COMMENT
COMMENT Bombs Away 'Nuclear weapons pose an intolerable threat to our humanity and to our habitat.... The beast must be chained, its soul expunged, its lair laid waste.' —General Lee...
...Unocal managed to persuade the Senate to turn down a total pullout of American investment in Burma...
...The word "spasm" implies something involuntary, uncontrollable, and without cause...
...Shadow Over the Mideast: Short Fuse of Arab Youths...
...Six U.S...
...empire, the ultimate prop for bullying other nations weaker than our own...
...Republican of Texas) will permanently deny cash benefits and food stamps to anyone convicted of a drug felony...
...It's all part of what President Clinton and other welfare reformers are fond of calling the "'social contract" between welfare recipients and the stale...
...government still has 8,000 operational nuclear warheads, and it intends to maintain that deadly arsenal...
...A dud would give the enemy a distinct advantage...
...The ease and relish with which people use "nuke" as a verb is the measurement of how perilously close we are to blowing up the world...
...It is much more likely, however, that the United States would be the nation launching these weapons against the rogue states...
...This is a lot of pressure...
...Robert Bell, special assistant to the President and senior director for defense policy and arms control at the National Security Council, warned that the United States will keep all its options open if another country is "'using weapons of mass destruction...
...Assistant Secretary of Defense Kenneth Bacon said that if Libya went ahead with a chemical-weapons plant, the United States would have to destroy it, and this "could include the use of nuclear weapons...
...There are real and ideological interests that fuel the production of nuclear weapons...
...The SLORC (State Law and Order Restoration Council), Burma's military government, held Suu Kyi under house arrest from 1989 until 1995...
...It is he who has dragged his feet on the Oslo accords...
...Headlines you won't see in the Times: Shadow Over the Mideast: U.S...
...North Korea, or Iraq...
...Peres knew a good deal when he saw one...
...It's better than nothing," Zarni says about the recent legislation...
...As Michael Klare pointed out in "Itching for a Fight" (September issue), the United States waved the nuclear stick against Libya this spring...
...But the United States is still preparing for nuclear war...
...It's still in the business of waging nuclear war, as it has been for the last fifty years...
...There is precious little security to protect the information stored in such databases, and firms may find it profitable to share information among themselves to conduct background checks on employees, or for redlining and other insidious purposes...
...The nuclear-energy labs and the nuclear-armament companies, like Raytheon and Lockheed-Martin, have a vested interest...
...That is what's behind the belligerence whenever the United States takes on a Third World nation, whether it is Libya, Panama, Grenada...
...It was his obstinacy that precipitated the crisis on the West Bank and Gaza in September...
...Boycott them...
...empire...
...Because of the conditional sanctions President Clinton signed in September as part of the appropriations bill, U.S...
...If they don't help somebody convicted for a drug charge, how is somebody going to get their life together...
...cities and the state of Massachusetts are boycotting any company that does business in Burma...
...Arco also defended its presence there...
...The latest wave of repression indicates that the regime is determined to hold on to power at any cost," says Zarni...
...Early on, the Times ran an editorial carefully rendering the language in its most passive form, as a way to shield Israel from blame...
...The puppet has loosed his own strings, and now dances madly on the stage...
...It could be catastrophic for a country to launch a first strike unless that country were confident the weapon would work...
...Today, the repression of Burma's democracy movement is escalating...
...We cannot allow this to happen.' —Kyaw Thein, colonel and high-ranking Burmese official promised a hard line, and now he's delivering it...
...It will be able to conduct virtual tests that will ensure the reliability of the nuclear weapons the treaty was designed to make unreliable...
...Other corporate interests rely on nuclear weapons indirectly, for nuclear weapons are the badge and holster of the U.S...
...If U.S...
...The U.S...
...Further, the government continues to prepare its soldiers for waging—and surviving—nuclear war...
...For the last thirty years, the U.S...
...government has recently resumed an effort to produce tritium, a radioactive gas that is a key ingredient of nuclear warheads...
...companies have major investments there and are collaborating with the SLORC (see "Burma in Chains," October 1995, and "From Green Bay to Rangoon," Page 30...
...The test-ban treaty may succeed in its first goal of keeping the nuclear-weapons club small...
...The risks of a malfunction would be too great...
...multinationals rely on cheap labor and cheap raw materials from abroad, the nuclear arsenal comes in mighty handy...
...But Bill Clinton hasn't seemed to notice, nor for that matter have the editors of The New York Times...
...The so-called constructive-engagement approach advocated by U.S...
...government that engineered the lopsided Oslo accords that left the Palestinians only the smallest scraps of self-rule...
...On September 28, riot police surrounded Suu Kyi's house, preventing her from leaving and from making her customary weekend speeches to the thousands of supporters who gather to hear her...
...The government had stopped producing tritium in the late 1980s...
...Many citizens are in thrall of the notion that we are the world's superpower, that we are the top dog...
...Constructions like "was shaken" cleverly erase the shaker...
...though these days you wouldn't know it...
...Israel at the Brink The picture of the Israeli helicopter gunship raining bullets down on Palestinian protesters just about said it all...
...Such arrogant government intrusion into poor people's lives is discriminatory and destructive...
...The winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, Suu Kyi was elected as the country's leader by landslide vote in 1991, but was never allowed to serve...
...Until there is a democratic government in Burma, no U.S...
...Foreign Policy, or Shadow Over the Mideast: Brutal Israeli Government Burma Cracks Down It's boycott time again...
...we will need to organize in vast numbers and with great creativity not just against nuclear weapons but against the empire that relies on them...
...Burma's repressive government continues its campaign against the pro-democracy movement and Aung San Suu Kyi...
...government has winked and nodded at the Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands and the repression of the Palestinian people...
...It began: "The uneasy peace that has prevailed between the new Israeli government and Palestinians was shaken yesterday by a spasm of violence...
...Soon it may no longer be necessary for the United States to conduct actual tests...
...The beast must be chained, its soul expunged, its lair laid waste.' —General Lee Butler, formerly commander-in<hief of the U.S...
...To the extent that U.S...
...or "Nuke Khomeini...
...Already the corporations stand to lose contracts worth millions of dollars, says Simon Billenness, a senior analyst at Franklin Research and Development, a socially responsible investment firm in Boston...
...Since the end of World War II, the Pentagon has spent 30 percent of its budget on nuclear-weapons production, Some people are getting rich on this deal...
...Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu 'For us old bleeding-heart liberals who were on the streets in the sixties, the idea that Lockheed, of the military-industrial complex, would be in charge of welfare is out of somebody's nightmare fantasy.' —The director of a stole welfare program, quoted in The New York Times 'Sometimes, with the pretense of human rights and democracy, things can go bad for our country...
...But it's not enough...
...the government has withdrawn the guarantee that it will provide assistance to poor families, while at the same time expanding the power of the state to monitor and regulate the behavior of the poor...
...It also prevents the nuclear powers from having a sense of reliability about their own arsenals...
...Nicaragua...
...October 4, just two days after Netanyahu had stiffed Yasir Arafat in Washington, the Times focused not on Netanyahu but on Palestinian kids...
...that we rule the world...
...In April...
...It provides $3 billion in aid {including $1.8 billion in military aid) to Israel every year, making that country far and away the largest recipient of our foreign-policy largess...
...Many states have already set up "deadbeat-dad" databases, working with the Internal Revenue Service and state motor-vehicles departments to chase parents who fail to pay child support...
...is an unreasonable search in violation of the Fourth Amendment, because it presumes guilt rather than innocence," says Carole Doeppers, who directs the Privacy Project of the ACLU of Wisconsin...
...But the whole Pentagon rationale for using these anti-nuclear drugs is euphemistic...
...Why does the United States persist with the nuclear folly...
...The project is part of an effort to upgrade the effectiveness of troops on the post-Cold War battlefield," the Post continued...
...In the final days of September, the SLORC rounded up hundreds of Suu Kyi's followers to prevent Suu Kyi's party, the National League for Democracy, from holding a weekend congress...
...Then, as now, the moral argument is clear: U.S...
...law will prohibit new investment in Burma if Suu Kyi is imprisoned or harmed, or if there is a large-scale crackdown on the pro-democracy movement...
...Last year, the Energy Department launched the Science Based Stockpile Stewardship Program, with a $4 billion annual budget that includes a "large-scale computing project to more accurately model nuclear weapons," according to an article in The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists a year ago...
...The first line of the editorial was not much better...
...And it was the U.S...
...or "Nuke Saddam" became popular bumper stickers...
...There are ideological interests, as well...
...This is hardly an ethical stance, and it's the kind of claim companies trotted out when they opposed sanctions to end apartheid in South Africa...
...The headline was Violence Returns to Israel, as if violence were a meteorological force—a storm or a wind or a cold wave that blows in with no human involvement whatsoever...
...But the conditional sanctions will not apply to companies that already have operations in Burma...
...The drugs, which reduce or eliminate the vomiting that follows exposure to radiation, are being tested 'to extend the ability of an individual to perform his mission in a radiation environment,' Major General Kenneth Hagemann told reporters...
...That is why "Nuke Qadaffi...
...Poor people are citizens, too...
...This growing authoritarianism should worry all of us...
...He is so intoxicated with the rightwing dogma of superiority that he cannot serve as a rational leader of his own people, much less a loyal sergeant of the U.S...
...The implication is clear: The United States will use nuclear weapons against countries that use— or threaten to use—chemical or biological weapons...
...It is he who is responsible for the scores of deaths in September...
...This is a gross violation of privacy, and since a disproportionate number of women on welfare are fugitives from domestic violence, it is particularly worrisome...
...And they are noticing...
...The ideology of empire provides psychological comfort: That is what's behind those throaty chants of U.S.A., U.S.A...
...a former welfare recipient who had been arrested on drug charges in Washington, D.C...
...States have the option of cutting off women entirely if they will not identify the paternity of a child...
...The United States wants to cling to its nuclear weapons, and wants to make sure they are reliable...
...Part of this high-tech weapons design and testing will take place at the National Ignition Facility at the Lawrence Livermore Labs...
...No Rights for the Poor People who rely on government assistance have always been particularly vulnerable to intrusions on their privacy...
...Strotegic Air Command With much fanfare, Bill Clinton signed the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty in late September at the United Nations...
...investors such as Unocal has clearly failed...
...The idea behind the treaty is two-fold: By banning tests, it prevents non-nuclear countries from acquiring nuclear weapons...
...companies don't go into Burma, you can bet the French will," said Mike Bowlin, the company's C.E.O...
...government bears responsibility as well...
...Meanwhile, the SLORC carries on more repressive actions, including forced relocations, village burnings, imposing slave labor, and murder...
...It has recently enacted a law prohibiting Burmese citizens from owning modems...
...But under the new federal welfare law...
...So before we get all carried away by the hoopla surrounding the signing of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, we need to take a hard look at what our own government is doing...
...Punishment for this offense is fifteen years in prison...
...In August 1995, the Clinton Administration acknowledged that "if the safety and reliability of our nuclear deterrent could no longer be certified," then the United States would reserve the option to bolt the treaty...
...The SLORC is also noticing the effects of the worldwide activism...
...Here's where the United States comes in: Several U.S...
...To enforce a five-year lifetime limit on welfare benefits as required by the new law, the federal government is developing a nationwide database that could include unlimited personal and financial information on welfare recipients...
...Living arrangements, school attendance, work schedules, even showing up for doctors' appointments are conditions of aid...
...It is he who has made it policy to confiscate Palestinian land, to promote additional Israeli settlements, to rub Palestinian faces in the dust...
...told The New York Times...
...But it is not just these material interests that hold us back...
...In exchange for food stamps, cash assistance, and medical care, the government requires that poor people provide all kinds of personal information about themselves that other citizens do not have to divulge...
...To bring the nuclear age to a nonviolent end...
...Such a preemptive strike would have violated the Clinton Administration's policy of not initiating nuclear war...
...Zarni, a University of Wisconsin-Madison graduate student and a citizen of Burma, is the founder and coordinator of the Free Burma Coalition, an international network of activists who maintain daily contact with each other via e-mail (zni@students.wisc.edu...
...The United States is also making a mockery of the test ban by designing simulated nuclear tests in the laboratory...
...But the no-first-use policy no longer seems to be in force...
...There's an escape clause if ever there was one...
...Defense officials believe there is a greater possibility than ever before that theater nuclear bombs . . . may be used by a so-called rogue nation like Iran or North Korea...
...Integrating entire databases, merely because of the misdeeds of a few...
...The Free Burma Coalition and other groups supporting the pro-democracy movement are calling for a worldwide boycott of companies that continue to do business with the SLORC, including the U.S...
...companies Total, Unocal, Texaco, Arco, and PepsiCo...
...Let's make sure these companies lose millions of dollars in contracts—they'll notice that...
...People who have been convicted and have served time for a drug offense are thus subjected to a double whammy...
...But Netanyahu is blind to the benefits...
...If a country can't test a nuclear device, it will have no way of knowing whether the damn thing works—and won't launch it...
...In April 1995, the Pentagon announced it was "testing two commercially approved drugs it hopes will enable soldiers who initially survive a nuclear bomb to last long enough to finish their battlefield mission," The Washington Post reported...
...investment should be allowed...
...Many Americans have bought into the empire...
...investment in Burma last year totaled $245 million, most of it in oil and gas...
...In the process, we will need to restore an image of ourselves not as rulers but as citizens of the world...
...A White House fact sheet, quoted in the September/October issue of The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, stated that without a "high level of confidence" in the safety and reliability of the nuclear arsenal, "the President, in consultation with Congress, would be prepared to withdraw from the CTBT under the standard 'supreme national interest' clause in order to conduct whatever testing might be required...
...Another provision of the federal welfare law (contained in a little-noted last-minute addition by Senator Phil Gramm...
...This followed an order from the Defense Department that the Department of Energy "maintain capability to design, fabricate, and certify new warheads" without underground nuclear testing...
...But the ban won't succeed in its second goal because the United States has no intention of rendering its nuclear arsenal unreliable, which is one of the reasons India balked at signing the treaty...
...How are they going to live and survive...
...Private firms are competing for government contracts to gather data on welfare recipients, which raises further privacy concerns...
...What's going to happen to the children0" Mothers who do not cooperate in establishing the paternity of a child will also lose at least 25 percent of their welfare benefits under the new law...
...Sure, the Clinton Administration preferred Shimon Peres to Benjamin Netanyahu...
...The front-page story was entitled...
...Meanwhile, the U.S...
...We need to get the oil corporations out...
...Radiation environment" is a classic Pentagon euphemism...
...That's why the U.S...
Vol. 60 • November 1996 • No. 11
