- One of the great discoveries of the late 20th century
was the existence of black holes.
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- Their existence was implied by Albert Einstein's relativity
theory, and their necessary characteristics were worked out by Stephen
Hawking and others. Eventually, a new generation of powerful visible-light
telescopes and x-ray observatories gave us direct observations supporting
what previously had only been theory.
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- As every kid fascinated by science knows, black holes
come from stars that collapse as their fusion engines sputter out of fuel.
The resulting, unimaginably dense bits of mass have the remarkable ability
to grow by capturing matter and energy entering their space-bending gravitational
fields.
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- Modern Israel started as a bright star of an idea, a
place of refuge for a horribly abused people, but many observers today
might agree that the bright star appears to be collapsing into a dark mass
bending the geopolitical space of the entire planet.
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- The world waits for Mr. Bush to launch a terrible war
against Iraq. The only purpose for this war is a preemptive strike at Israel's
most tireless opponent. But the honesty of national debate in America is
so distorted by massive gravitational tides, even many of the war's opponents
do not understand what it is they are opposing.
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- No meaningful evidence has been offered for Mr. Bush's
shrill assertions. An argument for protecting intelligence sources might
be accepted as reason for not releasing details to the general public,
but what is ridiculous is that no evidence has been supplied to the leaders
of major NATO allies. France and Germany would not require the "report"
now being quickly cobbled together for Mr. Powell, were the case otherwise.
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- Iraq has bothered no one for twelve years, so why the
sudden rush to war before weapons inspectors even complete their work?
The only explanation appears to be so that the furious, temporary momentum
of American public opinion generated by September 11 can be harnessed for
a war that would not be supported otherwise.
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- Never mind the deliberately misleading, invented term
weapons of mass destruction; there is no evidence that Iraq has strategically
significant weapons. There is virtual certainty that Iraq has no fissile
materials for nuclear weapons, and we know from the previous chief weapons
inspector that Iraq's costly facilities for manufacturing fissile materials
were destroyed.
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- There is no evidence that Saddam Hussein had any past
dealings with al-Qaeda. Indeed, it is known there was considerable animus
between Hussein and bin Laden.
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- The notion that secret national weapons programs, if
any have been reconstituted since weapons inspectors left Iraq in 1998,
can be successful when teams of well-equipped inspectors, kept informed
by intelligence agencies, roam over the Iraqi countryside, free at any
time to enter any facility, truly is delusional. And delusional notions
are a mighty dangerous basis for going to war.
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- To reassure Israel, all reasonable parties are willing
to see a strict inspection regime maintained in Iraq, but this is not enough
for the single-minded American President who insists on going to war and
inflicting more horror on Iraqi civilians. And it is certainly not enough
for Mr. Sharon who cheers Mr. Bush on and proclaims maniacally that Iran
should be attacked next.
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- How easily people forget, or perhaps they do not care,
that modern war means killing civilians in large numbers. The proportion
of civilians killed to military personnel killed has grown exponentially
since World War I. America's focus on overwhelming air power and its reluctance
to accept any casualties of its own only makes the trend worse. The question
of going to war now is one in which Americans take little account of death,
for the deaths are almost all on the other side and remain unseen by a
comfortable public thinking itself informed by its heavily-biased press.
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- General Schwarzkopf's well-staged press briefings with
highly edited film clips during Desert Storm left the impression that precision
munitions have turned war into a neat, almost bloodless computer game.
The truth is that about 95 percent of the munitions used in Desert Storm
were not precision. Precision munitions are extremely costly; they slow
operations down; and they can, themselves, go wrong, so they are reserved
for special applications. Good old-fashioned dumb bombs and artillery are
the only things to use when you want to do a lot of killing in a hurry.
Something like a hundred thousand Iraqi civilians were killed by American
munitions that were not precision.
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- As we wait for this war, we feel the world's economy
buckling and yielding to the threats and uncertainty of a vast, destructive
enterprise, to the promise of inflation and dislocation that always accompanies
war, and to unavoidable, crazed gyrations in the price of oil.
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- As we wait for this war, the President addresses an uneasy
world in the cadences of a fundamentalist tent-preacher thumping his pulpit
and threatening hell's fire, offering the five and three-quarters billion
people who live outside America but are still affected by its arbitrary
decisions, such reassuring observations as, "The course of this nation
does not depend on the decisions of others."
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- This President compounds economic uncertainty by running
huge deficits and by offering to keep preoccupied Americans happy with
huge tax cuts -- a bizarre, economically illiterate version of "You
can have it all and have it all now!"
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- As we wait for this war, Israel reduces the West Bank
to an utterly bleak and hopeless landscape. All past commitments, as those
of the Oslo Accord, are ignored. All the many past resolutions of the United
Nations imposing obligations on Israel remain ignored, even while the U.S.
asserts Iraq must be attacked precisely for ignoring other United Nations'
resolutions. The leader of the Palestinians, with whom no discussion can
possibly be held, is degradingly treated as a criminal, virtually under
a form of house arrest.
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- No more worthy foes of injustice and hatred breathe than
Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu. They have made unmistakably clear what
they see in the West Bank -- a repeat in virtually every detail of South
Africa's hateful apartheid regime, but the collapsing star's force field
sucks in even the sympathetic emotions these observations should elicit
from Americans.
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- As we wait for this war, Israel has approached the United
States for another $10 billion or more in assistance, over and above the
$3 billion it receives automatically each year (and, by rights, we should
add the $2 billion paid annually to keep Egypt quiescent). This money is
deemed necessary because Israel is run on a war footing seemingly in perpetuity.
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- Israel behaves as a regional, geopolitical miniature
replica of the United States, even to the extent of now building a triad
of nuclear forces (land-based missiles, bombers, and submarine-based missiles
-- all nuclear-capable) -- this in a country whose population is about
the size of Ecuador's, about one-tenth of one percent of the world's people.
The costly wastefulness of this is almost beyond description.
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- Bush's War on Terror, rather than being a clearly focused
campaign against those actually responsible for September 11, has become
the label on a portfolio of grudges against all those in the world who
balk at or oppose American foreign policy. The War on Terror is itself
an emerging black hole sucking in resources, energy, and principles.
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- It's not as though a good deal of the world does not
understand what is happening. Voices of reason are heard from France, Germany,
Italy, Canada, Egypt, South Africa, Russia, China, and other lands, but
Bush announces he is willing "to go it alone" if necessary, meaning
the entire planet, willy-nilly, must be dragged into a great vortex of
destruction.
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- John Chuckman encourages your comments: <mailto:jchuckman@YellowTimes.org>jchuckman@YellowTimes.org
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publication. YellowTimes.org encourages its material to be reproduced,
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