Surviving Capitalism (Not) : Ellsberg’s The Doomsday Machine: The Madness of America’s Nuclear Weapons

We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Tuesday, January 2, 2018

Ellsberg’s The Doomsday Machine: The Madness of America’s Nuclear Weapons

Click here to access article by retired lieutenant colonel William J. Astore from AntiWar.com. (Material added at 1;36 PM Seattle time.)

The author, based on his reading of a new book by Daniel Ellsberg, makes solid arguments that the US ruling class leaders are insane by promoting a policy that was formulated in the Obama administration to upgrade nuclear weapons at a cost of $1.2 trillion dollars over the next 30 years (according to the Congressional Budget Office). After using atomic bombs on two civilian cities in Japan during WWII, our masters have continued using nuclear weapons as threats against those nations that it sees as competitors or that might interfere with their imperial plans.

Our ruling capitalist class are now so thoroughly addicted to the drugs of power and profits that they are prepared to destroy the world if they can't obtain their drugs. Meanwhile back at the imperial ranch, our masters have been indoctrinating citizens to believe that war is very entertaining. Beginning in 1966 (probably in an effort to suppress the growing anti-Vietnam War movement) their culture executives began a non-stop series of movies and TV series featuring inter-galactic wars and exotic weapons as seen in Star Trek, war as comedy in MASH movie/TV series, more exotic weapons in Star Wars, and now in the 21st century the abundance of war games on many electronic devices. Yes, war, even a nuclear war, has been sold to the gullible American public as merely entertainment. Hence, the disappearance of an effective anti-war movement.

Weapons of war are very profitable for our "merchants of death", and under our fascist rule (government + corporations = fascism) the government participates (in sharp contrast to the 1930s) in the promotion of weapons as described in the article entitled "The ‘Merchants of Death’ Survive and Prosper" from the same website.