That was my comment on Guardian cif.
How long before it is moderated out?
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Washington hyperventilating, eastern seaboard rises and then falls.
http://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/7318451311869952
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/americas/2010/11/201011257272126324.html
Hi Suhayl,
Not much time so I’ll be brief,
“One is aware of the North Korean regime’s rhetorical attitude, actual stance, etc. I was also wondering, though, precisely why this situation seems to have become more acute over the past few months – military strikes, sinking ships, military ‘exercises’, etc. Somebody is cranking-up the tension to fever-pitch levels.”
Yes, there are two plausible theories for me which may both be true.
a) Kim Jong-il is dying and has had to appoint a successor, Kim Jong-Un who is still young and without anything to show for himself. He has recently been promoted to four-star general despite having no military credentials whatsoever. It could be that some of these recent antics have been done to give him some sort of prestige. We’ve seen the triumphalist messages broadcast on KCNA. It is *possible* that domestic propaganda may sometime soon boast of Kim Jong Un’s role. Why? Because the only thing that the Korean regime have going for it is their role of defenders of a special race.
(A writer on North Korea, B.R Myers says this is how the North Koreans see themselves, as somehow superior but delicate and in need of a military leader to protect them.
I may have link to this before but here you are:
http://www.booktv.org/Watch/11315/The+Cleanest+Race+How+North+Koreans+See+Themselves+And+Why+It+Matters.aspx
b) Perhaps it could also be because it is really the only way North Korea knows how to win concessions. Right now something they may be in desperate shortage of is food and this may be a ploy to get to the negotiating table.
These two ideas aren’t mutually exclusive as they may then gain something and announce that they saw off the Yankee imperialist foes and their puppet regime with merciless blows before the Yankees and the puppets abased themselves offering sacks of rice.
It is also unusual that the North Koreans suddenly revealed their uranium processing plants before this incident. This is probably to strengthen their bargaining position.
“I think this is a situation in which the UN need to get involved immediately. Surely, China needs to be involved, too, as the next-door-neighbour superpower?”
The reason I said that China won’t be much of a solution is that they have always been the biggest impediment in the UN, only allowing mild censure and subverting any kinds of sanctions aimed at the top level. Kim and his friends rarely travel outside of China or Russia (except the older son who tried to sneak into Tokyo Disneyland and now may fear for his life) who allow in all the luxury items that they were supposed to be deprived of. Besides sanctions can’t work when the population can’t vote out their leaders and their leaders don’t particularly care about the population.
China also don’t want to endanger the regime as they fear collapse and a refugee problem, so they’ll express “concern” in public and never actually apply any real pressure.
“Is this situation actually to do in some way with US-China dynamics? I know North Korea and China are not exactly the best of pals these days, to put it mildly, but could this be another element in the USA’s strategic policy of containment/ encirclement?”
It might have contributed to the specific incident but I don’t think it was a cause. The cause is within North Korea, I am pretty sure of that.
“What I’m trying to say is, it’s too easy, I think, simply to ascribe all of this (I’m not saying that you are) to ‘mad-dog North Korean regime erupts again’.”
No, I completely disagree with the “mad-dog” assessment of North Korea. In fact, I’ll post a link to another analyst who I think is very perceptive on North Korea, called Andrei Lankov, who was himself once a graduate of Kim Il-sung University.
Here’s that again in summary:
http://angrysoba.blogspot.com/2010/11/why-did-dprk-shell-yeonpyeong-island.html
And here’s an article by Andrei Lankov that came out today:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/25/opinion/25iht-edlankov.html
Anyone heard about Global ‘Bank Mutiny Day’ on 7 December?
http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/300585
“b) Perhaps it could also be because it is really the only way North Korea knows how to win concessions”
I’ve heard a c) – that there is an internal struggle going on for power and someone is showing off their ‘strength’.
The notion of Kim Jong-Un being in charge evokes the same reaction in me as Sarah Palin going into the White House. He’s about 21 or something? Why is South Korea conducting naval exercises so close to a disputed maritime border? Sounds foolhardy to me. The area is also apparently littered with islands. I’m not sure I accept the trotted-out Western version that N Korea suddenly let off that barrage without provocation.
dreiloin: “I’ve heard a c) – that there is an internal struggle going on for power and someone is showing off their ‘strength’.”
It could be, and I have addressed that one in my blogpost. I don’t think anyone can say for sure what is going on there.
“I’m not sure I accept the trotted-out Western version that N Korea suddenly let off that barrage without provocation.”
The provocation that North Korea cited was that the South Koreans were firing live rounds in their military exercises, which they were. North Korea says they were within the border they recognize if not the one recognized as the Northern Limit Line. The thing is that the island the North decided to shell is within South Korean waters by anyone’s estimates.
dreolin, the bank mutiny link threw me out and cancelled my connection, all in one go, twice, so I shall be vary of it, are there any other links?
Angry
North Korea, as you so rightly say, are most likely in need of food. But they also are living in dependency to China. Their daily food supplies are needed and China’s word counts for far more than anybody elses.
What are the chances that this is an internal manouvre by over eager regional/border military wanting to get recognised as extra handy with new general Kim Jong-Un.
I accept that the revelation of the nuclear facillity, who knows for how long its been running, will have changed the table rethoric somewhat in the negotiation teams, imho nuclear castration for food has always played a part in negotiations and will do so again this time.
I also agree with dreolin, its unwise to conduct military manouvres in the south China sea when they could be happen on the east coast.
“Good ‘Operation Krackpottery'”
Thanks for that link, Suhayl. It’s an excellent piece. I’ve said before that the terror scare reminds me of Fermi’s question: if there were aliens on other planets they’ve had time to get here. So where are they?
Roberts’ point about the nature of the targets is also important – always innocent people, never the ‘perps’. Recall that the IRA went after key commercial targets and big names – Neave, Mountbatten, Thatcher. After Thatcher survived the Brighton bombing they said ‘You have been lucky, but you have to be lucky all the time. We only have to be lucky once.’ I think that concentrated minds wonderfully.
somebody – from their website Iraq Body Count don’t claim to be giving the full numbers of civilians killed or an estimate of the full numbers killed. They only give cases that can be verified from media reports. So even they would likely admit that their figures are not estimates of the total numbers killed, but the minimum number they can prove have definitely be killed – with the total number killed unknown but likely to be much higher.
As a result the IBC figures are relatively low, but much harder for opponents to challenge than estimates would be.
You are probably familiar with the work of the Media Lens editors on the subject. They have written extensively using their alerts (searching ‘iraq body count’ produces 25 results there), some of in two parts.
http://www.medialens.org/search.php
This from their latest on Marr interviewing Blair.
“From the BBC to the New York Times, from the Guardian to Channel 4 News, the figure of choice is that offered by Iraq Body Count of around 100,000 civilian deaths by violence. Sometimes this figure is interpreted as total Iraqi deaths as a result of the war, sometimes as total Iraqi civilian deaths, sometimes as total Iraqi deaths by violence. Almost +never+ do journalists make clear that it is an extremely limited count of deaths recorded by media in a country that is obviously much too dangerous for journalists to be able to work effectively.”
Their work is good enough for me. The neo-cons and the proponents of the war, e.g. Marr, Cohen, Aaronovitch, Rentoul, Roberts, ALL refer to the IBC figure.
Ingo,
Sorry to hear you had a problem with that link. (I’ve just been to it again with no bother.) Here’s one from the Guardian:
http://tinyurl.com/2g58w3r
“Cantona’s call appeared to touch a popular chord and generated an instant response. Nearly 40,000 people have clicked on the YouTube clip, and a French-based movement ?” StopBanque ?” has taken up the campaign for a massive coordinated withdrawal of money from banks on 7 December. It is claimed that more than 14,000 people are already committed to removing deposits. The movement is also gaining increasing attention in Britain.”
a friend the other day asked ‘so, if the banks collapse, is that good? what will happen?’
um.
good demonstration of potential people power, though.
and good to see the mainstream often furious about the kettling etc of our students, by the way. Though the fact that all the Cambridge students, certainly, and doubtless many others, are protesting about the cuts as a whole, not just the scrapping of the EMA and the tuition fee extortion, seems to have got utterly lost.
‘a friend the other day asked ‘so, if the banks collapse, is that good? what will happen?’
Their intention is to put the money back in the next day.
The object is preumably to show the banks that without the people they’d have nothing. But I’m not sure it’s the best way – unfortunately. If enough people did it, there’d be chaos.
A clip from Have I Got News for You:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzN0Js0tKZ4&feature=youtu.be
I was at the student protest, the other day.
I didn’t see any good bits other ten that boy climbing on the police van and kicking in its lights.
Oh I met jody mcintyre and shock hands with him.
This guy:
http://www.google.co.uk/#hl=en&q=jody+mcintyre&um=1&ie=UTF-8&tbo=u&tbs=vid:1&source=og&sa=N&tab=wv&fp=4a0c6102a61791e8
I got to this blog from Facebook (one of my friends posted it). After reading, I of course clicked Like then shared it myseld. More power.
http://www.spectator.co.uk/nickcohen/6491963/political-correctness-not-nearly-mad-enough.thtml
The decision of the United Nations last week to exclude gays from a special resolution condemning extrajudicial, arbitrary and summary executions did not receive the attention it deserved.
The United Nations is still the object of wistful and on occasion Utopian hopes from those who do not realise that it can never be a moral force because it is a club without membership rules that allows any tyranny to join. Its best ?” some would say only ?” good purpose is to reveal how apparently rival dictatorial ideologies ?” African Nationalist, Islamist, Communist, post-communist and crony capitalist ?” will sink their differences and unite in opposition to liberalism.
Among the lackeys of despots who said it was all right to kill queers were the representatives of Iran Algeria, China, Congo, Cuba, Eritrea, North Korea, Egypt, Malaysia, Pakistan, Russia, Sudan, Uganda, Vietnam, Yemen, and Zimbabwe. Not one African country voted in favour of protecting homosexuals from extra-judicial murder, including Nelson Mandela’s South Africa, which still gets far too easy a ride in the Western press in my view. At the UN the supporters of dictatorship and dictatorial ideas reminded us once again that what unites them is more important than one what divides them, and that lesson is always worth remembering.
Thor Halvorssen, President of the Human Rights Foundation, tells an anecdote that is as revealing in its own way.
He describes how Kasha Jacqueline, a brave campaigner against the persecution of homosexuals in Uganda, risked reprisals by speaking out publicly at the Oslo Freedom Foundation.
She spoke well.
Thor goes on to describes how:
‘Upon arriving in Norway, she was approached by several members of one of Oslo’s gay and lesbian organizations who urged her not to speak at the Oslo Freedom Forum because they disagreed with our inclusion of several speakers who were outspoken critics of left-wing dictatorships. Sadly, some people in Oslo believe that only those on the left call themselves human rights defenders [but] their double standard usually will manifest itself when they ignore the crimes of the governments they favour.’
I am researching a book on free speech and am coming across stories like Jacqueline’s all the time. The Liberal-left is making a habit of snubbing people from the poor world or Europeans of immigrant descent, who believe in liberalism, and gay and women rights, and have every right to expect its support. Usually radical Islam is at the heart of the hypocrisy. When dissident Muslim liberals are threatened by ultra-reactionary theocrats, leftists will not defend them because they’re frightened of being accused of “Islamophobia” or of being a “neo-con,” or because their political leaders want to appease the brutish “community leaders” they hope can deliver the ethnic bloc vote on polling day.
Don’t think that those on the receiving end of liberal double standards don’t notice what is being done to them. Right wingers accuse the left of “political correctness”. But when it comes to the oppression of people with brown skins by people with brown skins, the Left is nowhere near politically correct enough.
The best and bravest people I have spoken to are on the move. They are rejecting the establishment left with a contempt, which is justifiable in the circumstances. Many are turning towards the democratic Right seeing it as the best protection against neo-Nazism on one hand and Islamism on the other – not that there is much of a difference between the two.I am not sure the Right is ready to receive their support.
As Thor notes:
‘Just days later, the inclusion of Kasha Jacqueline in the program of the Oslo Freedom Forum was one of the subjects of public condemnation by an American pro-life activist. The irony was excruciating. Here was a man who devotes his life to what he describes as stopping the mass killings of babies chastising an event for including someone in our program who wants to stop the mass killings of gays and lesbians.
Thus the Left, dear reader, thus the Right. They deserve each other.’
angrysoba, many thanks indeed for taking the time to explain matters so well to me wrt the Korea situation. I do appreciate it. I’ll check out the links you kindly supplied.
Vronsky, good point!
Alan, that’s a very lucid article from The Spectator and addresses key hypocrisies. The writer make some excellent points, including about the situation regarding the gay and lesbian communities in many countries and also, in my view, the monopoly instrumentalisation that religious-based groups in the UK seem to have cultivated with key cultural and political gatekeepers and the institutions behind them. It’s essentially divisive and allows these financially powerful lobbies to exclude heterogeneous voices within ‘their’ supposed (recently culturally constructed without any form of democratic accountability) ‘communities’ – read ‘self-assigned mental ghettos’. They certainly don’t represent me!
Unfortunately – though I will not allow this fact to detract from the important truths enunciated in the piece – those at whom the pro-war liberal imperialist, Nick Cohen directs his fire do not possess a monopoly on hypocrisy, in which regard, perhaps he might occasionally deign to glance at the mirror.
Just how bent are the banks? US home repossessions:
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/17390/232611
Don’t shoot the messenger. If you’re right, you’re right. It doesn’t matter how objectionable you may find the messenger.
I also disagree with Cohen when he attempts to centre all of this hypocrisy, everywhere in the world, around Islamism. The situation in Africa has as much to do with fundo Christianity and other, earlier cultural dynamics such as patriarchies of various types, as with Islamism. Uganda/ South Africa, etc., for example. Cohen sort of reveals his hand there, I feel. A pity. Because he did make some very valid points. But one can see that he too is attempting to instrumentalise human rights. And so he is in danger of committing the same error of judgement as those on the Left whom he criticises. This is a guy who advocated incinerating lots of Iraqis (gays, lesbians, transgendered and heterosexuals, alike) in a war of aggression.
Is no-one free of tribalism of one sort or another? Probably not.
Yes, I know – re. 1048pm. That’s one of the reasons why I think it’s important always to try and listen to voices with which one disagrees on various points.
On a different subject, btw, here’s a good book – ‘My Father’s Paradise’, by Ariel Sabar.
http://www.arielsabar.com/home.html
Cohen has become the kind of bigot against people of a particular religion who he would rightly condemn as “anti-semitic” if that religon was judaism. “Islamophobia” makes it sound as if it’s not prejudice of the same kind, but it is.
Cohen has also lost any coherence in his arguments. He demands we back overthrowing Saddam because he was a brutal, torturing dictator – but then demands we back brutal, torturing dictators like Mubarak in Egypt because they’re banning and repressing the Muslim brotherhood (along with using jail ,torture, beatings and sexual harassment by hired thugs against every other opposition group in the country including secular ones).
Saying you disagree with Islamic fundamentalism. Fine. I disagree with it too. As Craig has said though, bacing dictatorships and banning Islamic parties sends the message that we never really meant we’d allow democracy – and that violence is the only option – because if Muslim parties win elections in other countries we’ll help crush them and ignore the election result.
Cohen is backing policies that provide more recruits for Al Qaeda than Bin Laden could possibly hope for otherwise.
He lumps violent and peaceful Islamic fundamentalists together – and moderate Muslims in with fundamentalists. He’s a confused bigot.
Suhayl,
I do hope you studied ‘Angleton’ a bit esp. his influence on Bush senior and his connection to Chertoff’s mother.
It was Mark Lane who questioned the Warren Commission’s report and I recommend his book, ‘Rush to Judgment’ (late 1965) and ‘Plausible Denial’ where he develops the Israeli thesis.
In a nutshell, from John F Kennedy to USS Liberty to the Trade Towers a deceptive treacherous thread can be established. The Isareli penetration permeates the bubble within the CIA with tentacles to the NSA and via the top secret intelligence sharing agreement to our own SIS. The teams are autonomous and I have revealed them in other posts (look up wiki ‘Team B’) Teams A and C also exist.
If you can get your head round the complexities that have trickled into the public domain and are still prepared to judge me as having both oars in the water and not prone to delusions of importance as has been suggested, I will do my very best to provide some missing links to expose this cabal that has ruined and terminated so many lives.
For those interested a good starting point is JFK’s Letter to Eshkol About Dimona here:
http://www.jfkmontreal.com/dimona.htm
Somebody – I hadn’t read that – but your MediaLens quote blames the journalists, not IBC.
“Almost +never+ do journalists make clear that it is an extremely limited count of deaths recorded by media in a country that is obviously much too dangerous for journalists to be able to work effectively.”
IBC have made the nature of their count clear on their site.
I agree with you on Marr, Aaronovitch, etc – but they’re giving the figure out of context. That’s the journalists’ fault though – not IBC’s.
While IBC’s count is not an estimate of the total number killed as a result of the war – and any journalist claiming it is is either dishonest or half-arsed (even more so because it excludes people killed as a result of cholera epidemics, malnutrition and lack of medical treatment caused by the corruption of the CPA and the new Iraqi governments).
However, while i’m not any expert on this, one part of the methodology used to get the 1 million estimate in the Lancet Study seems a bit doubtful. They got an estimate of the death rate per 100,000 people by surveys which were pretty flawless, but they got the 1 million estimate by comparing the post-war deathe rate they got from the surveys with a pre-war figure which is purely a guess – of 5.5 per 100,000 per year. For a country which was suffering sanctions at the time which killed millions, that seems extremely low.
There are some people who give arguments for the 5.5 pre-war being a reasonable estimate though.
I emailed Mike Lewis of Iraq Analysis about this a couple of years ago and he argued that the figure isnt too low because the gross mortality rate is being measured – and the average age of the population (which is much lower in Iraq than e.g Israel or the UK) can affect the gross mortality rate.
He told me “a country with high infant and child mortality rates, as well as high rates of violence may have a relatively low gross mortality rate simply because it has a relatively young population Thus, for instance, the CIA world factbook (taking figures, I think, mainly from UNDP estimates) estimates that the gross death rate in Eritrea is slightly below that in Norway”
The fact remains though that the 5.5 figure pre-war is a guess, reasonable or not. The Lancet study’s methodology was sound on the post-war figure, but pretty much a guess on the numbers killed as a result of the war due to making a guess on the pre-war death rate.
sorry – the sentence which starts “They got an estimate of the death rate” should read “They got an estimate of the post-war (i.e post-invasion) death rate”
Play the ball,not the man. He’s quite right in the above article. No getting away from it.
True, he’s still right sometimes
“I do hope you studied ‘Angleton’ a bit esp. his influence on Bush senior and his connection to Chertoff’s mother.”
James Angleton?
He was in charge of the Israeli desk at the CIA and was the guy who secured the text of Khruschev’s secret speech denouncing Stalin via Israeli intelligence.
The speech was broadcast via Radio Free Europe (CIA-backed radio station) to Eastern Europe which showed there was a crisis of sorts within the Soviet Politburo.
For his part, Angleton believed that Soviet intelligence had infiltrated the CIA and had probably discovered its assassination attempts on Fidel Castro, and that Oswald was part of a Communist or Soviet conspiracy to kill Kennedy. For years after he would subject Soviet defectors and other members/assets of the CIA to imprisonment and interrogations.
Richard Helms and LBJ also suspected either a Soviet or Cuban hand in the assassination. The Warren Commission included Dulles, apparently because they were petrified that loose talk of a Soviet hand in the assassination could possibly push the US into war with the Soviet Union.
That is, at least, one analysis and no doubt some would dismiss it out of hand as some kind of attempt to spin the “secrecy” of the Warren Commission in a positive light.
As for Mark Lane, he has long been considered an albatross around the neck of a lot of other conspiracy theorists to the extent some of them consider him to be deliberately discrediting. After all, this is the Jonestown lawyer who is pushing the JFK KoolAid.
Mark, I haven’t kept up with ‘teams A, B and C’. Would you be able to present a brief summary of the dynamic, for those of us who haven’t been following this particular subtext within the threads (if I may refer to it as that)? What do the different teams do and where are they based? They haven’t been stopped, it seems, so why is that? Etc, etc. Many thanks. I’ll look up ‘team B’ on wiki as you suggest.
I’ve read about the charismatically-named James Jesus Angleton – sounds like the name of a ‘!Number One International Best-Selling, Award-winning, Highly-acclaimed Author: Now the Subject of a Major Hollywood Motion Picture!’, but of course it was his real name. He seems to have had his fingers in lots of pies. It’s fascinating.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Team_B
Intriguing: The birth of neoconia, at least in the form we know it today.
A little anecdote, of no world significance but in retrospect an intriguing weather-vane of sorts.
When Carter won the 1976 Presidential election in the USA, a guy who was a self-proclaimed serious supporter of the (racist) National Front in the UK was so angry, he decided, after I’d announced the result, to assault my desk at school. Silly teenage boy. Wonder what happened to him, later. Maybe he matured. Yet he saw in the Republican Party (of Ford, whom I suspect he despised, and defeated Republican candidate, Reagan, whom he did not) and most importantly in the acolytes of Reagan, the incipience of something with which he could identify.
Thus does global politics arrive at the doors of a Scottish school.