Artvoice: predictions for the year to come.

The Buffalo weekly, Artvoice, has a feature, Predictions for the Year to Come.

"Last year, we asked a dozen or so friends and contributors to offer their predictions for 2010 and the decade to come. We’ve done the same thing this year, but we’d be remiss if we didn’t provide some sort of scorecard to measure last year’s prognostications."

One of the people they asked was Bruce Beyer, compassionate peace activist, former exile and draft resister from the Vietnam War. This is what he had to say:

My precognitive abilities have never been very sharp. I’ve rarely voted for a political candidate who won an election or chosen an issue to support which has prevailed. Nevertheless, I am flattered to be asked to make predictions for the coming new year even though I find little hope in making them.

I predict:

The acronym IWOT will join the lexicon of the mass media as a way of describing American interventionist foreign policy going back as far as the Gulf War and Somalia and extending into further incursions into Pakistan and Iran. No longer will I be able to object to the war in Afghanistan or the occupation of Iraq, rather I will face the daunting task of opposing the International War On Terrorism.

Thousands of veterans of the IWOT will be revealed to be suffering the long term effects of war. I believe that IWOT veterans will become an increasing demographic in the makeup of our homeless, hospitalized, and prison populations.

The number of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans afflicted with traumatic brain injuries will dramatically increase the longer we allow ourselves to be manipulated by fear. I believe that disability claims submitted by these vets will peak in the year 2040 - unless, of course the war drags on for far longer than I care to predict.

The military will continue to order thousands of our sons and daughters to multiple deployments despite alarming increases in the number of suicides and reported PTSD claims.

The Veterans Administration will spend $42.2 billion over the next 10 years to treat Vietnam veterans who were exposed to Agent Orange sprayed over the lush landscape of the Indochina peninsula. This expenditure takes place more than 40 years after the end of the war.

An increasing number of Americans will subscribe to the belief that “war is peace” and will come to believe that “broke is rich.” How’s the war economy working for you?

Finally, on a local note, I predict that Public Works Commissioner Stephan Stepniak and his duplicitous duplicitous Deputy Commissioner Andy Rabb will bury the issue of a small East Side children’s playground so deep in legal razzmatazz and phony environmental issues that children in the Emslie/Bristol neighborhood will be left without swings, slides and seesaws.

Read more: http://artvoice.com/issues/v9n51/year_ahead_predictions#ixzz190lm5Ci3