through joint practical and incremental measures that include definitions, benchmarks and transparency requirements for nuclear disarmament.”

What is needed to achieve these practical steps towards outlawing nuclear terror is our political will. Unfortunately, our government seems intent on another path. Behaving as a superpower that seeks perpetual dominance, and that considers itself and its allies as exempt from international law, will not make us more secure. It will only provoke proliferation, just as our invasion of Iraq has not reduced terrorism but has instead created new grievances and new bands of terrorists. By trying to reap maximum benefit from our temporary role as sole superpower, our government is acting like the terrorist we fear, and in the process is making more likely the very things we fear the most: nuclear terror and a new arms race.

Michael Howard teaches philosophy at the University of Maine
Eric Olson teaches physics at EMCC
Both are members of the Peace and Justice Center of Eastern Maine

This one is well worth the download.

“It appears to me that the Iraqis have made up their minds that they are not going to accept foreign domination….It’s time for some escalations in the anti-war movement.” –Stan Goff

85 min; 20 MB; 32 kbps mp3; download link here ->