Call me a romantic but I treasure this biosphere called earth.
And only progressives can save it. But first you need to know your true enemy and it is not Richard Perle or Bill Kristol. They are simply the shills carrying their masters' message.
A little historical review: Carter was undone because he understood
the biggest threat to our democracy was our increasing dependence on foreign-oil and the dominance of the U.S. weapons industry.
Cut down by the October Surprise and a some savvy election 'manipulation' Reagan
aided by the Democrat neocons in Congress was installed with the understanding that the military/industrial /complex would now reign supreme.
The economy was transformed to ratchet up the arms race and being shrewd as well as conniving the weapons cartel spread their tentacles to the hinterland both to add to the voting strength of the suburbs and drive up the price of oil, giving their prime customers the gulf state oil sheikh's deeper pockets to buy weapons they could not use and did not need.
The first gulf war was a result of this oil for weapons strategy but Bush I by forcing the Saudis and Kuwaitis to finance Desert Storm left them unable to make good on their promises to the arms cartel, as East Asia had fallen into recession and oil revenues were tumbling.
That was it. Bush I was toast for failing his masters. Enter Clinton, a social liberal but a fiscal centrist given the stamp of approval from the industry's neocons (ie, Feinstein, Leiberman, Albright)
Clinton has bold ideas but he's in a bind. The Republicans have left him a limping economy and a pile of red ink. The weapons boys thanks to their cosy little arrangement with the Saudis are the de facto rulers since they control the cost of our new life blood: gulf oil.
Clinton tries to extricate himself by shifting purchases to Venezuela and the fascists' "neocon" noise machine swings into action with Whitewater Travelgate, Troopergate etc... the Big Dog compromised to survive but you know how it ends.
<snip>
Other major industry victories during the Clinton years included a revival of spending and serious testing of the missile defense program, which grew to be a $5 billion per year enterprise with the support of members such as Representative Curt Weldon, R-Pennsylvania, a member of the advisory board of the Center for Security Policy with a Boeing plant in his district. The progress of "Star Wars II" was helped along by the findings of the Rumsfeld Commission, another classic exercise in threat exaggeration headed up by former Ford (and future George W. Bush) Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.
Perhaps the industry's slickest move of all was the "payoffs for layoffs" plan, in which then-Martin Marietta chief Norman Augustine persuaded Pentagon officials William Perry and John Deutsch to get the government to pick up part of the tab for arms industry mergers. The idea was for taxpayers to pay to promote consolidation in the industry, in the wake of post-Cold War reductions in military spending. This approach helped spur mergers of Lockheed and Martin Marietta, Northrop and Grumman, Boeing and McDonnell Douglas, and numerous other combinations large and small. Eyebrows were raised by the fact that both Perry and Deutsch had worked as paid consultants for Augustine's firm before joining the Pentagon.
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Military_Industrial_Complex/Profits_of_War.htmlTo sum up; unless we can convince the American public to embrace renewable energy and kick the oil habit and begin conserving we will not only be the beggars in a corporate military state we will be complicit in the destruction of life itself.
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