"IT'S ONLY A CIGARETTE BURN!"
-Yale senior George W. Bush

(PREFATORY NOTE: On October 17, 2006 bad policy became bad law when Mr. Bush signed the "Military Commissions Act of 2006." This new law strips us of the 800-year-old writ of habeus corpus, thus permitting the administration to detain people without charges and without trial, and to withhold legal recourse from anyone--including US citizens--it labels an "enemy combatant." Furthermore, this fascistic law allows Mr. Bush to define torture any way he pleases. Given the Bush administration's history of embracing Torquemada and the Marquis de Sade, it almost certainly will continue to use torture. Underneath the full text of Richard Franklin's important essay, I have briefly summarized nine directly-related articles and added two "Quotes Worth Remembering." Warm Regards, - Evan Augustine Peterson III, J.D.)

I've often altered a famous line of Ralph Waldo Emerson, rendering it as, "Mad men are in the saddle and ride mankind." In that Emersonian context, Canadian Professor Michel Chossudovsky, who is one of the world's premier journalists on geostrategic military matters, has written a carefully-researched article that will make your hair stand on end.

Dr. Chossudovsky tells us, "The world is at the crossroads of the most serious crisis in modern history." At first glance, that resonates like the muckraking headline on a copy of the National Enquirer, but this article is neither tabloid sensationalism nor a fabrication. It's an exposition of numerous hard realities that the world is now facing.

What is perhaps most disturbing is the degree and precision with which the lines of battle have been drawn, and the forces of war have been assembled along those lines. If this piece doesn't scare you, you are on some good Colombian pot, you are too pharmaceutically anaesthetized to care, or you have nerves of steel. What makes the scariness more potent are the photos of the machines of war he has included, and the revelations of massive international military preparations on both sides of the well-defined battle lines.

ONE IS REMINDED OF THE PREPARATIONS PRECEDING WORLD WAR I AND WORLD WAR II.

If you have a bottle of good scotch whiskey in your cupboard, you might want to down a shot before reading this hair-raising article. At first glance, his statement that "The world is at the crossroads of the most serious crisis in modern history" may seem like Chicken Little's the-sky-is-falling rant, but as you proceed with the article, you just might change your initial reaction.

This genre of military geopolitics falls outside my area of academic expertise, so I'm not going to comment on the contents of this report. I will only say that I have great confidence in the scholarship and resources of Professor Chossudovsky. MY EDUCATED GUESS IS YOU CAN TAKE THIS ARTICLE TO THE BANK.

IF SO, THIS COULD BE HUMANKIND'S LAST CLEAR CHANCE TO PREVENT A SERIES OF TRAGIC MISSTEPS THAT RAPIDLY ESCALATE INTO THERMONUCLEAR WORLD WAR III. Therefore, please read Dr. Michel Chossudovsky's article, "Cold War Shivers: War Preparations In The Middle East And Central Asia", now at: http://tinyurl.com/ylenu7

Warmest Regards, Richard Franklin

Today's Quotation: "... politicians are most alive when their constituents are dying." -Allen Thornton, "Laws Of The Jungle" (this wise, albeit thin, 1987 booklet is online).

PLEASE READ 9 DIRECTLY-RELATED ARTICLES (BRIEFLY SUMMARIZED HERE):

[1] Joshhua Muravchik's Nov./Dec. 2006 Foreign Policy essay, "Operation Comeback" ["To stay relevant, neocons must admit mistakes, embrace public diplomacy, and start making the case for bombing Iran." Of course, the author is himself a warmongering neocon at the American Enterprise Institute, which is the pro-Israel lobby's foremost thinktank. A paid subscription is required for access to this website.]: http://www.foreignpolicy.com/users/login.php?story_id=3602 &URL http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=3602

[2] Gregory Cochran's 10/23/06 AmCon essay, "Size Matters: The Push For Military Strikes Against Iran Rests On Inflated Assessments Of A Minor Threat" [A physicist and evolutionary biologist explains why risk assessment always takes the magnitude of any risk into account, and then correctly concludes that the risk concerning Iran is small.]: http://www.amconmag.com/2006/2006_10_23/cover.html

[3] Victor N. Corpus' 10/18/06 Asia Times essay, "America's Acupuncture Points: Part One - Striking The US Where It Hurts" [A wise general explains the ways the world can hurt the USA if the Bush administration foolishly decides to attack Iran.]: http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/HJ19Ad01.html

[4] Borhan Azemi's 10/18/06 "Message From An Iranian-American To The American People" [Let the Iranian people take care of the needed regime change in Iran. And let's get the American people to take care of the needed regime change here. That will be our greatest gift to the people of Iran and the rest of the world.]: http://www.countercurrents.org/iran-azemi181006.htm

[5] Elizabeth Spiro Clark's 10/17/06 TomPaine.com essay, "The North Korea Effect" [If Mr. Bush is a rational actor, then the realities of the US constraints in Iraq and the epiphany that multilateralism has its advantages in dealing with North Korea should convince him not to commence another war of aggression against Iran.]: http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2006/10/17/the_north_korea_effect.php

[6] Joseph Cirincione's 10/17/06 CounterCurrents essay, "Bush Unleashes The Nuclear Beast" [Rather than negotiate treaties to eliminate weapons, the Bush administration forged a strategy to eliminate the regimes that might use them against us. The Bush team felt they knew who the bad guys were, and they aimed to get them one by one. But their strategy has backfired.]: http://www.countercurrents.org/us-cirincione171006.htm

[7] Juan Santos' 10/17/06 CounterCurrents essay, "Swallowing The Blue Pill: Frank Talk On Race And Fascism" [As the US veers onto a radical course toward fascism, the Democrats, who are riding high on a national wave of revulsion against the Bush regime, breathe not a word about reversing the legalization of torture or restoring habeas corpus; they say nothing about reversing the Patriot Act, nothing about averting war in Iran, and nothing of substance about pulling out of Iraq. He goes on to explain why white Americans wrongly believe they are invulnerable to the rise of tyranny at home.]: http://www.countercurrents.org/us-santos171006.htm

[8] Brasscheck-TV's 10/18/06 article, "Police State In Action" [One of the characteristics of a police state is that police are not subject to the rule of law--so long as their violence is directed against citizens and not power-holders. Do we have this condition within the United States today? Read and watch this. Then you tell me.]: http://www.brasscheck.com/videos/cl/cl3.html

[9] Edward N. Gomez's 10/17/06 SF Gate essay, "Bush Signs Torture Bill: Americans Lose Essential Freedom" [In an Orwellian pronouncement today, Bush said: "The United States does not torture. ... It is against our laws and it is against our values. By allowing the C.I.A. program to go forward, this bill is preserving a tool that has saved American lives." Bush's self-contradictory claim flies in the face of numerous reports of torture conducted by American officials at US military prisons or secret locations overseas.]: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/sfgate/category?blogid=15&cat=388

FINALLY, TWO QUOTES WORTH REMEMBERING:

[1] "IT'S ONLY A CIGARETTE BURN!" -Yale senior George W. Bush, president of the Delta Kappa Epsilon (DKE) fraternity in the late 1960s, lying in the attempt to downplay wounds his fraternity had sadistically burned onto the backs of 40 new DKE members with a hot branding iron in the shape of the Greek letter Delta; quoted the 1967 New York Times article, "Branding Rite Laid to Yale Fraternity", and cited in blogger BiblioSquirrel's 9/29/06 article, "Brander In Chief," to demonstrate that George W. Bush's well-known sadistic tendencies have long history: http://bibliosquirrel.blogspot.com/2006/09/brander-in-chief.html

[2] "COLORFUL DEMONSTRATIONS AND WEEKEND MARCHES ARE VITAL BUT ALONE ARE NOT POWERFUL ENOUGH TO STOP WARS. WARS WILL BE STOPPED ONLY WHEN SOLDIERS REFUSE TO FIGHT, WHEN WORKERS REFUSE TO LOAD WEAPONS ONTO SHIPS AND AIRCRAFT, WHEN PEOPLE BOYCOTT THE ECONOMIC OUTPOSTS OF EMPIRE THAT ARE STRUNG ACROSS THE GLOBE." - Arundhati Roy, explaining why large-scale nonviolent noncooperation with evil must go beyond symbolic protests (from her book, "Public Power In The Age Of Empire").

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October 19, 2006 BY: DR. RICHARD FRANKLIN, an American university professor. SOURCE: Published 10/18/06 by Franklin's Focus. URL: None because Franklin's Focus is an e-newsletter.