‘Hiroshima Mon Amour’
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This past weekend the North Koreans tossed the old middle finger once again at the world and tested a nuclear device:
“Was it another fizzle?” asked Hans M. Kristensen, a nuclear expert at the Federation of American Scientists.
“We’ll have to wait for more analysis of the seismic data, but so far the early news media reports about a ‘Hiroshima-size’ nuclear explosion seem to be overblown.”
(Illustration found here).
This relationship on the Korean peninsula is real peculiar.
Two physical countries: North and South.
And these two countries have been in a constant state of crisis, or near-crisis with each other for now-near 60 years.
Nothing real odd about the set-up on its face, down through human history there’s been a shitload of similar situations — bunch of peoples/nations antagonistic and bickering for long periods of time — but the strange lies in the lay of the land and a bad, bad doohickey/weapon.
In the South, the landscape is one of an highly-developed nation, a place teeming with iPods and laptops: South Korea is classified as a high-income economy by the World Bank and an advanced economy by the IMF and CIA. Its capital, Seoul, is a major global city and a leading international financial centre in Asia. South Koreans enjoy one of the highest living standards in the world and have a high life expectancy and a high level of economic freedom.
Despite that, or maybe because of that, South Korea has a national mental illness: Honor via suicide.
The suicide of former president Roh Moo-Hyun last week hightlighted the problem — The country has one of the highest suicide rates among economically-advanced countries, with rates of suicide doubling to 21.9 deaths per 100,000 people between 1996 and 2006.
These South Korean suicides, Roh included, are nothing but pantywaists — How would these guys react if instead they were citizens of a nation a few miles north of Seoul, that major global city, in a place seemingly which could exist only if Phillip K. Dick and George Orwell had collaborated on a horror tale.
In the North, the landscape is blighted by the blinding light reflecting off the face of the Great Leader Kim Il-sung, though dead for 15 years.
When he died, his number-one son, Kim Jong-il, took over with the daddy still the real head honcho, being the “Eternal President” forever — North Korea, officially called the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), is the most secretive society on earth, no one knows what really is going on in there as only about 2,000 Westerners a year are allowed inside.
And although the Great Leader instituted “juche” ideology, or national self-reliance in being “a revolutionary ideology with a people-centred view of the world that aims to realise the independence of the masses, the guiding principle of its actions,” the entire country is a hell-hole:
Aid agencies have estimated that up to two million people have died since the mid-1990s because of acute food shortages caused by natural disasters and economic mismanagement.
The country relies on foreign aid to feed millions of its people.
The totalitarian state also stands accused of systematic human rights abuses.
Reports of torture, public executions, slave labour, and forced abortions and infanticides in prison camps have emerged.
A US-based rights group has estimated that there are up to 200,000 political prisoners in North Korea.
North Korea is the most militarized country in the world having the fourth-largest with an estimated 1.1 million armed personnel and operates an enormous network of military facilities scattered around the country, a large weapons production basis and an extremely dense air defence system.
And along with uniformed military, the country also has what’s called the Worker-Peasant Red Guard, a reserve force comprising of between 3.5 and 4.7 million troops. (Source: Wikipedia).
North Korea is a late bloomer in the nuclear field — After George Jr. proclaimed the DPRK a member of the “Axis of Evil” in 2002, Kim II started a route that would take the country to its first nuclear test four years later.
All this despite some encouraging non-nuclear news in the 1990s, but all to no avail.
Which brings us to the DPRK’s nuclear and missle testing the past few days, a situation which has everybody ringing the alarm bells — especially Japan, a country living under the shadow of not only a possible missile strike from North Korea, but the Hiroshima/Nagasaki nightmare.
And recent events could bring about a re-arming of Japan — a first-strike ability using the old chestnut of a “pre-emptive strike” to take out a supposed danger.
Talk in Japan considers just that:
“North Korea poses a serious and realistic threat to Japan,” former defense chief Gen Nakatani said today in Tokyo at a meeting of Liberal Democratic Party officials.
“We must look at active missile defense such as attacking an enemy’s territory and bases.”
Reports of North Korea’s test last weekend generally claimed the firepower produced was at or about that equal to the bombs used on Hiroshima and Nagasaki — an all-US event.
As Justin Raimondo mused at antiwar.com: “It is certainly not lost on the North Koreans that the U.S. could just as easily rationalize a similar attack on yet another nation of yellow-skinned people.”
Hiroshima is another word for infamy — ironic is FDR’s Pearl Harbor quote — and in the years since August 6, 1945, the city has been a focal point of anti-nuclear war.
A nation’s guilt, a world’s guilt of not only nuclear weapons, the terrors of war itself is epitomized by the dream/nightmare that is Hiroshima.
Into this dream/nightmare is a love affair wrapped around the horror of Hiroshima and the guilt of life in war — Frenchman Alain Resnais‘ “Hiroshima Mon Amour,” a 1959 film which gathers together war and memory in a stream-of-consciousness montage backgrounded by the city itself.
The opening sequence of shots — a series of naked shoulders and arms, upon which what at first appears as sweat, but is actually fine-grained radioactive dust — forces one to wonder at the true nightmares the bomb actually brought to the city’s population in August 1945.
From Marguerite Duras, the noted French writer who scripted the Resnais film:
“Thus the initial exchange is allegorical. In short, an operatic exchange. Impossible to talk about Hiroshima. All one can do is talk about the impossibility of talking about Hiroshima.”
(Illustration found here).
North Korea and Hiroshima: An impossibility to fathom.
Memory
Filed Under Just Plain War, Musings | Leave a Comment
Despite all the posturing, the US is a war-like nation.
(Illustration found here).
War has always been in the vital interests of the US — starting from day one, but officially most-likely from the Pequot War in 1637 with 11 wars fought before the so-called Revolutionary War and 30 even prior to the Civil War, a shitload of dying in such a small space.
The US has wasted 653,708 lives in wars prior to the modern era and the Global War on Terror, which has been rebranded as the Overseas Contingency Operation (to soften up the phrase, I guess) has currently produced two quagmired conflicts without an end in sight, both immoral and illegal.
Although Iraq supposedly has an end, it’s going to be bloody until then.
So here we are on Memorial Day 2009 to honor all those war dead.
Originally called Decoration Day in 1868 for the mass of US peoples slaughted in the Civil War and was “designated for the purpose of strewing with flowers, or otherwise decorating the graves of comrades who died in defense of their country during the late rebellion, and whose bodies now lie in almost every city, village, and hamlet churchyard in the land.”
And what better time than to recite a few words of Mark Twain’s sarcastic, horrifing-but-true anti-war ode/poem, The War Prayer:
O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames of summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it – for our sakes who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage, make heavy their steps, water their way with their tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet!
We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source of Love, and Who is the ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts.
Amen.
War, yes, war!
‘Change’ = ? = WTF!
Filed Under Mad as Hell, Media, Musings | Leave a Comment
Change out my wizened, ancient ass!
Yesterday from CREW – Citizens for Responsibility And Ethics In Washington — on the so-called Valerie Plame Wilson episode:
CREW learned today that the Obama administration is opposing our request that the Supreme Court reconsider the dismissal of the lawsuit, Wilson v. Libby, et al.
In that case, the district court had dismissed the claims of Joe and Valerie Wilson against former Vice President Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, Scooter Libby and Richard Armitage for their gross violations of the Wilsons’ constitutional rights.
Agreeing with the Bush administration, the Obama Justice Department argues the Wilsons have no legitimate grounds to sue.
It is surprising that the first time the Obama administration has been required to take a public position on this matter, the administration is so closely aligning itself with the Bush administration’s views.
(Illustration found here).
When Obama was elected last November, the whole affair was akin to a daydream.
After eighth years of a living nightmare, this was the kind of change the US could put its grip on and feel good about.
Alas, now nearly four months into his administration, Obama’s curtain has been parted and the wizard is exposed — Nothing really has changed.
Starting with his “business as usual” slection of his financial inner circle to continuing the foreign policy operations from up the ass of Dick Cheney, Obama has already proven he’s not the man of the vast-throngs that voted for him, but instead for the powermongers in DC.
Even in explaining his decision to close the notorious Guantanamo Bay was softened by his speech this morning:
After September 11, “faced with an uncertain threat, our government made a series of hasty decisions,” he said.
“I believe that many of these decisions were motivated by a sincere desire to protect the American people. But I also believe that all too often, our government made decisions based on fear rather than foresight; that all too often trimmed facts and evidence to fit ideological predispositions.”
Is he shitting us — ‘motivated by a sincere desire to protect the American people’ — ?
Cheney and Don Rumsfeld were so removed from any kind of sincerity the very thought makes one want to blow chunks.
Paul Craig Roberts via antiwar.com ties the whole bullshit together:
America has lost her soul, and so has her president.
A despairing country elected a president who promised change. Americans arrived from every state to witness in bitter cold Obama’s swearing-in ceremony.
The mall was packed in a way that it has never been for any other president.
The people’s good will toward Obama and the expectations they had for him were sufficient for Obama to end the gratuitous wars and enact major reforms.
But Obama has deserted the people for the interests. He is relying on his non-threatening demeanor and rhetoric to convince the people that change is underway.
The change that we are witnessing is in Obama, not in policies.
Obama is morphing into Dick Cheney.
…
Obama has defended the Bush/Cheney warrantless wiretapping program run by the National Security Agency and broadened the government’s legal argument that “sovereign immunity” protects government officials from prosecution and civil suits when they violate U.S. law and constitutional protections of citizens.
Obama’s Justice Department has taken up the defense of Donald Rumsfeld against a case brought by detainees whose rights Rumsfeld violated.
In a signing statement this month, Obama abandoned his promise to protect whistleblowers who give information of executive branch illegality to Congress.
…
Meanwhile, war with Iran remains a possibility, and at Washington’s insistence, NATO is conducting war games on former Soviet territory, thus laying the groundwork for future enrichment of the U.S. military/security complex. The steeply rising U.S. unemployment rate will provide the needed troops for Obama’s expanding wars.
Obama can give a great speech without mangling the language.
He can smile and make people believe his rhetoric.
The world, or much of it, seems to be content with the soft words that now drape Dick Cheney’s policies in pursuit of executive supremacy and U.S. hegemony.
No shit, Sherlock!
Change we can’t even believe in and there’s now nothing to do but watch.
Where Is We?
Filed Under Media, Musings, Technology | Leave a Comment
Talk about being lost after eight years of failure on so many different levels!
It is uncertain whether the Air Force will be able to acquire new satellites in time to maintain current GPS service without interruption.
If not, some military operations and some civilian users could be adversely affected.
– GAO Report on GPS status
(Illustration found here).
One of the most-used modern marvels is the GPS navigational system.
The operation touches so many areas in so many different way, its break-down could cause more than just pain-in-the-ass problems, but could be dangerous.
And it could start to crash in a few months — in 2010, which to my reckoning is next year.
From PC World this morning:
Considered by the GAO to be “essential to national security” the GPS is also widely used by business and consumers and is a driver for next-generation location-based mobile applications used with smartphones and other devices.
And, too, this flip:
It is hard to imagine the U.S. government could allow this to happen.
Actually, that’s a lie, it’s easy to imagine, but there is also time for corrective action to be taken.
The first replacement satellite is expected to be launched this November, some three years after the original launch date.
Speeding up future launches can solve the problem, but is likely to come at a high price.
Just another problem linked to the asshole, incompentence of George Jr.’s eight year as head honcho.
The first replacement GPS satellite was due to launch at the beginning of 2007, but has been delayed several times and is now scheduled to go into orbit in November this year — almost three years late.
The impact on ordinary users could be significant, with millions of satnav users potential victims of bad directions or failed services.
There would also be similar side effects on the military, which uses GPS for mapping, reconnaissance and for tracking hostile targets.
Some suggest that it could also have an impact on the proliferation of so-called location applications on mobile handsets — just as applications on the iPhone and other GPS-enabled smartphones are starting to get more popular.
When one is throwing huge chunks of cash at waging never-ending war, torturing people and invading countries some project might slide through the old cracks in the foundation, and, not being too smart, also allow valuable operations to fade, fade away.
‘IRF-ed’ — Biblically Speaking
Filed Under Double Standard/Religious, Mad as Hell, Media, Orwellian, War & Politics | Leave a Comment
The terror/shame of America.
(Illustration found here).
Similar to peeling the layers off one rotten-assed onion, the horrors of the last presidential administration continues to strike nausea and shame into the very hearts of any US peoples who have any heart left to smell the shit — in the last few weeks bad odorous news has spewed forth from DC about just how corrupt and vile were the years 2001 to 2009.
If the current trend continues, George Jr. and Dick Cheney will be viewed as monsters.
Via antiwar.com on the inquiry by Spain into US “enhanced” techniques:
The torture, according to the Spanish investigation, all occurred “under the authority of American military personnel” and was sometimes conducted in the presence of medical professionals.
More significantly, however, the investigation could for the first time place an intense focus on a notorious, but seldom discussed, thug squad deployed by the U.S. Military to retaliate with excessive violence to the slightest resistance by prisoners at Guantánamo.
The force is officially known as the the Immediate Reaction Force or Emergency Reaction Force, but inside the walls of Guantánamo, it is known to the prisoners as the Extreme Repression Force.
Despite President Barack Obama’s publicized pledge to close the prison camp and end torture — and analysis from human rights lawyers who call these forces’ actions illegal — IRFs remain very much active at Guantánamo.
…
So notorious are these teams that a new lexicon was created and used by prisoners and guards alike to describe the beatings: “IRF-ing” prisoners or to be “IRF-ed.”
Former Guantánamo Army Chaplain James Yee, who witnessed IRFings, described “the seemingly harmless behaviors that brought it on [like] not responding when a guard spoke.”
Yee said he believed that during daily cell sweeps, guards would intentionally do invasive searches of the Muslim prisoners’ “private areas” and Korans to “rile the detainees,” saying it “seemed like harassment for the sake of harassment, and the prisoners fought it.
“Those who did were always IRFed.”
The above-mentioned James Yee is the same guy who was harassed out of the military on all sorts of trumped-up bullshit because of his concern for the well-being of other human beings at Guantánamo.
All the charges were eventually dropped.
And while all these “blows to [the] testicles;” “detention underground in total darkness for three weeks with deprivation of food and sleep;” being “inoculated … through injection with ‘a disease for dog cysts;’” the smearing of feces on prisoners; and waterboarding… was going on, US defense chief at the time, the dastardedly Don Rumsfeld was dispatching daily the ultra-top secret Secretary of Defense Worldwide Intelligence Update to George Jr. with Bibical quotes smeared on them.
See some of this creepy, weird and hypocritical shit here at GQ.
Rumsfeld might a backstabbing criminal, but he knew George Jr.
Some background on this craziness can be found at Think Progress.
This particular aspect of the Rumsfeld/Cheney era will be a hot topic right now — there seems to be no end to the uncovering of the workings of the most-corrupt adminstration in this nation’s history.
Frank Rich, once again in the New York Times this morning nails it.
President Obama has to open the can of worms to clean-up US history.
I’m not a fan of Washington’s blue-ribbon commissions, where political compromises can trump the truth. But the 9/11 investigation did illuminate how, a month after Bush received an intelligence brief titled “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.,” 3,000 Americans were slaughtered on his and Cheney’s watch.
If the Obama administration really wants to move on from the dark Bush era, it will need a new commission, backed up by serious law enforcement, to shed light on where every body is buried.
Amen, brother!