- I came home from work yesterday evening and idly flicked
on the TV, only to learn that the I-35W bridge over the Mississippi River
in Minneapolis- St. Paul, Minnesota had just collapsed, as a consequence
of catastrophic structural failure. Like millions of other people I was
glued to the live coverage of the scene yesterday evening. I more or less
accepted the proffered explanation that the collapse may have had something
to do with maintenance being done on the bridge at the time of collapse.
After all, the bridge was 40 years old. It was plausible that it just
wore out, due to age and heavy use, complicated by the maintenance it
was undergoing.
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- This afternoon, more information has come out suggesting
that engineering inspections in recent years have raised questions about
the bridge's structural integrity, with references to cracked steel and
bent metal. Other reports in the news today have raised the issue of the
bridge's deicing pipe system, which dispensed corrosive chemicals that
may have weakened the bridge's steel structure. Apparently, this information
was available to the relevant transportation agencies and highway departments
and they effectively did nothing of any consequence to resolve the evident
safety issues - with the tragic result that the bridge fell down, killed
and injured many people, and caused huge property loss and tremendous
disruption to one of the country's major urban areas.
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- And so we are faced with the prospect of Malign Neglect
(this is the LIH, "Let It Happen" explanation) by federal and
state transportation and highway agencies. Which is to say, they inspected
the bridge, more than once, and found problems which they noted in their
reports - and then they dithered. Nothing was done to bring the bridge
back up to standards, and due to their incompetence and negligence last
evening it fell down.
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- This ex-bridge in Minnesota, that now lies in rubble
in the Mississippi River, is a powerful metaphor for the USA itself. It
encapsulates the rapid evisceration and destruction of this country by
the self-styled ruling "elite" of our society who fancy themselves
to be superior to the rest of us. From coast to coast and border to border,
bridges and roads are crumbling, and crucial infrastructure such as water
works, sewers, electrical grids, railroads and more are deteriorating
and in need of repair, maintenance and modernization. Concomitantly, millions
of well-paid jobs have been lost to off-shoring and rapid de-industrialization.
To add insult to injury, at the same time that living standards and employment
prospects for many millions of Americans are plunging, wealthy American
corporate executives have awarded themselves compensation packages that
run to tens and hundreds of millions of dollars; even worse, in many cases
they have physically moved their factories and industries out of the country.
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- Simultaneous to the looting of the country, and the malign
neglect of its infrastructure, the so-called political "elites"
have scarcely been idle. Oh, no. In rapid succession we have seen the
Patriot Acts I and II, the Military Commissions Act, invasion and military
occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq, endless rumors of war against Iran,
and now Pakistan too, and many other injuries and outrages to common sense,
which violate national and international law, alike.
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- Of course, these political and military outrages are
a direct follow on to the attacks against the World Trade Center in New
York and the Pentagon, on 11 September 2001. Which, sadly, brings me to
my next point.
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- As I was mulling these things over in my mind, the first
videos of the bridge collapse hit the Internet, apparently "leaked"
from an Army Corps of Engineers surveillance camera set up along the river
bank and now spread widely across the Internet. The Army Corps of Engineers
has locks, levees and navigation structures all up and down the Mississippi
River from Minnesota all the way down to the Gulf of Mexico. And so one
of their cameras happened to record the collapse as it happened. It doesn't
really matter who "leaked" the video at this point; what matters
is that it's out there and it shows a surprisingly symmetrical collapse,
in which both ends of the central span drop almost at the same time. It
looks almost too clean and neat. So clean and neat that after watching
it a couple of times, I began to have a niggling feeling that there may
be other forces at play here other than accidental, structural failure.
I started to think back to the very neat "dropping" of the World
Trade Center towers in 2001, which are as clear a case of sabotage as
we have seen in modern times (notwithstanding that 50% of the population
still cannot grasp that shadowy elements of the American power structure
have violently attacked the American people, and now conceal the deed,
in order to whip the country into a war hysteria and launch a generations-long,
bogus "War on Terror", with endless wars abroad, and imposition
of a red-white- and-blue police state at home).
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- But back to the bridge in Minnesota-- was sabotage involved?
For the uninitiated, this would be the MIHOP, "Made It Happen On
Purpose" explanation. We are living in such a surreal time, post-9/11
and all the official lies attendant to the murderous events of that day,
that I no longer put anything past the malevolent and cruel people now
running this country. If they can destroy a few skyscrapers in New York
City and attack the Pentagon, what is all of that compared to dropping
an interstate highway bridge?
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- So was the bridge collapse an accidental, structural
failure, or was this thing sabotaged? I honestly don't know one way or
the other.
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- But supposing that it may have been sabotaged, who would
be behind it? The obvious culprits would be the neocons who are now on
the military and political rampage, here and internationally. And why
now?
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- I can think of at least two possible reasons.
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- 1. Whether due to accident or sabotage, the collapse
of the Mississippi River bridge has conspicuously removed other major
news items from the national news cycle for a day or three - stories
such as the Pat Tillman "friendly" fire murder in Afghanistan.
This is a story for which the Bush administration has been taking a lot
of heat in recent days, especially when it came to light that Pat Tillman
had been shot three times in the head, at close range, more strongly suggestive
of a contract killing than a "friendly" fire incident. Then
there is the ongoing saga of Alberto Gonzales' and his faulty memory.
It is not just that Attorney General Gonzales has a selective memory,
but that he appears to have NO MEMORY whatsoever of what he does on his
job, so often has he said "I cannot recall" in congressional
testimony about his recent actions. One is reminded of a mobbed up Consigliere
taking a fall on the witness stand, to protect his Mafia Don, which in
this case would be the President of the United States, George Bush. And
then there are the rumblings of possible war against Iran, and maybe Pakistan
too, perhaps even later this month, in August.
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- All of these important issues, and much more besides,
have been practically eclipsed in the national news cycle, for the time
being. Out of sight, out of mind, lost in the glare of the unfolding
tragedy in Minnesota.
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- 2. Then there is the small matter that the bridge
that fell down happens to be an integral part of the I-35 corridor that
extends all the way from the Mexican border, in south Texas, to the Canadian
border, in northern Minnesota. The I-35 corridor happens to be the route
that is intended as the core of the projected Trans- Texas Corridor running
along I-35 in Texas, and slated to continue along the I-35 corridor right
up through the Midwest to Canada. Others have referred to this plan as
the NAFTA Superhighway. The project envisions a massive, 1200 foot wide
rail, toll road and utility corridor running north-south through the spine
of North America, from Mexico into Canada, with intersecting corridors
branching off to destinations east and west of the central corridor.
Those are the plans in a nutshell, and they are already well along in
Texas and elsewhere, projected for completion over the next 50 years,
and starting right now, in 2007. If you have not heard of these plans,
it is high time that you did. Try Googling key words such as Trans-Texas
Corridor, NAFTA Superhighway, North American SuperCorridor Coalition,
International Mid-Continent Trade Corridor, and/or North American Union.
Pull up a chair and commence reading. Events are moving fast these days.
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- Let's suppose that the movers and shakers are itching
to get this project going. Let's further suppose that here and there along
the route there are choke points that need substantial upgrading to meet
the planned requirements of the NAFTA Superhighway. Going just a little
further, what if one of the said choke points is a rickety, 40-year old
I-35 bridge across the Mississippi River in Minnesota. For the International
Mid-Continent Trade Corridor to be built this bridge will have to removed
and rebuilt anyway - so why not just take it down??!! Boom.
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- Could something like this be done under the plausible
deniability that it was an old bridge with known maintenance and safety
issues, secure in the knowledge that enough of the sheep- like American
populace would be bamboozled by such an explanation to accept it?
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- I do not actually know if something like this has happened
or not. However, the people currently running this country are so malevolent,
and so cruelly violent that this type of activity would be well within
their customary modus operandi.
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- We are therefore left with two more or less equally unpalatable
scenarios: 1) If "just" an accident the collapse of the bridge
in Minnesota is yet one more example of the continuing, internal collapse
of this country, as it rots from the inside out, due to official, Malign
Neglect. 2) If perchance the ruling "elites"did drop this bridge,
then it is just one more example of their insidious treachery. Pick your
poison, and in the end does it even much matter? Either way the bridge
is down, and catastrophically so. We have entered a new period in this
country -- the old is vanishing in front of our eyes, and something new
and sinister is heaving into view. Will we be passive consumers of the
planned ugliness that is coming, will we acquiesce in its awfulness and
permit it to establish itself? Or will we instead take joint, concerted
action to create our own reality, on better, more creative, humane, positive,
life-enhancing and constructive terms?
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- That is the choice we face.
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- What will our decision be?
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