Last week Radio Raheem had an article regarding the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund , the World Trade Organization and all the mayhem and activism surrounding those entities. He ended it with a mention of the ozone problem, and "some old white men...... having a Star Chamber-like meeting in Washington."

"Star Chamber"; mentally, I somehow made a jump to Ronnie Reagan's beloved "Star Wars" anti-ballistic missile system: up in the sky, being decided upon by a bunch of old soldiers with agendas so different from most habitants of Mother Earth. It brought back a wave of old worries: worries from a time when the economy was low; there was little sharing of knowledge amongst common folks; and the last memorable exchange of fire power involving Americans, was the Vietnam War.

Right now, we are riding a wave of great intellectual and societal advancement:

• the Internet;
• anti-discrimination laws;
• disability rights laws;
• gay rights laws;
• right-to-die laws;
• Whistleblower protection laws;
• school-of-choice laws;
• mapping of the human genome and so on.

Despite problems like Aids, pollution, starving children, environmental disasters, police brutality, drug abuse and unfathomable events like the Columbine tragedy, life quality has, arguably, never been higher for such a large percentage of the world's population. And we forget a much bigger threat, one that doesn't seem as tangible as maintaining our lifestyle, helping the starving or the environment, something that was protested against quite vigorously by an earlier generation, my generation, the "Boomers". The Cold War. Nuclear Proliferation. Radioactive fallout. Mutual Assured Destruction(MAD).

Yes, non-Americans worry and resent the Americanization of their cultures, but people in New Delhi are wearing Nikes if they can get their hands on them and Wal-Marts in China sell Dorito's Nacho Chips. Old-growth forests are being cut down on all six inhabited continents, fresh water everywhere in the world contains measurable amounts of chemical and radioactive pollution and people are protesting the IMF and the World Bank, but not many of those protesters worry about the Nevada Desert. You know, the place where the United States government has resumed nuclear weapons tests.

It's a shell game, old boy.

Basically it works like this: the USA has more missiles than any one other country, but not nearly the number of all these other "enemy" countries combined; we (I'm American) can't really afford to build more missiles as fast as all of "them" combined, so we have agreed to point less of them at some countries, so we have more of them to point at others. Russia has disarmed missiles to get down to the level our countries "mutually" agreed upon; that number was reached after the reality that the Russians didn't WANT to increase their armament to match ours - too expensive.

Our military people wanted more! Guess that's why they call it MAD. To massage the small contingent of Americans who are still concerned about what WE are doing to put the brakes on this madness, we have disarmed some of our oldest, weakest missiles; however, the United States total available kilo-tons of nuclear firepower, has increased, unabated, every year since we first hit Japan 50 years ago.

Back to "Star Wars", aka "Kinetic Kill" aka "Clementine II":

• we suffered through worries of Y2k
• the richest man on earth (Bill Gates) can't put on a computer presentation that doesn't crash;
• NASA has had a phenomenal year of failures;
• the Air Force's fancy $80 million dollar Osprey planes keep crashing and the government admits that their anti-missile lasers don't have a one hundred percent [missile] "kill" rate, only 95% at best, despite $100 billion spent on researching the original "Star Wars" system and another $27 billion laying on the current system (excluding the inevitable overruns).

So why do the "old men in their Star Chamber-like meetings" feel like this is a good time to play "Russian Roullette"? Russia has 1000 ICBMs (intercontinental ballistic missiles) pointed at major metropolitan areas of the United States - can we live with 50 (5%) of those missiles making it to our cities? Along with the accidental attacks that might come from a host of other countries once THEIR intelligence satillites see missiles in the air? It's MAD!

Much as I don't like the increasing number of nuclear powers in the world (India, Pakistan, North Korea, Israel ), I can't really blame them: they don't want to be bullied, they want to be players in the MAD game. And for now, they are players; because, in this "game" size don't count. The "Star Wars" system would change rules that appear to be working, upsetting 50-some years of an awkward status quo; that's MAD!

It's an election year, a great year to examine and question what various politicians are committed to in regards to the nuclear arms race, and to ponder how you feel about a $127 billion dollar experiment, that will set up conditions that are a much greater threat to ALL OF OUR LIVES, than crime, drunk drivers, crack cocain, Aids, racism, concealed weapons and cancer put together.

Tucked away in a folder beside my guitars, on paper yellowed from the twenty plus years that have passed since I wrote them, are words to a song with the same title as this article; the last verse and chorus are just as true today, as they were back then:

"You wake from dreaming about nuclear disaster,
"a warm glow's coming through your shade,
"Is it just the morning sunlight,
"or some hell-fire man has made?

"There'll be no question about the future,
"Once the weapons have been drawn,
"'Cause everything we've lived and died for,
"And the future,
"All the future,
Will Be Gone."*

* Song "Question 'Bout The Future",copyright 1977, Edward L. Cantarella

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RDR RECOMMENDED SITE OF THE DAY: Cath Junge sent us a photo-journalism site that we believe you'll spend hours with. But don't forget to come back here! Like "our" Dragana Vicanovich, this person is committed to quality reporting from on the ground. A. Rafaele Ciriello's Postcards from Hell


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