Of rats and men

Or, in vino veritas

By Capt. Fogg

When I watched Dennis Rodman's drunken rant the other day, I was astonished, dumfounded and amazed that none of the commentary included the compelling, obvious, unavoidable observation that the man was dead drunk: smashed, stewed, tanked, wasted, three sheets to the wind and shitfaced. It was probably more obvious to the sheepish players sitting next to him who were, I'm sure, worried about any open flame in such hazardous atmosphere. If we needed any further reminder of the somewhat erratic journalistic and public tendency to forgive athletes for their often disgusting outbursts, perhaps here we have it.

Nonetheless, we now have the inevitable apology from the man who might not give a rat's ass about being a rat and an ass himself but just might respond to worries about the financial consequences on those too rare occasions of sobriety. I'm not expecting any such retraction from the Reverend Jesse "Hymietown" Jackson, who not only couldn't find the strength to criticize the friend and defender of a grizzly mass murderer and psychotic tyrant, but still defends him. "I had been drinking," says Rodman through a face full of hardware. No shit! reverberates throughout the cosmos.

Is it time at long last for America to examine the way it selects people for elevation to the status of hero, prophet, and role model for our children -- examine the reasons we give to explain our support or condemnation? 

Shhhh -- what's that sound? No shit! says the universe.

(Cross-posted from Human Voices.)

Jeremi Suri calls for war

By Frank Moreas 

Jeremi Suri wrote a remarkable op-ed in The New York Times on Friday, "Bomb North Korea, Before It's Too Late." What I find so interesting is that Suri is not some Fox News shouter. He seems to be more or less a liberal, or at least what passes for one in modern America. He is also a history professor at University of Texas, Austin -- despite what many people seem to think, one of the best schools in the world.

Let me see if I can break down his argument: (1) North Korea is going to launch a missile; (2) we should bomb it first; (3) Obama should state that this attack on a sovereign country is defensive; and (4) we will never have trouble with North Korea again! He also "knows" lots of stuff: "precise satellite reconnaissance" tells us where the missile is; "civilians face serious danger" from North Korea; the strike would "preserve regional stability"; it is "unlikely that Mr. Kim would retaliate by attacking South Korea"; and most shockingly of all, "the Chinese government would do everything it could to prevent" a counter attack from North Korea.

Suri goes on to admit that, well, maybe North Korea would counter attack, just to save face. But then he write -- and this is important -- "Under these unfortunate circumstances, the United States and its allies would still be better off fighting a war with North Korea today, when the conflict could still be confined largely to the Korean Peninsula." You got that? He's offering Bush's great Iraq War justification, "We're fighting them there, so we don't have to fight them here." I am shocked that an otherwise reasonable person would make this argument today.

Read more »

North Korea agonistes

By Carl

A true test of a nation's mettle comes not in how it deals with "existential threats" (i.e., a force equal to or greater than its own) but with the niggling trouble-makers.

Thus enters North Korea:

SEOUL, South Korea — South Korea's defense chief said on Thursday that North Korea had moved to its east coast a missile with a "considerable" range, but that it was not capable of reaching the United States. The disclosure came as the Communist North's military warned that it was ready to strike American military forces with "cutting-edge smaller, lighter and diversified nuclear strike means."

That last likely should be taken with a grain of salt, but clearly not discounted completely. We know they've been working on a nuclear capability for some time now, they have a reactor that is not hooked up to the power grid (so we know it’s not for energy), and they had been in touch with our old fiend, Abdul Qadeer "A.Q." Khan, who likely advanced their ambitions by several decades.

Too, North Korea has been gearing up for some time to "battle" the United States and South Korea.

I put "battle" in quotes for a reason: there's significant cause to believe that Kim Jong-Un is saber-rattling not for international purposes but in order to clamp down dissent domestically. Precious little news of the North ever really gets out, so we have to infer a lot, but here's my thinking in support of this notion.

Read more »

One of these is wrong

By Carl 

Either North Korea successfully placed a "weather satellite" in pole-to-pole orbit around the earth or it's spinning wildly out of control and could crash at any moment.

We report, you duck and cover.

This story is less important for the content -- nearly every nation on the planet, including Russia but not China, have forcefully condemned the launch -- and more important for the interesting spin (pardon the pun) the US is putting on it.

Let's assume for a moment that, indeed, the satellite is wildly out of control. So the U.S. is warning the world to keep an eye out. If this was confirmed by anyone else (South Korea is closely tracking the launch, and even picked up the first stage as it splashed down for further examination,) then the US is prudently advising the world of a potential hazard, much like the US warned about SpaceLab back in the '70s, and Russia about its satellite in 2009.

But there's been no independent confirmation. Which makes the U.S. statement curious, to say the least.

So now let's assume it's all smoke. What is the process for making such a statement in the first place?

Read more »

Sucker bets

By Carl 

Don't be fooled by this story. 

The markets didn't tank because of Kim's death. Markets never tank because of bad or even good news like the death of a tyrant. They tank on uncertainty as investors pull their money out of riskier investments and into more stable ones.

Kim's death created next to zero uncertainty. Yes, his son, the Great Successor, is an unknown quantity, but ask yourself this: could he be any worse for the world than his father? Could he be any worse for his own people than Kim Jong-Il?

No.

Markets also tank when market makers decide it's time to manipulate the market, usually under the guise of a story like this. Remember, the smart money is much smarter than the market, barring an absolute calamity like 9/11 (and even then, the mystery of put calls on American and United airline stocks has never been fully vetted*).

Smart money has already sussed out the obvious weaknesses in the current market and is now focusing on upcoming weaknesses. The age of instantaneous information has made the markets grossly unfair to the average investor unless they can afford access to people with the special talent and/or technology to read it.

Of course, those people are running hedge funds (although even there, the hoi polloi have infested and polluted the pure stream of profit).

My guess? There's some bad news on the retail side of things, a guess that will be reinforced today if the markets continue a drift downward. Last Saturday was the last full Saturday ahead of the Christmas holiday, a day that traditionally sees shoppers out in droves. 

They simply weren't there. While sales were up for the week, the season itself has had fits and starts in bricks-and-mortar stores. That's still a major factor in retail, but its also a major factor in commercial real estate, restaurant business, local gasoline sales, and other businesses dependent on that damned shopping mall.

It's Tuesday. Markets don't like Tuesdays.

(Cross-posted to Simply Left Behind.) 

* I know the article says the trades were investigated and cleared, but here's the thing: why those stocks, why that day, and why haven't similar articles created similar spikes in options trading?

Sarah Palin: "We've got to stand with our North Korean allies."

By Michael J.W. Stickings

I'm sorry for not blogging the past few days. I've been a bit under the weather.

But I can always count on Sarah Palin to pull me back in...

Yes, Sarah Palin, the most amazing living American, who, appearing on Glenn Beck's radio show today -- where she knows she won't be asked any tough questions and where she can pretty much say whatever she wants without being challenged -- made a rather significant gaffe:

Co-host: How would you handle a situation like the one that just developed in North Korea? [...]

Palin: But obviously, we've got to stand with our North Korean allies. We're bound to by treaty –

Co-host: South Korean.

Palin: Eh, yeah. And we're also bound by prudence to stand with our South Korean allies, yes.

Now, Think Progress's Alex Seitz-Wald is right that "malapropisms can and should be forgiven for frequent public speakers." Everyone makes mistakes. Think about Joe Biden, for example, who frequently needs to extract his foot from his mouth.

But Biden's problem is that he is sometimes too honest (for a politician) or just says embarrassing things. In Palin's case, her problem is that she's lazy and unserious. Time and time again, what she reveals is that she doesn't think, let alone think seriously, about... well, about pretty much anything other than the marketing of the Palin brand.

Think back, for example, to that Katie Couric interview during the '08 campaign. As I put it back then, "[h]ere's Palin, running for vice president, on the national stage, saying silly and stupid things and at times unable even to answer Couric's questions in any coherent, let alone meaningful, way, and showing a complete lack of experience, engagement, expertise, and even basic understanding of the issues." Whether it was her comment that she had foreign policy experience because Alaska is close to Russia, her general incoherence in response any and every policy question, her inability to name a single Supreme Court case, her cluelessness on the separation of church and state, her ridiculous claim that she'd been "hearing about" Biden's speeches since she was in the second grade, or her inability to name a single newspaper or magazine she reads, she exhibited not a tendency to commit malapropisms but a general ignorance about policy, politics, and, well, pretty much the entirety of the world around her.

Is it any wonder that Palin later accused of Couric "badgering" her, even though all Couric did was ask some fairly innocuous questions and, treading softly, give Palin every opportunity not to embarrass herself? Is it any wonder Palin recently said won't "waste time" with Couric if she runs in '12?

Nothing has changed. The Sarah Palin of '08 is the Sarah Palin of '10. The only difference is that her brand is bigger -- with a couple of best-selling (ghost-written) books, a (phony) reality TV show, an even bigger ego, a place of prominence in the Republican Party, and the tantalizing allure of a presidential run.

So back to her latest gaffe. Should we make anything of it? On its own, maybe not -- I suppose anyone can confuse North and South Korea in this context, and she probably knows that the North is the totalitarian one (surely she knows at least that?) -- but it's just one more piece of evidence that her public utterances are really just a string of talking points and ignorant assertions, that is, that she speaks without thinking, and without ever having thought about what she's talking about (including on rather serious issues like this one).

Is it any wonder the vast majority of Americans, including no less an authority than George W. Bush himself, think she's unqualified to be president?

This is what Jon Stewart was talking about

By Edward Copeland

To paraphrase the old Clinton campaign battle cry, "It's the media, stupid."

When the whole TSA media explosion began, it was one of those rare stories where all sides of the political spectrum seemed to agree from the likes of Jane Hamsher at Firedoglake to an assortment of conservative talking heads. It even had its own variation of "Don't tase me, bro" with "If you touch my junk, I'll have you arrested" before true horror stories came out of passengers who had colostomy bags broken and urine collection bags ruptured, women who had their prosthetic breasts which they got after cancer surgery moved around as if they were puzzle pieces, etc. (Read Capt. Fogg's post for some of the examples.) It all pointed to improper training. Well, cable can't stand something like that, so they had to find political sides.

Suddenly, the left decided the whole issue was raised by neocons and the right to try to use racial profiling, even though days earlier they agreed with some of the ridiculousness of the system that still doesn't really add to protecting our skies nine years after 9/11. What makes this completely nonsensical and infuriating is that there is real news going on.

North Korea attacks a South Korean island in the most serious engagement between the two countries since 1953 in the same week we learn that North Korea has built another uranium enrichment facility. Do cable news shows want to discuss the serious implications of this? They could even put a political spin on it, if they wanted, as Jon Kyl continues to oppose the latest START treaty for no apparent reason.

I just watched Ed Schultz throwing a conniption fit about racial profiling and the TSA and Rush Limbaugh and I just couldn't take it anymore and I did what I do more and more when I need reasonable news coverage: I watched PBS' the NewsHour. They, of course, had in-depth coverage of the Korean situation as well as the fake Taliban negotiator, a promising drug that might actually prevent HIV infection and details of the financial reform. In fact, they went an entire hour without mentioning the TSA or what the cable channels would have you believe is today's other story of monumental importance: Prince William and Kate Middleton have set a wedding date!

Of course, I'm not even mentioning MSNBC's corporate synergy with NBC by using its nonstop coverage of the TSA imbroglio to play the Saturday Night Live skit about it from last weekend about it (which they do every time there is a new SNL on) as if it's an essential part of illustrating the story. Chris Matthews went as far as calling it the greatest SNL sketch ever. It aired on Olbermann, Maddow and O'Donnell last night and Morning Joe, Hardball and Schultz today.

Politico's Mike Allen had a funny tweet earlier today pointing out that Good Morning America actually did lead with the North Korean situation, but the Today show actually chose to go with the wedding date. As Fran Lebowitz said in the wonderful documentary about her that premiered on HBO last night, Public Speaking, I remember when news used to mean information.

It's like Jon Stewart said during his interview with Rachel Maddow. Was the Juan Williams story really as important as cable news made it out to be? No, but it fit their narrative and their template. There are far too many important things going on both domestically and overseas to waste our times on this nonsense anymore. Our "leaders" in D.C. can play politics, but they've lost the ability and the interest to govern and none of the talking heads on either side have any role in governance. Enough.

Pyongyang politics

By Michael J.W. Stickings

In case you care:

North Korea has reshuffled its top leadership at a rare second session of its parliament, state media says.

Top leader Kim Jong-il attended the session, KCNA news agency said, after missing the previous one on 9 April.

Choe Yong-rim replaced Kim Yong-il as premier -- the official responsible for the communist state's economic policy.

State media also said that Mr Kim's brother-in-law, Chang Song-taek, was promoted to a powerful military post on the National Defence Commission.

Mr Chang is thought to be a backer of a hereditary succession involving Mr Kim's youngest son, Kim Jong-un.

Fascinating, in a way, insofar as it possibly has to so with succession plans, that is, with Kim planning for the post-Kim era by making sure his own people are in the right places.

Obviously, though, it would be for the best, not least for the brutalized North Korean people, if Kim's awful regime were to be obliterated, wiped off the face of the earth, somehow.

In the meantime, here's hoping North Korea gets crushed at the World Cup. (Though I'm sure the state-run media will find some excuse to explain away the crushing.)

Stuff to Read (3/24/10): North Korean cuisine and Canadian hate-speech laws

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Check these out:

-- Slate: "Kingdom Kim's Culinary Outposts," by Sebastian Strangio.

A fascinating look at North Korea's Pyongyang restaurant chain in Asia, open to the public but ruled over by Kim's state-run surveillance apparatus. The restaurants are apparently quite popular with South Koreans, with entertainment provided by "group[s] of pretty North Korean-born waitresses, who perform music and dance routines complete with tightly synchronized choreography reminiscent of North Korea's annual Mass Games." And what exactly do they serve? "Unlike North Korea proper, which is wracked by economic sanctions and constant famines, the food here is fresh and abundant. The menu features specialties such as Pyongyang 'cold noodle' (served encrusted with ice), barbecued cuttlefish, stringy dangogi (dog meat) soup, and countless variations on the kimchi theme, all served with glutinous white rice. Also available for sale are a series of North Korean products, including ginseng wine and some nameless bear 'product' promised to increase sexual virility." How do you say "Yum-O!" in Korean?

-- Salon: "The creepy tyranny of Canada's hate speech laws," by Glenn Greenwald.

Glenn rightly objects to Canada's objectionable (and wholly subjective) hate-speech laws, as I do (it's one thing about my country I really don't like), focusing on Ann Coulter's invitation to speak at the University of Ottawa, which essentially threatened her with legal action if she crossed the subjective line. "I think threatening someone with criminal prosecution for the political views they might express is quite 'hateful.' So, too, is anointing oneself the arbiter of what is and is not sufficiently 'civilized discussion' to the point of using the force of criminal law to enforce it... The hubris required to believe that you can declare certain views so objectively hateful that they should be criminalized is astronomical; in so many eras, views that were most scorned by majorities ended up emerging as truth." Be careful what you wish for, in other words, as the situation could reverse, the hunter become the hunted, the prosecutor become the prosecuted. (For more on Coulter's appearance in Ottawa yesterday, see Capt. Fogg.)

The Big Dawg!

By Carl

Long time readers of this blog, and friends of Actor212, know that I am in the tank for former President Bill "Greatest. President. Ever." Clinton.

So it should come as no surprise that today's column will be about The Big Dog:

You'd need to have a heart of stone not to be moved by the sight of Laura Ling and Euna Lee coming off that plane yesterday.

During those moments, as the two journalists embraced their families for the first time in nearly five months, questions about diplomacy and politics seemed to vanish. They were two human beings, caught at the wrong time in the wrong place, spared 12 years of hard labor and back on their native soil. Laura Ling's choked-up words of gratitude just added to the drama.

Clinton was asked in by his former Vice President (and former friend, apparently) and Nobel Prize Winner Al Gore, the employer of the two captured and convicted journalists. This was in an unofficial capacity, to be sure, although one suspects that a former President and husband of the current Secretary of State would not lightly be sent into enemy territory without a full briefing by the White House and State Department, as well as a shopping list to present to Kim Jong Il.

So we'll call it a happy accident of circumstance and individual. If anyone could bring North Korea to the table, it had to be Bill Clinton.

It's been interesting over the past thirty years to see how ex-Presidents handle themselves in private life. Clinton (and now Obama) is a relatively young man and has one would hope a long retirement to assist the nation he lifted out of economic depression and turmoil-- apart from his own character flaws, of course. He's committed to his foundation, which is trying to bring smart solutions to intractable problems like malaria and hunger.

Jimmy Carter, of course, has his Habitat for Humanity, building homes for the poor, bringing onwership and a sense of community to people without hope and with despair.

Even George H.W. Bush has been committed to foreign policy solutions and to being a globe trotting goodwill ambassador for American interests and enterprise. No, not precisely a giving cause, but it promotes some of the good qualities America has: a can-do attitude, a willingness to step in and grab an opportunity to fix things.

Ronald Reagan rode a horse. George W. Bush bought an apartment in Houston.

And now Bill Clinton is saving Americans. Whoda thunk?

It was done without threats, without sabre-rattling, without hectoring from the White House. It was done sotto voce, respecting that even a knuckleheaded moron like Kim deserves to be treated as the head of a sovereign nation, no matter how despicable we may perceive him or how much we would like to remove him from office.

Clinton, former President of the United States and ex-officio member of the State Department inner circle, apologized, or so it has been reported by the North Korean press agencies (the government, basically).

The diplomatic signals the trip sent-- for example, he was greeted at Pyongyang airport by North Korea's top negotiator on its nuclear program-- are intriguing and this mission does give the North a propaganda victory, to be sure. And an "apology" by a former President, however couched in vague generalizations and as subject to multiple interpretations as it may have been, is a small humiliation for a superpower.

After all, if you were held in a hostile nation whether you earned it or not, you'd want to know that your government isn't worried about saving face in its efforts to return you safely, and given the eight years we've spent calling this nation "evil" and Satanic and who knows what else, however true it was, we sort of deserved to have the chip on our shoulders knocked off.

I think the way this will play out is a good one for America, for Barack Obama and for the Clintons. After all, who hasn't seen the video of Laura Ling talking about her reaction when she saw Bill Clinton standing there in the room where she was told of the release? Who hasn't imagined, even briefly, that powerful feeling that Clinton appeared as Superman, rescuing her?

And I think it signals a willingness on the part of the Obama administration to continue the Clinton doctrine of engagement, but not appeasement, which worked so well in Iraq, and Iran (where we actually saw moderate presidents elected!), and even in Korea, where we saw actual progress towards a working agreement on nukes, albeit one that Kim tested regularly.

Which is a good thing.

(Cross-posted to Simply Left Behind.)

How the conservative critics of Clinton's trip to North Korea are both heartless and stupid

By Michael J.W. Stickings

I tweeted a bit on this last night, but I must stress again: The right's response to Bill Clinton's trip to North Korea to free the two American prisoners is simply appalling. Apparently, Krauthammer, Bolton, Morris, and their cruel and unusual ilk would rather Laura Ling and Euna Lee have rotted away in a totalitarian labour camp.

They claim, without actually knowing any of the specifics (they're full of idle, partisan speculation, as usual), that the U.S. must have given up too much to secure the prisoners' release (more on this below), but what they can't abide, and will not acknowledge, is that Clinton, Gore, and Obama actually succeeded. Had Bush done something like this, they would have kowtowed before his diplomatic ingenuity with genuflective obeisance. Forget, as Jon Stewart rightly noted last night (hilariously, and with indignation), that Iran-Contra was an egregious and illegal diplomatic quid pro quo. Forget that famous shot of Rumsfeld shaking hands with Saddam, or Reagan's support for any number of tyrannical regimes around the world. What these conservatives want us to believe is that Clinton's trip, along with whatever concessions were required to secure the release, was an expression of American weakness, and that, basically, the U.S. should have sacrificed the two women for the sake of its own image (and for the neocon agenda).

This is silly. First, what exactly do they think the U.S. gave up? A lot, according to Krauthammer, who doesn't have a clue (again, speculation). (What, did Clinton give them Mississippi or something? Did he promise them some of the Wall Street bailout money?) But is the U.S. really so incredibly weak that it can afford to give up nothing? Hardly. It is possible to negotiate from a position of strength, which is precisely how the U.S. ought to approach North Korea. (Indeed, diplomacy now would allow the U.S. to take a harder line, if necessary, down the road, especially if/when international support is required for sanctions.)

Second, did the trip grant North Korea any of the legitimacy in the international community it so desires? Look, whether we like it or not, North Korea is a sovereign state. Either you deal with that fact, or you don't. If you don't, all you have is your bullying righteous rhetoric, which won't do anything to help solve the problem, which is not just that North Korea is a totalitarian regime that brutalizes its own people but that it is a relatively powerful nuclear state with the capacity both to disseminate its technology to more formidable foes and to destabilize the region (not to mention to retaliate against South Korea and possibly Japan in the event of an American attack).

The only viable solution rests with serious diplomacy, and what is important here is not what Clinton may or many not have been authorized to give up (such as an apology) for the sake of the release but what a gesture of good will his trip may have signalled. Fred Kaplan has more on this at Slate. Just as Jimmy Carter's trip to Pyongyang in 1994 paved the way for the Agreed Framework, which could have been effective had Bush not dismantled it, Clinton's trip may pave the way for serious diplomacy between the U.S. and North Korea down the road. In that sense, the trip may have been not just about the release of the two journalists but about the bigger picture of relations with North Korea, specifically focused on its nuclear program. The release was obviously a good in and of itself, but there is now the possibility that the whole incident could have provided the opportunity for progress with respect to one of the world's most pressing crises.

No wonder conservatives are aghast. They want nothing to do with such diplomacy, for any sort of negotiation, let alone a one-on-one deal, between Washington and Pyongyang. But what other options are there? It will be diplomacy, and a deal, or it will be nothing -- and, if it's nothing, the problem only gets worse.

These conservatives aren't just heartless, they're stupid.

The quiet American

By Capt. Fogg

Normally, the rescue of captured Americans gets tremendous coverage; launching over-dramatized movies and mini-series and giving politicians a platform for unrestrained self adulation and patriotic buffoonery -- but not always. Sometimes we puff up a story until, like Jessica Lynch, the hero has enough of the lies and walks away. Sometimes we make the hero look like a traitor. Welcome to the ugliness of American tribalism.

When the rescue is facilitated by someone the Republicans need as a symbol of inaction and incompetence; when a political enemy walks into the lion's den and returns with two young women many had given up for lost, it becomes necessary to bring in the creeps. That starts with C and that rhymes with B and that stands for Bolton.

Perhaps it was the short notice that explains it. John Bolton went on the air almost instantly after Fox's report that Clinton along with Center for American Progress President and CEO John Podesta had pulled off a rather John Wayne gambit and had secured the immediate release of journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee who had been arrested for espionage and sentenced to hard labor in a very nasty North Korean prison. Perhaps it was simply the desperation one feels when one's enemy leaves one on the sidelines throwing tantrums like Yosemite Sam while the damsels in distress are rescued from the dragon. Perhaps the Republicans are simply jealous of the international prestige of Clinton when compared to any president since Eisenhower. Perhaps Bolton just had no other tools with which to try to dismantle the story and rebuild it as a straw man, but that's just what he did.

It's "rewarding bad behavior" said he. It's "negotiating with terrorists" said he. It's "legitimizing the regime." It's going to make them kidnap more Americans so they can get visits from ex-presidents. It's pathetic and childish and disgusting and embarrassing to listen to him, but then, he's only repeating the line the GOP has used for decades -- even while Saint Ronald was selling arms to someone at war with us.

Whatever one might say about Clinton and his liberal commandos, we got our fellow Americans out of there without beating our chests like impotent apes, waving our dicks and threatening nuclear annihilation unless the country disbands and turns its assets over to Halliburton. What could be more emasculating and humiliating to Republicans?



(Cross-posted from Human Voices.)

Bill Clinton's mission accomplished

By Capt. Fogg

George W. Bush may have looked good in his tailored flight suit with the sock stuffed in his pants when he pretended to have just made a carrier landing all by himself, but in terms of courage, the guy who denied having got drunk and crashed his car and walked away from National Guard duty couldn't, as Charles Bukowski used to say, carry Bill Clinton's balls in a paper bag.

President Clinton is now returning home with the two young American reporters being held at hard labor in that stinkhole North Korea. Mission Accomplished.

(Cross-posted from Human Voices.)

Hillary Clinton vs. North Korea

By Michael J.W. Stickings

I think it's a sign you're doing something right when the totalitarians in Pyongyang, always so busy brutalizing their own people and wallowing in their own pathetic self-aggrandizement, take the time to attack you personally.

And, clearly, Hillary Clinton is doing something right.

In response to Mrs. Clinton's suggestion that North Korea's leadership is like "small children and unruly teenagers and people who are demanding attention," a government spokesman called her (and one wonders what was lost in the translation of such inanity) a "funny lady" and "by no means intelligent": "Sometimes she looks like a primary schoolgirl and sometimes a pensioner going shopping."

Actually, no, she looks like what she is, a strong, principled woman who is taking on, if still rather tamely, North Korea's thugocracy -- and you have to be seriously lacking in the intelligence department to call her unintelligent. There are many worse things, and more accurate things, that can be said about North Korea's leadership, but it isn't exactly off the mark to compare it to petulant children, although that rather insults children, the bloodthirsty bullies among them excepted.

No, I'm not advocating war with North Korea, but we'll all be better off, not least the people of that backwards land, when Kim Jong-il's brutal regime, including whatever post-Kim variations follow it, is wiped off the face of the earth.

Endgame?

By Carl

Not that there's a formal clock for this sort of thing...world events tend to lie in the mud until they explode like an IED... but the sense I get from the news is that we're heading for a big, big conflict.

1) Iran protests: Regime cracks down on opposition as further unrest looms -- In itself, this would not be troubling me, beyond my concern about Iran in general, both as a harbor for terrorism as well as a genuine hope for democracy at some point. Iranians are highly intelligent and educated people. But add to this...

2) Carter challenges Gaza blockade as he meets Hamas leaders -- ...and you have the makings of a regional crisis. See, Bibi Netanyahu, the troubled and troubling Israeli prime minister, is on a two-pronged dilemma. On the one hand, he has to assure his supporters with respect to the Palestinians. On the other, he has a credible threat to Israel's very existence with Iran's budding nuclear development program.

It is likely that Netanyahu will compromise on the Jewish settlements question at Obama's behest, in exchange for the very real possibilty of an airstrike on Iranian nuclear facilities. Which would then get the attention of...

3) Russia, China urge talks on North Korea -- ...which now brings Putin and Hu into the fray, since both have expressed support in the past for Iran for different reasons, and neither of whom is particularly friendly to either Israel nor its existence. By forcing them to divide their attentions between Iran and North Korea, we have a very real threat from...

4) North Korea threatens merciless attack if it is provoked -- ...which is responding to the Obama statement about their nuclear program being very troubling. Now, North Korea has been sharing technology and resources with...

5) EU to pledge humanitarian aid for Pakistan -- ...which is fighting on three separate fronts, all in or near its borders: the Swat valley, the Indian border and of course, against...

6) Several dead in Pakistan bombing -- ...internal terrorism, the same scourge that killed Benazhir Bhutto. These attacks grow out of the panic and fear of radical Islamists that...

7) Skirmishing ahead of new Pakistan offensive -- ...Pakistan is getting serious about assisting in rooting out the Taliban and short-circuiting their attempts to not only reclaim Afghanistan but to annex the territories of northwest Pakistan, all while...

8) Pakistan sought time to act against militants: India -- ...trying to coax yet another nuclear power, India, into a regional conflict.

Talk about your basic clusterfuck! You have all the elements of a world war right there: radicalism, armaments, regionalism, and three superpowers who seem to be eyeing each other with a mixture of contempt and confusion. And that's before we consider the residual effects of American involvement in Iraq (weakened fighting forces, exhausted materiel, resentment on the part of Iraqis) and the world economic crisis, which is only now filtering down to the very poorest of nations.

And then there's Africa, my pick for the single biggest story this year... hell, even Europe and America are not immune from the vagaries of hate!

All this occurs against the backdrop of the single biggest crisis to confront man in millenia.

And man does not handle crises well.

(Cross-posted to Simply Left Behind.)

North Korea

By Creature

North Korea is clearly a problem. Bombing them, however, would be an even bigger problem [see Iraq]. This is not a hard conclusion to reach. Unless, of course, you're William Kristol.

Troubling blind spot

By Carl

The Bush administration's singleminded focus on Iraq blinded it to some pretty ugly things going on in other parts of the world:

North Korea has fired two more missiles, hours after the UN Security Council unanimously condemned its nuclear test, South Korean reports say.

The Communist state fired two short-range missiles off an east-coast base, South Korea's Yonhap news agency reported, citing an official.

The move came as UN diplomats began work on a resolution to punish North Korea for its underground nuclear test.

Translation: When John Bolton warns George Bush you're doing it wrong, U R Doin It Rong!:

In 2002, our intelligence community definitively judged that the regime was working on an industrial-scale enrichment program. Since then we have little new information, reducing the confidence level, but not changing the substantive conclusion, that the North Koreans "have and continue to operate a uranium enrichment program" – as Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell testified in February.

For the Bush administration, however, the lack of new data is an excuse to ignore the entire issue of uranium.

On plutonium, the administration seems content to seek vague statements from the North that "account" for the amount of this fissile material we think it has extracted from its Yongbyon reactor's spent fuel rods over the years. Administration briefings reveal little or no interest in how many plutonium weapons exist; whether there are other plutonium-related facilities hidden in North Korea's vast complex of underground facilities; and what the North's weapons-manufacturing capabilities are.

Proliferation? Perhaps the Bush administration's most wondrous act of magic is to make that problem disappear. The State Department argues that North Korea may have proliferated in the past, but that's all behind us. How do we know? The North Koreans have told us.

Remember this gem of a meme?

Under the final terms of the Agreed Framework approved in October of 1994, Clinton agreed to provide the "Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea" (DPRK) with two light water nuclear reactors and a massive allotment of oil. The U.S. agreed to ship 500,000 metric tons of oil annually in response to the North's pretense that the energy-starved backwater had developed the nuclear facility to generate power. These shipments have cost taxpayers more than $800 million to date - a bargain compared with the $6 billion spent on constructing the nuclear reactors, which now empower North Korea to produce 100 nuclear bombs each year.

All these measures failed to quell the North's atom-lust.

Odds are you won't hear a peep from the right about Bush's complicity in the further development of nuclear arms by the North (absent Bolton's now-year-old OpEd), rather than correctly point out that, of the "Axis of Evil", only Korea had any hopes of developing a nuclear armament program AND legitimate targets to lob them at.

Means, motive, opportunity, the classic tripod on which to hang a conviction in a criminal case apparently holds no weight in the realm of the right wing. We striked out at the country with the least means, the lesser motive, and practically zero opportunity and rattled sabres at the country with slightly more means, slightly more motive, but even less opportunity.

And did nothing about the guy in the ski mask holding a gun at the bank teller window with an open sack.

Smart. Very smart.

What could have been handled six years ago is now looming as a pandemic of pandemonia. The same logic used to invade Iraq could just as easily have been applied to Korea, all the way to the feeble excuse of bringing an international criminal to justice and freeing his citizenry.

Indeed, that charge more applied to Kim Jong Il than to Saddam Hussein. Hussein, at least, never starved his own people, despite gassing large numbers of them.

But now we have what we have, as Strindberg so aptly put it.

(Cross-posted to Simply Left Behind.)

Focus on Obama Policies

By Carol Gee

Image via Wikipedia

Now into his third month in office, U.S. President Barack Obama has his feet planted firmly on the ground. He has taken a tremendous number of policy steps, however. Today's post will play catch-up with some of the political news that has sped by in just this past week.

North Korea -- "Make a strong statement." The recent missile launch has reignited the debate over nuclear disarmament, according to Politico (4/5/09). President Obama has called for the United Nations to act against North Korea. American voters actually support a military approach to eliminate North Korea's nuclear capabilities; 57% for and 15% against in the Rasmussen poll. Quoting,

"The White House says the launch only underscores the importance of Obama’s call Sunday for “a world without nuclear weapons.” Hard-line critics say North Korea’s move makes the president’s no-nukes aspirations all the more unrealistic, even dangerous."

General Motors and the economic crisis --"Do what you need to do." The White House is questioning the viability of GM and Chrysler, to the point of instituting a big shake-up at the top at GM. Politico says GM is already planning for bankruptcy. Paul Krugman has become increasingly critical of the administration's economic strategy. But the administration's financial reform proposal does not go as far as Wall Street expected or as Progressives wanted. The administration has been hampered by a lack of anyone but the President to "sell" his approaches, though that is getting better as Timothy Geithner gains confidence.

The Obama administration budget -- "Priorities survived." The Senate and House have approved competing budget plans, both short of what the President actually wanted, though the administration is putting the best face on it. A few - 38 - House Republicans defected during the final vote. Politico speculated that "fierce fights may follow [a] budget victory" for the Democrats. And Democrats are not united regarding the President's agenda. Public opinion will certainly be a factor. The President's approval ratings remain high - 66% approve - and 42% of Americans still think we are on the right track, Ed Kilgore reports at The Democratic Strategist. One of the reasons has always been the President's capacity for effective public speaking, for his willingness to be unusually personal in his speeches, Policito explained.

Af-Pak and Defense -- "Think new thoughts, focus more on diplomacy and less on cold war weapons systems." President Obama's strategy for the Afghanistan-Pakistan region in the Middle East already has a certain amount of qualifiied support, according to J.P. Green at The Democratic Strategist. Today the Secretary of Defense, Robert is rolling out his defense spending plan that represents a fundamental shift in priorities. A significant number of large-scale weapons systems will be on the line. To quote from Congressional Quarterly - Politics:

The fiscal 2010 funding choices in the announcement will represent the first major defense policy decisions of President Obama’s administration. Specific budget details are not expected until the first week of May, but Gates will make the unusual move of announcing several major program decisions weeks ahead of the budget release, said Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell.

“These are not changes to the margins,” Morrell said April 3. “This is a fundamental shift in direction. And the secretary’s point of view argues for an unconventional approach in explaining that shift to the American people.”

. . . Morrell said Gates plans to brief congressional leaders Monday morning. A press conference will follow.
“The fact of life is that since Sept. 11, 2001, the military has been engaged in irregular warfare activities that require more of our focus, more of our energy, and more of our resources than we have been dedicating to them,” Morrell said. “So Gates is trying to shift between the large-scale conventional near peer conflicts that we have to prepare for down the line and the very real conflicts we are engaged in now.”

Reference: Exclusive Obama interview with The Financial Times (3/29/09)

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• John King: A dramatic day for Obama (cnn.com)
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This is a test

By Capt. Fogg

Well, it happened, just like the campaign ads threatened it would -- that three AM phone call. OK, so it was 4:30, but close enough. The phone call from the Press Secretary woke Mr. Obama to say that North Korea had launched a multi-stage rocket which shortly afterward crossed over Japan and landed in the Pacific Ocean.

It's not quite the Cuban Missile Crisis, but it woke the president, who presumably was not reading about goats and didn't sit frozen in fear for 7 minutes. Instead, he talked to Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, Vice Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General James Cartwright, National Security Advisor General Jim Jones, Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel and various other intelligence officials. You know, president stuff.

As the launch was advertised as a communications satellite experiment it must be seen as a failure, since it did not enter orbit at all, much less the 22,500 mile orbit it would need to be geosynchronous. As we recall, their nuclear test was a bit of a dud as well, although it did go bang, but the DPRK (I won't insult the Beloved Leader by calling it D-PRICK) like certain American presidents of recent memory does not admit to failure. They've declared it a success and I'm sure that in the Democratic People's Republic of North Korea nobody will act like the Dixie Chicks and show shame.

Does the DPRK now pose a credible nuclear threat? It doesn't look like it, but they're trying. It doesn't look like we're going to give the John Wayne response we might have expected by that same president of recent memory, but much will be made ofObama's reaction and his ability to communicate our disapproval in a way that the Little PRK in charge of North Korea won't be able to refuse. I'm sure jaws will be flapping and huge Palm Beach billionaire behinds will be bouncing up and down in radio studios over this, making conclusions and drawing inferences and expostulating on myriad ramifications, but this is a test -- a real one, and unlike Mr. Limbaugh, real Americans hope he succeeds.

(Cross-posted from Human Voices.)

When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie...

By Michael J.W. Stickings

That's... totalitarianism?

Yup, North Korea now has pizza, among other Italian delicacies, available at a new ristorante in Pyongyang:

It has taken almost 10 years of work, but North Korea has acquired the technology to launch a project very dear to its leader's heart - the nation's first "authentic" Italian pizzeria.

The launch of Pyongyang's first Italian restaurant meanwhile brings to fruition a ten-year effort by Kim Jong-il -- a renowned gourmand and lover of western food -- to create the perfect pizza and pasta in his homeland.

Last year a delegation of local chefs was sent by Kim to Naples and Rome to learn the proper Italian techniques after their homegrown efforts to mimic Italian cuisine were found by Kim to contain "errors".

Umm... errors? Like cilantro instead of oregano? Or was the crust not stuffed properly?

In the late 1990s Kim brought a team of Italian pizza chefs to North Korea to instruct his army officers how to make pizza, a luxury which is now being offered to a tiny elite able to afford such luxuries in a country that cannot feed many of its 24 million inhabitants.

Despite the food shortages high-quality Italian wheat, flour, butter and cheese are being imported to ensure the perfect pizza is created every time.

Yeah, I'm sure it's perfection incarnate. Good totalitarian eats!

As for the North Korean people, well, they're dying of starvation anyway. As long as Dear Leader Kim's ego is satisfied, that's really all that matters.

Seriously, he really is one of the world's most loathsome little shits, madness incarnate in a land gone mad.