RATS

July 16, 2002 / / 11 Comments

It boggles my mind the things the American people are allowing Shrubya and his cohort of ratbastards to do to their once-great nation. It’s sad, and somehow seems inevitable. Decades ago, when I gleefully predicted the implosion of America as a result of the rot at its very core, I never actually thought my predictions would come true!
Steve invites you to strap on the armband, don the brown shirt, and join in the Happy Fun Fascism Parade. Can I dob myself in for my UnAmerican activities? Will they have McDonalds at the labour camps?

[Background here, and here (thanks, Bb) if you’re lost. The Sydney Morning Herald notes, mildly : “Historically, informant systems have been the tools of non-democratic states.” Now that’s comedy gold.]
Edit : Eeksy-Peeksy spoke recently, in his elegant way, about something tangentially related in Poland, which I was going to mention. Now seems like a good opportunity.

The Hundred Thousand Years War Q&A

July 3, 2002 / / 6 Comments

What is happening in Cro-Magnon Territory and the Neanderthal territories?
Cro-Magnon forces moved into key Neanderthal towns in the Big River Caves at the end of cold season to try to halt a series of suicide attacks on its citizens.
There were many casualties in the military operation which also sparked a wave of protests in the Neanderthal world and led Cro-Magnon Territory’s main ally, That Other Tribe, to call for killmaker withdrawals.
The action caused much hardship among Neanderthals and the militant rock-throwing campaign against Cro-Magnon Territory has continued since.
So how did the violence begin?
The Neanderthal intifada, or uprising, broke out at the end of The Long Cold Season When The Mammoths Died.
Analysts say the atmosphere at the time was ripe for an explosion. Neanderthal frustration that years of the peace process had failed to deliver their political aspirations was intensified by the failure of the Deep Cave summit in Hot Season.
Then Cro-Magnon hard-liner Arshon visited a site in Shared Hunting Grounds known to Neanderthal Shamen as the Noble Sanctuary and to Cro Magnon Ghost Talkers as Happy Killing Floor.
The Neanderthals viewed the visit as provocative because the hunting ground lies on territory captured by Cro-Magnons in the Grandfather war and is at the centre of the fierce dispute over the sovereignty of Shared Hunting Grounds. It ended in bloody clashes at the Shamen tents, which quickly spread through the occupied Neanderthal territories.
Correspondents say the visit was intended to underline the Cro Mag claim to the hunting ground and its holy sites.
What has happened to the peace process?
One of the weaknesses of the Father Times peace process was that it deliberately left the most difficult issues – the status of Shared Hunting Grounds, refugees and borders – until last, in the belief that this would make them easier to resolve.
These issues were finally discussed when the former Other Tribe Chief Clon made an all-out attempt to bring then Cro Mag Ghost Talker Ehurak and the Neanderthal leader Yasafat together at The Other Tribe’s long house.
An agreement was in sight, but talks broke down over failure to agree on the future of Shared Hunting Grounds and – to a lesser extent – the fate of Neanderthal refugees.
Cro-Magnon leaders believed they had been generous to the Neanderthals, while Neanderthal negotiators rejected the proposals as inadequate.
The two sides came even closer to agreement when they met during The Long Cold Season When The Mammoths Died. But this, too, ended in failure.
There has been very little progress on the diplomatic front since Arshon took possession of the Leader Bone more than a year ago.
He has accused his predecessor of offering the Neanderthals unacceptable concessions and that all Cro-Magnon Territory got in return was violence.
One of the biggest obstacles to final status agreement is the issue of Cro Mag settlements, and Arshon has long been seen as a champion of the settlers’ cause.
The Neanderthal Authority currently controls most of The Big River but less than 40% of the Big River Caves, in non-contiguous chunks that are dotted with Cro-Magnon settlements. The Neanderthals believe there can only be a purely Neanderthal state if the settlements are dismantled.
Why are both sides locked in this violence?
Arshon says there is no room for dialogue as long as violence continues. He said the Ehurak Government tried to negotiate under hails of rocks for several months but to no avail.
The Cro-Magnon leader has shown a resolutely tough paw in his dealings with the Neanderthals – but commentators say his policies have support among most Cro-Magnons.
They support the government’s view that Cro-Magnon Territory is exercising its right to self-defence in the face of attacks from Neanderthal militants on Cro-Magnon civilians and defence forces.
The government accuses Yasafat of failing to contain militant groups like Big Stones Brotherhood and Neanderthal Ghost Eaters which carry out many of the attacks. But analysts are now increasingly arguing that Yasafat is in no position to control them.
The Neanderthals say militant attacks on Cro-Magnon Territory are inevitable as long as there is no satisfactory Neanderthal state.
The militant group BSB has pledged to escalate its activities and intensify the armed struggle against Cro-Magnon Territory. The group’s popularity has soared recently, following the demise of the peace process and general sense of despair.
Could the peace process be revived?
Any common ground that appeared to exist at the Other Tribe’s long house has been all but extinguished by more than a hundred thousand years of fighting.
The only thing that could make the two sides move is outside pressure.
There is hope that proposals put forward by more evolved branches of the species for peace and normalisation between Cro-Magnon Territory and its neanderthal neighbours could provide the much-needed momentum.
Under the terms of the proposal which was debated after The Long Cold Season When The Mammoths Died, Cro-Magnon Territory would withdraw from territory occupied in Grandfather Times and a Neanderthal state would be created with its capital in East Shared Hunting Grounds.
In return, Neanderthal nations would give Cro-Magnon Territory full diplomatic relations, including security guarantees, trade relations, animal skins, and some women.
But this plan will only be taken seriously by Arshon if it is actively promoted by the Other Tribes Big Chief Geush.
So far, the homo sapiens proposal has not led to any moves to halt the violence and revive the peace process.
[Search and replace liberties taken with this article.]

We won't deny our consciences

June 18, 2002 / / No Comments
Let it not be said that people in the United States did nothing when their government declared a war without limit and instituted stark new measures of repression. The signers of this statement call on the people of the US to resist the policies and overall political direction that have emerged since September 11 and which pose grave dangers to the people of the world.
We believe that peoples and nations have the right to determine their own destiny, free from military coercion by great powers. We believe that all persons detained or prosecuted by the US government should have the same rights of due process. We believe that questioning, criticism, and dissent must be valued and protected. We understand that such rights and values are always contested and must be fought for.
We believe that people of conscience must take responsibility for what their own governments do – we must first of all oppose the injustice that is done in our own name. Thus we call on all Americans to resist the war and repression that has been loosed on the world by the Bush administration. It is unjust, immoral and illegitimate. We choose to make common cause with the people of the world.
We too watched with shock the horrific events of September 11. We too mourned the thousands of innocent dead and shook our heads at the terrible scenes of carnage – even as we recalled similar scenes in Baghdad, Panama City and, a generation ago, Vietnam. We too joined the anguished questioning of millions of Americans who asked why such a thing could happen.
But the mourning had barely begun, when the highest leaders of the land unleashed a spirit of revenge. They put out a simplistic script of “good v evil” that was taken up by a pliant and intimidated media. They told us that asking why these terrible events had happened verged on treason. There was to be no debate. There were by definition no valid political or moral questions. The only possible answer was to be war abroad and repression at home.
[more]

That there is such a ragtag group of signatories (Kasey Casem? Starhawk?) is perhaps more revealing than anything else about this declaration of dissent. Still, heartening, and hopefully not totally pointless.
In light of recent revelations and discussions about covert plans (which in reality have been about as covert as a waterbuffalo in an elevator (a little teeny glass elevator, the kind that go up the outside of the building)) and first strikes : Would you sign?
Edit : If you’re still not sure whether you’d sign or not, have a look at this book-in-progress by Douglas Kellner. Might help.

[This] is an experiment in writing contemporary history as it evolves, circulating a first-draft condensed from various media sources. As more material comes out, I plan to keep up with new information and various interpretations of the emerging Terror War and New Barbarism to help produce an eventual book on the topic, one that documents the conjunction of Bush’s theft of Election 2000, the September 11 terror attacks, and the consequent Bush administration responses and their global ramifications.
[more]

[via the perpetually humbling wood s lot]

What's Going on?

June 15, 2002 / / 15 Comments

Godwin’s Law aside, this, compared and contrasted with this, despite attempts to debunk it here, is a little scary, I’d venture…
One poster on the (admittedly shrill) forum linked above says :

If you can’t stand up and silently protest in this country without being led away by police, the game is over for America.

I would be inclined to agree.

Parse this, if you can

June 5, 2002 / / 1 Comment

“Some worry that it is somehow undiplomatic or impolite to speak the language of right and wrong. I disagree. Different circumstances require different methods, but not different moralities.”

A friendly suggestion : How about you take your ‘moral clarity’ and shove it up your ass, you simpleminded sack of sh-t? How’s that for clarity? Might be immoral to use such words, might even be wrong to call the Most Powerful Man In The World a simpleminded sack of sh-t, but I’ve got to call a spade a spade, you know?
I realize of course that overwhelming evidence would indicate that the Resident couldn’t string together a foreign policy more complicated than ‘George not like, George hate, George kill’, and that it would seem that most of the time (‘Do you have blacks there too?’) he’s not even sure whether that’s a horseshoe, a handgrenade or a crucifix he has jammed up his fundament, and further that the words he was reading in the passage quoted above were written by someone else.
Almost certainly that someone is not quite so simpleminded as Our Hero, and painfully aware that simple parables of White Hats and Black Hats will make Georgie clap his hands in glee and stop touching his penis quite so often, frantic as he is to reassure himself that it’s actually there. That speechwriter, whether he believes the words he writes or not, dutifully churns out on demand these slightly-veiled calls for Blood! Murder! (and this year’s top of the monkeykiller hit parade) Vengeance! that get the crowds on their feet.
You hasten the end of us all, and guarantee by raising the stakes the deaths of uncounted thousands, soon or later, when you put words like that in the mouth of the beady-eyed, murderous commander-in-thief, you speechwriting scum. People, simple common f–king people listen to that drivel, and believe it, and take up arms and kill after they hear it. God damn you to hell.
[Excised : A wish for the painful death of the speechwriter in question. I get carried away sometimes.]
Does that make me a bad person? Not to a utilitarian, perhaps.
(Edit : Even the Please Tell Me What To Do, Daddy brigades at MeFi are unimpressed, or silent. Rusty dreams a beautiful, optimistic, doomed dream, though, which is worth hoping for, at least.)

We've been here before

June 4, 2002 / / 16 Comments

Pravda quotes a US soldier who apparently took part in ground engagements in Eastern Afghanistan :

“We were told there were no friendly forces,” said Guckenheimer, an assistant gunner with the 10th Mountain Division at Fort Drum. “If there was anybody there, they were the enemy. We were told specifically that if there were women and children to kill them.”

If more mechanical and less evocative, this puts me in mind of the following quote from one of the soldiers who were present at what is being referred to as the ‘Incident at Nogun-Ri’ during the Korean War, which I talked about here a few months ago :

“There was a lieutenant screaming like a madman, fire on everything, kill ’em all,” recalls 7th Cavalry veteran Joe Jackman, “I didn’t know if they were soldiers or what. Kids, there was kids out there, it didn’t matter what it was, eight to 80, blind, crippled or crazy, they shot ’em all.”

Killing civilians : a long, noble and continuing tradition in America, as elsewhere, it would seem.
Edit : The Pravda piece is a mirror of an article from the Ithaca Journal, here.

Naked Apes

May 27, 2002 / / 3 Comments

I’m struck once again at how even the most literate, erudite and presumably intelligent of thinkers, no matter where they lie on the political map, can be depended upon, when cornered, to bare their yellowed tusks and, with frenzied screeching and flinging of their own excrement, reveal their true simian nature.
Not crack!
This little internecine sh-tfight is instructive to read, while also being sad, pathetic and so completely unnecessary as to bring tears of somedamnthing to my eye. It’s no wonder that America (and it can be said of other nations, a multitude of them, I know) has been ruled by this endless procession of greedy, evil bastards for so long. How sad and ineffectual are those who agree on a common enemy, and then proceed to destroy one another in an argument about how to defend themselves against that enemy.
And this fandangled new personal publishing revolution (read that in a 1950’s TV-huckster, over-amped voice) in which we’re all so proud of participating has at times given me some hope that this time ‘it might be different, really it might,’ but the recent pointed and pointless screeching and feces-hurling in blogland, sparked by differences of opinion about the bloodthirsty tribal warfare of yet another gang of naked apes busily shedding one another’s blood over in the eastern mediterranean… this has left me less optimistic than I once was. How sad and pathetic it is to agree that killing is wrong, then become so involved in arguing about who deserves to die less that we do nothing to stop that killing.
Do I feel smug and superior in pointing this out? No, I do not. Mostly, I feel tired.

The revolution will not be blogged.

It's a damn good question

May 24, 2002 / / 1 Comment

The question on the table is : ‘who do you believe‘?
My answer is : not even my own mother.
Edit : Stuff like this – “As U.S. officials continued to issue warnings yesterday about the possibility of attacks by suicide bombers and terrorists, the White House quietly acknowledged that the threats are not urgent and that they are partly motivated by political objectives” – makes me considerably less inclined to believe The Little President That Could and his pack of weasels, though. How about you? Is it excessively hyperbolic to call them worthless scum?
No, no, I didn’t think so.
[via the usual suspects]

Kiss me Noam, you old fool

May 22, 2002 / / 2 Comments

People love to hate cranky old uncle Chomsky, and it’s no surprise really, with the stuff he goes around saying in these dissent-discouraging times. This recent CBC interview with him shows him in fine form, talking about the same things he usually does, jumping up and down on the head of the interviewer, uttering the word ‘No’ more times that I’ve ever seen anyone say it before in a single conversation. For what it’s worth, though, I agree with many of the things he has to say about governments, and about the press. I’m aware that’s an unpopular thing to say, and that many consider him a loon.
Something like this, though, doesn’t seem to me to be the words of a lunatic. On the contrary, it seems quite lucid indeed :

“What I’m saying is that as long as people, ordinary people, are able to free themselves from the doctrinal controls imposed on them by their self-appointed betters and mentors, as long as they’re able to do this, they’ll continue to be able to struggle for peace and justice and freedom and limitations on violence, and constraints on power, as they’ve been doing for hundreds of years. And I don’t see any end to that. Where it’ll end up in the long run, I’d tell you where I’d like it to, but I wouldn’t even dream about that.
The immediate problem is to free ourselves from the shackles imposed, very consciously, by the kind of people you’re talking about. Who don’t want the facts to be known. And for very good reasons. Because if people know the facts they aren’t going to tolerate them. So therefore you have to prevent them from knowing. You have to indoctrinate them, you have to tell them stories about how we’re really good guys, and if we use violence, it must be for the general good because we represent the course of history.”

[more]
Speaking of hypocrisy, and the Chomster does, this piece covers well-trodden ground, but worth a read nonetheless, perhaps :

“Hypocrisy, as La Rochefoucauld observed, is the homage that vice pays to virtue. In the case of Bush, campaign lies are the homage that Republican sloganeering paid to the popularity of Democratic ideology. […] As ideological fraud, then, George W. Bush remains in a class by himself. It’s understandable why he does it: Democrats’ domestic positions are basically popular. But why does he get away with it? He pulls it off, I think, for several reasons (of which September 11 is fairly far down the list). “

[more]
Are we in the weblogging community shouldering the burden of that responsibility to preserve the right of people to know the facts, as traditional media increasing fails in its role as watchdog?
I cetainly don’t know. But that should be clear, sporting as I do a tagline like the truth can blow me.
Edit : An interesting exchange between the Chomster and Christopher Hitchens.

War on Intelligence

May 19, 2002 / / 2 Comments
Walters admits that the nearly $1 billion spent on anti-drug messages needs to be better used, and promises to refocus the campaign. Congress is expected soon to consider re-authorizing the $18 billion-per-year National Office of Drug Control Policy activities.”

Turns out the TV ads that these twisted, evil, moralistic little icepickers (to lift an epithet from Mojo Nixon) have been coming up with are actually encouraging kids to do drugs. That is sad and beautiful.
Sad only because the One Billion Dollars they spent on f–king advertisements telling people what they should and should not put into their very own personal bodies could actually have gone towards doing some good in the world. How many lives could 18 billion dollars save if it were spent on health care for the 40 million Americans who don’t have any, for example?
More Mojo :

“We’re gonna have a war on drugs?
a war on drugs…
We oughta have a war on war, suckers
We oughta have a war on this senseless condominium new car
shopping mall hell…”

A few numbers

April 16, 2002 / / No Comments

US defense budget (fiscal 2003) : US$379.3 billion
Amount to be withheld from UN Population Fund : US$34 million
Ratio : 11,155/1
Potential consequences, according to UNFPA officials, of The Resident’s decision to withhold last year’s UNFPA funds and to zero out the agency in fiscal 2003 : 2 million unwanted pregnancies, 800,000 induced abortions, 4,700 maternal deaths, 77,000 infant and child deaths.
Happy fun! Good times, beautiful people! Keep on rockin’ in the Free World!

In the twilight

March 24, 2002 / / No Comments
In the twilight of the Cold War, the United States spent millions of dollars to supply Afghan schoolchildren with textbooks filled with violent images and militant Islamic teachings, part of covert attempts to spur resistance to the Soviet occupation.
The primers, which were filled with talk of jihad and featured drawings of guns, bullets, soldiers and mines, have served since then as the Afghan school system’s core curriculum. Even the Taliban used the American-produced books, though the radical movement scratched out human faces in keeping with its strict fundamentalist code.

This, via this worthwhile Metafilter thread. Funny old world.
And while I’m at it, via American Samizdat : the Hall of Shame. Not really surprising, is it, how those who raise their fists and call for war so often seem to be those who’ve never actually seen it?

“In Dr. Johnson’s famous dictionary patriotism is defined as the last resort of a scoundrel. With all due respect to an enlightened but inferior lexicographer I beg to submit that it is the first.”
– Ambrose Bierce

And for good measure, how about this?

MECCA, March 22, 2005 — President Osama B. Laden today called for a “regime change” in the United States, saying the military dictatorship led by unelected strongman George Walker Bush “is an ever-present threat to world peace.”
Speaking in Mecca at a rally marking his first year in power, the Saudi president said that “issues of national sovereignty are beside the point when the civilized world is faced with the possibility of untold carnage. Bush has long been developing weapons of mass destruction. He has announced his willingness to use them. He refuses to abide by international treaties to curtail these tools of evil. I will not wait on events while dangers gather. We must act.” [more…]

Get Your Torture On

March 14, 2002 / / No Comments

The Guardian : The US has been secretly sending prisoners suspected of al-Qaida connections to countries where torture during interrogation is legal, according to US diplomatic and intelligence sources.
“After September 11, these sorts of movements have been occurring all the time,” a US diplomat told the Washington Post. “It allows us to get information from terrorists in a way we can’t do on US soil.”
By torturing them.

It's like potato chips

February 26, 2002 / / No Comments

It’s like potato chips : once you start, it’s hard to stop.
Item the First : Lying is harder when the medium has a memory.
How about this one, kids?
Cached version at archive.org. Interesting that the live version is no longer available. [via ntk.net] (Followup : a call for his resignation is here.)
Item the Second : Cry havoc and let slip the dogs of clue!
Dvorak has a go at the Cluetrainers, and a very caustic go it is, indeed. “This means nothing …. Get over yourselves.” Found it via this Metatalk thread, which is hopefully going to be interesting. Regardless, I suspect this is going to be all over the place over the next couple of days…it will be interesting to see what Messrs Locke, Weinberger, Searls have to say in their defense. It’s always good to see a little pushback against accepted wisdom, but Mr Dvorak is certainly cranky about something…

So I sez to da guy… comments.

Bush Seeks To Restrict Probes

February 24, 2002 / / No Comments

Bush Seeks To Restrict Probes Of Sept. 11
Time for another distraction, deflect some attention, get the fist-in-the-air brigade worked up again…Anyone want to give me odds on how soon the bombs starting falling somewhere new? He promised they weren’t going to invade North Korea. That’s good enough for me, damn it!
Interlude :
I try to steer my way clear of politics. I try to, and for the last dozen years or so, I’ve claimed to be ‘apolitical’. Just wanted out of it. I remember now why I deliberately chose to be so. It’s exhausting, when you start to dig, start to work up that red-orange glow of indignation, start to think carefully about the manipulative pap that we’re fed by our leaders (elected or otherwise) and their lapdogs. Indignation turns to fury, and you slowly begin to turn into one of those people that sit at Metafilter, obsessively hitting Refresh on any political thread, keen to tear down anyone who disagrees with them, while their marriage falls apart and the pizza box in the corner sprouts new life forms not previously found in any taxonomy or textbook. Not to name any names, of course.
Disclaimer : My relationships are just fine, thank you, and I rarely get to have pizza these days.
Not only is it exhausting to be in a state of near-perpetual anger, but it’s unhealthy, and it annoys other people. There are old friends of mine that I no longer speak to, in part because of their one-note perpetual politicizing of Every Damn Thing. All The Time. It’s grating, and unnecessary, and reduces your life to a constant protest, usually against things over which you have no influence whatsoever. I’d rather have my life be a celebration, a paean.
This excerpt from the Tao Te Ching (recently quoted by Richard at Notes From A Life In Progress) is perhaps appropriate here :

Do you want to improve the world?
I don’t think it can be done.
The world is sacred.
It can’t be improved.
If you tamper with it, you’ll ruin it.
If you treat it like an object, you’ll lose it.
There is a time for being ahead,
a time for being behind;
a time for being in motion,
a time for being at rest;
a time for being vigorous,
a time for being exhausted;
a time for being safe,
a time for being in danger.
The Master sees things as they are,
without trying to control them.
She lets them go their own way,
and resides at the center of the circle.
Tao te Ching : 29
trans. Stephen Mitchell

But there comes a point, when it feels necessary to speak out, even if no one hears your voice. At least your conscience will be clear, and if someone does hear you, and agrees, perhaps you’ve done some good. Some days, lately, I feel like I am somehow failing myself if I don’t point out the latest falsehood, the latest manipulative rewrite of the facts, the most recent evil perpetrated on the world by the Evil Empire. Other days, I just feel like pointing to Ethel. I’m funny like that, and I make no excuses.
Everyone loves to quote this one, too, but that’s not gonna stop me : “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” – Edmund Burke
Interlude Ends.
Back to the Bombing The Innocent Sweepstakes : well-timed little gems like this would seem to make their intentions pretty clear, to me at least…
Edit : This is good. Laugh, cry, rinse, repeat.

Odds? comments.

I promised myself…

February 22, 2002 / / No Comments

I promised myself I wasn’t going to talk about the visit of a certain lying, half-wit sack of dung to Korea recently, as my temper might get the best of me, and I might accidentally let slip pejoratives like ‘lying‘ and ‘half-wit‘ and ‘sack of dung‘.
But I was just listening to Radio Canada International, and even they are toeing the line of bullsh-t that the American propaganda machine is spewing out. I just heard “President Bonobo (bit of static there, I think that’s what they said) will ask Jiang Ze Min to speak to Kim Jong Il about returning to the negotiating table.” What egregious, infuriating nonsense. The Americans were the ones who walked away, they are the ones playing games of brinkmanship and provoking the North Koreans, they are the ones who are most responsible for the ‘proliferation of weapons of mass destruction’.
The last time I talked about this, I linked to these two articles from the local English-language media, both of which made it quite clear that the North, weeks ago, were indicating their willingness to sit down and talk. But acknowledging that fact would get in the way of Pretzelboy’s scripted bluster about the ‘axis of evil’, now, wouldn’t it? History is being rewritten at the very moment it happens, these days.
f–k. I know he’s just reading a script – I know. I shouldn’t get upset about it. But what do they think – that no one’s watching? Are they so certain that they can just go about their merry way and no one will catch them in the lies? Has this game degenerated to such an extent that there’s no longer anything any of us can actually do, other than piss and moan, while these bastards flush us all down the toilet?
Update : This is classic. Laughing, crying, it’s all the same sometimes. Watch this (Warning : Realvideo file), and tell me this Resident knows what he’s doing. He says, to the Japanese Diet – “My trip to Asia begins here in Japan for an important reason. It begins here because for a century and a half now, America and Japan have formed one of the great and enduring alliances of modern times. From that alliance has come an era of peace in the Pacific.”

Comments? comments.

President Chimp

January 16, 2002 / / No Comments

This is old news, by the way. Just on my mind.
Ah, President Chimp. Always willing to take time out from Defending the Free World, snorting cocaine off the bellies of teenage hookers (Note : this is an unsubstantiated statement. I have no proof. Honest. None.) and passing out after swilling too much beer choking on pretzels to wave a finger and lay waste to nearly five years of slow, careful diplomacy. A Korea Herald Op/Ed piece today lays it out in some detail :

“Unfortunately, inter-Korean relations began to wind down from the elation of the Kim-Kim summit talks in June 2000 when Bush was sworn in as U.S. president with a conservative mandate in January 2001. Pyongyang’s ties with Washington also began to become frigid after Bush voiced strong suspicions about Kim Jong-il in his later talks with President Kim in Washington.
After several months of reviewing U.S. relations with North Korea, the Bush administration offered to have a comprehensive dialogue with Pyongyang, pledging to hold discussions “any time, any place, without preconditions.” But when Pyongyang was weighing the offer, terrorists with Islamic fanaticism attacked the United States on Sept. 11, which dampened the prospects of an early resumption of dialogue.
The United States is saying that despite the terrorist attacks, the offer of unconditional dialogue is still valid. In a move that makes it difficult for Pyongyang to accept the offer, Washington is also claiming that North Korea poses a potential threat to U.S. security both as what it calls a “rogue state” supporting terrorists and as a producer of weapons of mass destruction. “

I was living in Australia when President Kim Dae Jung visited North Korea. I watched on TV as he shook hands with Kim Jong-il, and sentimental bastard that I am, I misted up. The dangerous halfwit that is ostensibly at the American helm has perpetrated all manner of outrage on the world since his inauguration, and no doubt will continue to do so, and perhaps this particular arrogance is low on the scale of importance. And I will grant that it is true that the regime in North Korea cannot be trusted, and occasionally appear, if not completely whacked out, at least to have a very tenous grasp on reality.
But, while the Americans continue to play their games, another million children might die of starvation in the North when the next famine hits. Sure, it’s the fault of Kim Il Sung and his cartoonish son and the government they created. But if there were an opportunity to hasten its demise, or at least soften its hardline, and prevent those deaths, and it were so clearly within their power, don’t you think the Americans could at least give it a shot? No, of course not. Foolish of me to think that, dreamer that I am.
A brief summary : with the blessings of the previous US Administration, Kim Dae Jung (who I repeat, for the benefit of those who have started following all this recently, has been referred to as the “Asian Nelson Mandela” and has received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2000 for his ‘sunshine policy’ in attempting to end the 50-year war between North and South Korea) embarked on a mission over the first 4 years of his presidency to open a dialogue with North Korea. Almost immediately after Bush was sworn in, he made it clear that, Peace Prize or no Peace Prize, there was no way that he’d support further efforts toward ending hostilities on the peninsula.
It is, of course, no coincidence that there are 44,000 US troops here, and peace, let alone reunification, would leave them without much to do.
Several months after Bush’s initial meeting with Kim Dae Jung, the American administration offered to meet with North Korea unconditionally out of one side of its mouth, while proclaiming out of the other that they pose a threat to U.S. security as a “rogue state”. This virtually guarantees that North Korea, historically hypersensitive to hyperbole like this, will not participate in any talks, let alone propose them. A fait accompli.
Quiz : The corner that the Bush regime now has South Korea, their ally, backed into, is a minor miracle of :
a) Diplomatic sleight-of-hand
b) realpolitik
c) clear thinking
d) cheese, glorious cheese
Vote now, vote often!
Update : Sorry, when I posted this last night, I forgot to add option (e) Pure, unmitigated evil. Thanks for playing.
Comments?