Abril 13, 2004
Zia Mian & Project for New American Century
I just heard an amazing speech on the radio by
Zia Mian, a physicist at Princeton who studies nuclear proliferation and related topics. His talk was about The Project For A New American Century and U.S. imperialism. It was really really great. I just found a sort of abridged version of the talk.
He talks about the U.S. strategy for global hegemony, basically, and deconstructs the plans that the neoconservative intellectuals like Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle wrote up years ago. It's scary stuff, from his descriptions of their long term geopolitical strategy, to details of plans to build new nuclear weapons and use them, to the misconceptions of the american people
One really interesting bit is when he is talking about the 1992 Defense Planning Guidance document written by Wolfowitz for Dick Cheney. It outlines what to do in each region of the world, almost. But:
One of the regions that's missing from their analysis is Latin America. It's as if it doesn't exist. One reason for its absence is that if there's one region that has already suffered the American empire, it is Central and South America. It's suffered so much that it doesn't even exist as a possibility of a threat, something the US planners need to worry about anymore.
This is pretty depressing but also in a way pretty inspiring, and I'll tell you why: in light of all the huge mistakes the neocons have been making in other parts of the world, it's a good chance they are completely wrong about Latin America. Furthermore, its a unique and inspiring time there. It makes me feel like we should be doing as much as we can help social movements there, to help to prove the neocons wrong. It's like they have a blind spot that needs to be exploited....
Posted by steev at Abril 13, 2004 09:42 PM
Steev; I am assuming you are American. I have known about the groups and strategies outlined by Dr.Mian since the early days after 9/11. That is when I began to dig into the whole matter of Islamic antagonism toward the US. Obviously US foreign policy is the problem, not " They hate our freedom" George Bush's stupid answer to America immediately after the tragedy when people were asking "Why?", something most Americans have stopped doing even though no real meaningful explanation has ever been given by Bush, his cabinet, Congress, or the US mainstream media.
If you want a detailed but readable blueprint of American geopolicy and geo strategy region by region, go to the library and take out a book called The Grand Chessboard by Zbigniew Brzezinski. He was Nixon's defense advisor and the man who armed the Taliban to give the Russians headaches in Afghanistan. He'll fill you in on why America does what she does.
Check out The Progressive online. Just type The Progressive in the search bar of Google. Have a look at writings by Michael Parenti, Edward Said, Noam Chomsky, Molly Ivins, Jim Hightower, Matthew Rothschild, Howard Zinn, or just take a weekly glance at what's in The Village Voice and follow the stories and links.
The information to really get a good grasp of international manuevers by the US and everybody else is out there. The US mainstream media simply doesn't live up to their responsibility to be objective and aloof from pressure, from politicians, sponsors, ratings or wherever. They truly are embedded, to their discredit.
Steev; Two good websights are The Federation of American Scientists,and,Foreign Policy in Focus. These both deal in cold fact, not spin and disinformation.
Why are the media banned from photographing or filming the return of caskets bearing the war dead. Not to protect the feelings of the families. Televising too much was the cause of much opposition to the Vietnam mess. So since Desert Storm the media have been shackled and fed censored and watered down information. CNN's much vaunted coverage of Desert Storm consisted of Wolf Blitzer standing there for endless hours and repeating US military press releases, with a few shots of some damage in Israel by Scuds. You recall the mighty Patriot missile and it's near perfect record shooting down Scuds? The Patriots didn't hit one Scud, not one. That is a matter of public record now, but the military has never said, "Yes, we told a pack of lies".
I just read a piece in Aviation Weekly that states that the two billion dollar B2 bomber is so slow that any fighter since the Korean War can run it down and shoot it down unless it is at very high altitude, and,of course, at high altitude, stealth don't fool anybody. The military constantly refers to stealth aircraft as invisible to radar. This is pure cow patty. Stealth technology reduces the size of the aircraft's signature to conventional radar, thus possibly delaying identification,and Stealth attempts to modify the incoming radar signal to give a false result.Well, if somebody builds a lock, somebody else will pick it. Detection systems are getting pretty good.
You know the story about how NASA paid a US corporation hundreds of thousands of dollars to develope a pen that would work troublefree in zero gravity, and the Russians gave their guys pencils.
One of the results of technology is to make the user incompetant without it, like kids who can't find a square root without a calculator. So US military forces without air support and night vision and naval bombardment and helicopter evac. and front line surgical units,and all the rest, don't do as well as a few guys in rags and turbans. Another result is that combatants are desensitized to the destruction they are causing. Aerial bombardment is a warcrime itself. Surgical strikes are mythology. Less than ten percent of US ordinance is "smart", that is, capable of trajectory change after being fired or launched or dropped. Do you think the water supplies in Baghdad were ok after 45 days of hell raining from the sky? How about food coming into the city?
My point is, if you are surprised to hear Zia Mian inform you about The Project for the New American Century, you might want to pay more attention to the direction America will take now that the rest of the world has been told, " You're with us or against us".
John,
Your comments make me think that my entry about Zia Mian perhaps
made it seem like i'm unfamiliar with these issues, when in fact
I'm very familiar with the imperial machinations of the U.S. and
I regularly read alternative media to get news of what's really
going on.
I just wanted to make that clear here, and that the above Zia Mian speech was not the first time I'd heard of the Project for a New American Century, or most of the rest of the areas he touched on. The point of posting to a blog is not neccessarily to be saying "hey wow this is something i never knew!" but rather to say "hey, look at this, maybe you'd be interested!"