Techno-Logic

        Gunder's analysis of the decay of the dollar, the world depression
of the Bush Era, and East Asia as the next hegemon is astute and quite
plausible.  It follows the logic of contemporary social science to logical
conclusions.

        I would only add that another logic is now at play in the world,
which could radically compress the time needed for the United States to
topple and for others to take its place, perhaps to topple just as swiftly
in their turn.  I refer to the logic of technology.  Not just the logic of
"high tech," vastly expensive and often available only to states, but also
the power that comparatively "low" technology can give any disciplined
individual or organized group.  The logic of the Tokyo subway gassing, the
Oklahoma City bombing, the kamikaze attack on the WTC, and the Afghan
mujahideen.

        It is likely that we are only in the earliest and most primitive
stages of a whole century of sabotage, which will be able to bring down
the most "powerful" states, no matter how well armed, taking advantage of
the densely interlocked nature of modern economies and communication
networks.  There have been saboteurs and guerrillas since the beginning of
time, and most of the so-called terror wreaked in the last few years has
come nowhere near realizing its state-busting potential.  But the fact
that the WTC attack, for example, did significantly deepen the depression
already in progress in the U.S. is a bellwether of things to come.

        I recently read a report from Agence France-Presse about the
findings of a panel of security experts who took part in a computerized
simulation of a bioterrorist attack on the U.S. involving smallpox.  The
panel shared these findings with the House Subcommittee on National
Security.  The gist of the report was that the panic, confusion, and
ravaging economic consequences of the attack would bring the U.S. to its
knees in a matter of weeks.  Martial law would be imposed, and the economy
would collapse.

        Or what about the simultaneous detonation of dirty bombs
(conventional explosives laced with radioactive waste) in the heart of
Manhattan, Atlanta, Chicago, and San Francisco?  It would take years to
decontaminate these centers, and with commerce and finance in national
disarray, the economy would nosedive.  Such attacks could be renewed and
multiplied on a monthly schedule, paralyzing all efforts to recover.  The
cost of these attacks would be greater than the cost of 19 boxcutters and
19 airplane seats, but not much.

        I am not concerned here with who would be responsible for the
sabotage--home-grown fascist militias, "rogue" states, international
terrorist bands, conspiracies within the U.S. military itself, whatever.
Nor am I concerned with the justice of the saboteurs' cause, not in the
context of this post.  My point is simply that the technology is now
available to render impotent both of the "pillars" cited by Gunder, the
dollar and the Pentagon.  Or their equivalents elsewhere and elsewhen.
And the vulnerability of the world-system, just because it is also now a
world system without the hyphen, to major disaster anywhere guarantees
that the ripple effects of such local disasters will be grievous
everywhere.

        Warren

W. Warren Wagar
Professor of History Emeritus
Binghamton University, SUNY



> Folks--
>
>     This came to me from a Florida friend.  I think the point is not that
> the scenario presented here is likely to materialize in February 2003, but
> that something along the same lines is more or less inevitable sooner or
> later and not just in the U.S. or any other place in particular.  Even a
few
> dirty bombs--conventional explosives laced with radioactive
materials--going
> off simultaneously in Manhattan and Chicago and Los Angeles could bring
the
> U.S. to a screeching halt, devastating our economy for years to come.  If
I
> were Saddam, I'd have those bombs ready to blast within 24 hours of an
> invasion.
>
>     Maybe Saddam doesn't have the resources.  But maybe the next Evil-doer
> will.  And the next after that, and so it goes.  Since any of the 6.3
> billion of us is potentially an Evil-doer, and more are being born every
> minute, the outlook is not bright.
>
>     Warren
>
>
> http://community.webtv.net/Ralph-0/CANOFWORMS
> .
> NEWS ARTICLE from AFP (Agence France-Presse), US lawmakers warned of
> "dark winter" in case of bioterrorist attack WASHINGTON, (AFP) - A
> chilling scenario of possible national collapse was presented Monday to
> US lawmakers by a group of prominent security experts, who warned that a
> biological terrorist attack on US soil could bring the country to the
> brink of disintegration. LTShepler@aol.com writes:
> Does the "group of prominent security experts" describe in its
> "warnings" to the House Subcommittee on National Security what is
> essentially a military coup?
> AFP continues:
> The panel, which included former deputy secretary of defense John Hamre,
> Oklahoma governor Frank Keating and former senator Sam Nunn, presented
> their conclusions after holding a two-day exercise code-named "Dark
> Winter," which featured a computer-simulated bioterrorist attack on
> three US states.
> Members of the House Subcommittee on National Security closely listened
> as participants painted a picture of the world's most powerful nation
> descending into chaos in a matter of several weeks. The game starts with
> a brief television report that about two dozen people checked into an
> Oklahoma City hospital with an unidentified illness. Doctors soon find
> the patients have smallpox, a highly contagious and deadly disease
> unseen in the United States since 1949. Similar smallpox cases are
> reported in Pennsylvania and Georgia. By day six, 300 Americans are dead
> and 2,000 others are infected. Cases of smallpox are reported in Mexico,
> Canada and Britain, according to the scenario. Meanwhile the US heath
> system is overwhelmed, the 12 million doses of smallpox vaccine quickly
> disappear, schools nationwide are forced to close, and public gatherings
> are limited due to fear of contagion. Droves of Oklahomans anxious to
> flee stream toward Texas -- but the Texas governor, eager to protect his
> own residents, closes the border and deploys the state National Guard.
> Shots are fired. As the standoff between Texans and Oklahomans deepens,
> a rift opens between federal and local authorities. Members of the US
> National Security Council suggest "nationalizing" the national guard,
> while state governors insist on keeping the local troops under their
> control. On day 12 of the scenario, when the death toll reaches 1,000,
> interstate commerce grinds to a halt and stock trading is suspended.
> Demonstrations demanding more smallpox vaccines turn into riots. The
> United Nations moves its headquarters from New York to Geneva,
> Switzerland. Less than two months after the outbreak, when the number of
> dead reach one million and three million more are infected, the
> president, played in the exercise by Nunn, gathers his top aide to
> considers imposing marshal law. Dead silence reigned in the hearing room
> as Hamre and Nunn presented their findings with the help of colorful
> "emergency newscasts" prepared by the nation's leading television
> broadcasters, who also took part in the exercise, which took place at
> Andrews Air Force Base outside Washington, D.C. in June.
> "I think we felt it would cripple the United States if it occurred,"
> Hamre said.
> "We thought we were really gathering together to talk about the
> mechanics of government," Hamre said. "What we ended up doing is
> thinking how we save democracy in America." LTShepler@aol.com writes:
> Here we have the former Deputy Secretary of Defense John Hamre saying
> "What we ended up doing is thinking how we save demoncracy in America."
> How we `SAVE DEMOCRACY in America?ī Itīs not clear to me how that
> gets to be a question in this scenario --- unless someone WANTS
> democracy to be a matter in question.
> Why can't this be handled like any other domestic disaster, like a
> flood, hurricane, etc.?
> What legal authority does the NSC have to even broach the question of
> whether National Guard troops are under federal or state control? Are
> they suggesting that the National Guard would be under U.S. military
> control? Are they implying that federal troops would be rolling over
> state borders?
> The article paints a picture of public places being closed: "schools
> nationwide are forced to close, and public gatherings are limited due to
> fear of contagion."
> People will be in their homes too scared to venture out. Expressways,
> downtowns will be empty. If the U.S. military wanted to drive into
> cities and take them over, there would be no resistance. It could be
> done under the rationale of martial law and the guise of "protecting"
> Americans. It would hardly raise an eyebrow in the context of fear and
> panic.
> If our military bioweaponeers understand bioweapons to be able to bring
> entire nations to their knees -- in principle, what would stop them from
> salivating over conquering the greatest country on earth even if it
> happens to be their own?
> Military coups happen all the time. Bioweapons don't create new
> opportunities just for terrorists, they create opportunities for
> organized groups of any sort to wield disproportionate power and the
> threat of destruction over a large population --- without there being
> means of self defense in the target population. Funny the DOD never
> points this out. They tell us it is always "terrorists" who do this
> stuff and typically FOREIGN terrorists. Seems to me the spectrum for
> abuse is a whole lot broader than what we read in domestic propaganda
> and theoretically includes actors such as the DOD itself. It includes
> anyone who has access to these organisms and the technology for
> dispersing the organisms. If that's the definition of who could
> terrorize a population with bioagents, then the scope includes our own
> DOD and its agencies.
> The difficulty in tracing the source of an outbreak would work to the
> benefit of not only foreign terrorists, but it would work to the benefit
> of any domestic group. Like the hysteria in the wake of the Oklahoma
> bombing, the assumption was that this was the work of a foreign
> terrorist - but it turned out it wasn't.
> In the case of a bombing, there were ways to trace the evidence back to
> Tim McVeigh. That's essentially impossible to do with organisms
> associated with a bioattack.
> Theoretically, the attack could be staged by a U.S. military group and
> alleged to be by foreign terrorists. There would likely be no way to
> challenge this assertion. Those who weren't part of the planned
> overthrow would be bamboozled into thinking it was a foreign threat and
> then participate in the mobilization.
> The stuff of fiction? Let's hope so. But keep in mind these are the
> sorts of imbalances of power warned about by the Founding Fathers and
> which shaped their construction of our present form of government. It
> seems to me the Second Amendment has been rendered a meaningless antique
> by the advances in biotechnology.
> AFP continues:
> To Republican Congressman Benjamin Gilman, scenarios like this no longer
> belong to the realm of science fiction.
> "Sadly, events of the last few years, with bombings ... in New York,
> Oklahoma City, have transformed the bioterrorism debate from the
> question of 'if' to the seeming inevitability of 'when," he said. Nunn,
> who had sat on the Senate Armed Services Committee for more than two
> decades, said the exercise raised more questions than answers. If there
> is only one dose of smallpox vaccine for every 23 Americans, whom do you
> vaccinate? he asked.
> "Do you seize hotels and convert them to hospitals? Do you close borders
> and block all travel? What level of force do you use to keep someone
> sick with smallpox in isolation?" he asked.
> No clear answer was offered by those present. '' LTShepler@aol.com
> wrote:
> ``The CDC is thought of as a civilian agency, but unbeknownst to most --
> virtually all of the major policy and professional appointments at the
> CDC are staffed by MILITARY officers. This is described in the official
> govīt handbook on U.S. federal agencies.
> CDC officers are drawn primarily from the ranks of the United States
> Public Health Service (USPHS) Commissioned Corps. The U.S. Code contains
> the statutes authorizing the formation of this branch of the U.S.
> military.
> USPHS Commissioned Corps officers are subject to the usual perks,
> retirements benefits, VA benefits, etc of other members of the U.S.
> military and can transfer between other branches of the military (Army,
> Navy, etc.)
> What is troubling is that if you meet these people at a professional
> conference, for example, the common assumption is that these are
> civilian physicians or scientists. Not so. Has anyone heard of someone,
> for example, in Gubler's position and dressed in civilian attire
> introduce themselves as "Captain Gubler"? Has anyone heard it announced
> in introducing any of these people as speakers at a conference that they
> are a "Captain," for example, "in the Commissioned Corps" -- announced
> alongside the references to their other accomplishments and
> affiliations?
> I have found it virtually impossible to find references to the military
> affiliation and rank of CDC officers. Reference to these affiliations
> seems to occur ONLY in military contexts -- e.g., publications in
> "Military Medicine" or names listed in a brochure for a military event.
> In evaluating someone's work, I think most of us would prefer to know
> where someone is coming from -- their motivations, potential conflicts
> of interest, institutional affiliations, etc. That these officials at
> the CDC aren't simply civilian public health officials and that their
> pay and appointments come directly from the U.S. military -- this seems
> to me like a major potential conflict of interest that members of the
> public and the press would want to know about. Related to the
> congressional testimony of CDC officials on the subject of bioterrorism
> -- it would be nice to know that these docs are U.S. military and their
> employer is the U.S. military. As spokesmen for the CDC, they are not
> speaking as civilian doctors or civilian public health experts.
> By virtue of their ties to the military, CDC officials may have very
> different agendas than what would otherwise be expected from a civilian
> public health agency.
> Also, let's think about it further and consider how a military culture
> might view civilian health care issues, pathogenesis studies, and health
> care problems unique to children, the elderly, women, African-Americans
> and gays.
> Military culture and military medicine depart in important ways when
> compared to the culture of civilian health care organizations and
> universities engaged in medical research. These groups - children,
> elderly, women - and civilians in general aren't a focus of concern in
> military culture or in military medicine. It is also well known that the
> U.S. military has a history of human rights abuses related to
> experimenting on civilians and on military personnel. Perhaps we should
> not be so surprised that the CDC and its USPHS "officers" brought us the
> Tuskegee experiment. Certainly we are all familiar with the jokes about
> military medicine. Now that I appreciate that the place is staffed by
> military docs and more likely than not is imbued with a military culture
> -- It goes some distance in understanding the mediocrity of the CDC and
> their indifference to commonly held principles adhered to by civilian
> scientists and researchers such as scientific integrity. It explains
> their lack of real concern about the PUBLIC (i.e., civilian) health in
> covering up the epidemic of tick borne diseases and the serious effects
> of these diseases.
> It goes some distance in explaining the scandals regarding the diversion
> of funds allocated for the study of chronic fatigue syndrome, an entity
> predominately affecting females.
> And it goes a long way in understanding their abject lack of sensitivity
> to civil rights issues and constitutional law in planning for
> contingencies related to biological warfare. It also explains why CDC
> physicians don't embrace the long-standing views held by civilian
> organized medicine that biological warfare is evil and unwinnable.
> Instead, what we see are CDC officers eagerly setting the stage for
> biowarfare.
> You will not find reference to any moral qualms related to this frenzy
> by agency officials (i.e., "officers"). And, in reading their plans for
> responses to a biological attack, you will find little practical concern
> for civilians in the policies they are promulgating. Their plans for
> what is now being called "homeland defense" read like war games ... ''
> http://www.centurytel.net/tjs11/bug/l17.htm
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>