Sometimes You Can See Forever

By OTTO

Ironical Chronicle graphic

The New World Order, shaking.

This past week the US rejected Russia's attempt to mediate the US' demand that Iran accept in perpetuity its current lack of nuclear weapons in the face of Israel's possession of these same weapons.

This is the exact equivalent of the Soviet Union demanding unilateral nuclear disarmament from Washington. Besides being ludicrous, its acceptance would have been considered tantamount to capitulation in the Cold War and the responsible President would have been impeached and possibly even hanged for cowardice in the face of the enemy.

It should be remembered that J. Robert Oppenheimer, the "father of the atomic bomb" and the chief advisor to the post-WW2 Atomic Energy Commission had his security clearance revoked in 1954 for merely advocating that nuclear weapons should be placed in the custody of an international commission. Furthermore the US so valued its capacity to destroy the Soviet Union that the nuclear disarmament talks that went on between Washington and Moscow for a half century foundered repeatedly due to the hair-splitting over parity between the two sides.

It is a measure of the unswerving patriotism, and the mindlessness that it inevitably induces, of the US media that they wouldn't think of laughing at their comic opera Commander-in-Chief and that Washington's demand that Iran capitulate to Israel is treated with the solemnity granted to a papal bull by the Catholic priesthood. Anyone with the temerity to suggest regional parity of armaments, say Israel's nuclear disarmament, would immediately be labeled an anti-Semite and a Holocaust Denier by the ever-vigilant Israeli Fifth Column.

It has been suggested that the US will offer to back Russia's entry into the World Trade Organization [WTO] if it will support the US' demand for UN sanctions against Iran if it attempts to develop the technology to enrich the spent fuel rods from its power reactors, the first step on the long and technologically difficult road to the construction of a nuclear weapon.

If Russia accepts that US bribe it will be a signal that it has joined the ranks of the US' willing executioners, to paraphrase Daniel Goldhagen [author of the book Hitler's Willing Executioners]. It seems to me that the US' imperial edifice is developing cracks due to the Bush regime's Iraq debacle and that the real mushroom cloud over the US is the ballooning US national debt. One would think that this is hardly the time for Russia to buy into this WTO club of sovereignty-compromised States.

The Bush regime is essentially the Third Reich with less legitimacy and with an expiration date and since the Russians are much clearer about the history of the 20^th century than most people, my guess is that they won't take the bribe. At least not from this gang of retros from the US slaveocracy.

We are living in one of those short, but remarkable, periods where, like after a good rain, it feels like you can see forever. If people would just get up from their TV's and look out the window they'd be amazed at what the world really looks like without the media smog.

By now it should be clear to everybody that:

The country is governed by a liar and a war criminal who was put in power by the Supreme Court rather than being elected by the people as specified in the Constitution.
The US' carefully cultivated image of Mr. GoodNeighbor Sam is gone forever. In its place is Mr. Goodbar, the serial kidnapper/torturer/murderer.
The inviolability of the Constitution, taught to generations of Americans as being the bedrock of the cradle of democracy, now turns out to be supercedable by secret memos from some pushy deputy-undersecretary-type lawyer who happens to cherish a belief in the superior efficacy of dictatorship.

But the clarity won't last forever.

After the "bad cop" Bush/Cheney regime, in 2009 we'll get a "good cop" Mr. Kerry or Mrs. Clinton regime, or maybe both. The managers of US imperialism will enter a period of image refurbishment and the media will use this badly needed lull in their "War Against Everybody" to restore their shredded credibility.

And the toxic smog will have rolled back in.