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February 9, 2005
Fresh Open Thread
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Up to 480 U.S. Nuclear Arms in Europe, Private Study Says
The United States still keeps as many as 480 nuclear weapons at air bases across Europe, more than twice what independent military analysts previously estimated, according to a new study that says the weapons’ presence is hurting efforts to curb nuclear proliferation worldwide.
Military officials insisted that the size of the nuclear stockpile in Europe, while classified, was smaller than that. But they acknowledged that it still existed to deter terrorists or nations that could threaten America or its allies with unconventional weapons. The officials also say the stockpile’s presence and its long-term fate have caused simmering tensions among senior NATO political and military officials.
The report by the Natural Resources Defense Council, a private group here that advocates arms control and monitors nuclear trends, says short-range nuclear weapons are stored under American control and regulated by secret military agreements at eight bases in Germany, Britain, Italy, Belgium, Turkey and the Netherlands. The bombs are kept under tight security at sites reinforced against attack.
…
Deter terrorists – sure, sure …
THE COLD HEAVEN
Suddenly I saw the cold and rook-delighting Heaven
That seemed as though ice burned, and was but the more ice,
And thereupon imagination and heart were driven
So wild that every casual thought of that and this
Vanished, and left but memories, that should be out of season
With the hot blood of youth, of love crossed long ago;
And I took all the blame out of all sense and reason,
Until I cried and trembled and rocked to and fro,
Riddled with light. Ah! when the ghost begins to quicken,
Confusion of death-bed over, is it sent
Out naked on the roads, as the books say, and stricken
By the injustice of the skies for punishment?
——————
WB Yeats
Posted by: Ah | Feb 9 2005 11:12 utc | 2
B: As long as the EU tolerates any foreign base, even moreso American base, on the territory of EU, it will be a dwarf politically and strategically.
Frankly, they should just seize all the equipment, including the 400 nukes, and expel the troopers – while putting all the high-ranking officers on trial for war crimes and various other demeanours, which they certainly committed at a time or another during their long criminal and murderous career.
It’s time to kill off the Beast.
Posted by: CluelessJoe | Feb 9 2005 11:20 utc | 3
Results of Iraq’s polls to be delayed: officials.
Maybe it’s taking a lot longer than they expected to put Allawi’s name on all those hundreds of thousands of ballot papers they didn’t give out?
Posted by: Anonymous | Feb 9 2005 11:24 utc | 4
@Clueless – I agree. I see no reason for US troops in Europe and the hassle about Iraq should have been used to send them home – at least from Germany where I live.
Over on Common Dreams theres a good little article by Paul Krugman about SS. He claims in the article people like Stephen Moore from Club For Growth and Cato believe that if the wingers can put a spear through the armor of SS, the whole welfare state will fall.
Stephen Moore and Norquist must have been picked on by a welfare family or someone from the “wrong side of the tracks.” These are bitter, sick little men.
Keep an eye on Talking Points Memo. Josh Marshall is really covering the SS debate and is getting some notice on his arguements.
Posted by: jdp | Feb 9 2005 11:28 utc | 6
Some beautiful Iraqi paintings on security walls around foreign ambassies and news agency places.
CNN exec: US has killed 12 reporters in Iraq
From the Davos, Switzerland World Economic Forum blog January 28, 2005 :
At what was an initially very mild discussion at the World Economic Forum titled “Will Democracy Survive the Media?”… Eason Jordan, Chief News Executive of CNN… asserted that he knew of 12 journalists who had not only been killed by US troops in Iraq, but they had in fact been targeted. He repeated the assertion a few times.
… David Gergen was also clearly disturbed and shocked by the allegation that the U.S. would target journalists, foreign or U.S.
… Statements were backed by other members of the audience (one in particular who represented a worldwide journalist group). The ensuing debate was (for lack of better words) a real “sh–storm”. What intensified the problem was the fact that the session was a public forum being taped on camera, in front of an international crowd. The other looming shadow on what was going on was the presence of a U.S. Congressman and a U.S. Senator in the middle of some very serious accusations about the U.S. military.
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Feb 9 2005 12:07 utc | 8
It’s important to keep in mind that many of these sick little men, believe, at least at some level, in the things that they say. It may be much easier for them to believe something that justifys their behaviour, but they believe it nonetheless.
I have long held that anyone who has believes that any system as complicated as an economy can be managed by any simple set of principles is dangerously deluded, whether on the left or on the right.
Scam: There’s at least half a dozen cases where it is beyond debate and just plain old fact that the US troopers deliberately killed journalists because they were journalists.
Pick Al-Jazeera: their offices in Kabul were bombed, so this time the guys from Dubai phone the US Army and give them the GPS location of their Iraqi office, so that they’ll know where not to hit when the missiles fly the day after. Soon enough of course, a “stray missile” blasts the building, the next day, killing their journalist on live TV during a report. One Al-Jazeera guy then said “when I gave them the GPS positioning, I sentenced them to death”.
Now, I wonder who is the guy writing this report, because he’s clearly in full revisionist mode about how the US army is protecting reporters everywhere. Well, the embedded idiots, sure, but all the others are fair game in Iraq. Then he comes wit this gem:
“The dark scenario, what the rest of the world would love to believe, is that the U.S. is sinister and evil and this is just another example of Darth Bush.”
Reality check: most of the planet actually knows the US is sinister and evil.
Posted by: CluelessJoe | Feb 9 2005 12:59 utc | 10
Well Colman, I believe in SS and veterans benefits for I was a beneficiary of that system. My parents were both passed away when I was fourteen. I live with my older brother for my high school years, and if it hadn’t been for SS and the little bit of veterans I recieved from my dad, I would have likely been in an orphans home. When he died I had nothing but the cloths on my back.
Norquist and Moore are wrong and I will go to my grave defending the safety net that helped me. They may believe, but I believe in a better way. A way that gives some symblance of security and hope when all else fails. I didn’t choise to be an orphan, like all young people that age, you are a victim of circumstance. Actually I came from a wealthy family, but my father couldn’t handle money and was broke and dead at 46 years of age. My age now.
I have seen pretty well everything a family could go through by 14 years of age. I know ideology and theirs is wrong. We must fight the good fight against the regressive right.
Posted by: jdp | Feb 9 2005 13:11 utc | 11
jdp, that’s not exactly what I mean: many of these people actually believe that it would have been better for you if that system did not exist. Either charities would have looked after you, or you would have found work: surely fourteen is old enough to get a job?
Now, they’re clearly wrong, and as I have said before, if they win they will destroy themselves in the long run, but they believe this crap. You’re correct that their ideology is wrong. So is any other ideology that prescribes methods rather than outcomes.
The New Yorker:
OUTSOURCING TORTURE
by JANE MAYER
The secret history of America’s “extraordinary rendition” program.
The Humor that is the Left
Now, If I could just understand the difference between a “little Eichmann” and one of dwarfish stature.
Posted by: Anonymous | Feb 9 2005 14:13 utc | 15
Leave No Penguin Behind…
Do the quickie registration and play at least games 1 through 4. By the way, I have it on the best authority that no penguins were harmed in the making of these games. 😉
Posted by: Kate_Storm | Feb 9 2005 14:26 utc | 16
Ack! Note to self – preview posts: No Penguin Left Behind
Quickie registration, worth the effort if you like games. And I have it on the best authority that no penguins were harmed in the making of these games.
Posted by: Kate_Storm | Feb 9 2005 14:30 utc | 17
These guys are unbelievable:
BAGHDAD, Feb 8 (Reuters) – Iraq has banked $5 billion dollars in an account with the U.S. Federal Reserve, a move that will boost ties with the rest of the financial world and earn it millions in interest income, a U.S. official said on Tuesday.
U.S. Treasury Under Secretary John Taylor said President George W. Bush had issued an executive order in November granting Iraq the right to open the account with the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
“This enables the central bank to earn income on its reserves, of approximately $5 billion, that will be over $100 million a year. That can be used to improve infrastructure,” Taylor told a news conference in Baghdad during a brief visit.
Posted by: Greco | Feb 9 2005 14:44 utc | 18
Greco, the translation of that is that the Iraqis are helping underwrite the dollar by buying dollar bonds, right? They’ve just lent the US 5 billion dollars. I guess they didn’t have any capital projects they needed to invest that money in in their own country.
mickey z points out some controversial quotes ward churchill didn’t say
Posted by: b real | Feb 9 2005 15:19 utc | 20
Bernhard: Just some empty prattle for now.
I just wanted to sincerely applaud the fact that this site is still alive and well. I was under the impression, at least, that Moon of Alabama was planning to “close shop” previously. Delighted to see that wasn’t the case.
Kudos!
Posted by: JMF | Feb 9 2005 16:13 utc | 21
—Lynne Cheney finnear the close of her just-broadcast interview on NPR & Terry Gross’s “Fresh Air”—
I think we all question people’s sincerity sometimes. But I think we’d be better off if we didn’t.
Let me get this straight, SLOTUS is saying that the whole world would be better off if we always trusted everything people tell us?….
This is the wife of the ex-chairman of a company that is regularly busted for multi-million (now probably multi-billion) defrauding of the taxpayers.
Who actually believes such pious slop? The question answers itself, no? But the kind of religious belief in human authorities that could produce this idea has to be labeled demonic.
So, what would have happened to Terry Gross if she busted SLOTUS on this?
Posted by: Citizen | Feb 9 2005 18:01 utc | 22
So is any other ideology that prescribes methods rather than outcomes.
Colman, you and I are definitely seeing eye to eye on this. If our methodology leads to undesirable outcomes then we need to re-examine our methodology. Theory must be judged by results, not results fudged and denied in defence of theory 🙂 But then I have always preferred to be reality-based.
Where we part company with the Regressives — where the application of these simple principles may not serve us even to deconstruct their programs — is that they consider some outcomes desirable which you or I would not consider desirable. Remember Kennan’s moment of frankness back in the 40’s! Remember Kissinger’s slip of the tongue when he admitted the desirability of “depopulating Asia”. For some of these guys, as for their counterparts in Stalin’s murderous campaign against the landed yeoman gentry, as for their counterparts in the Nazi mass murders, as in [pick your favourite mass murderer, including Saddam when he offed the Marsh Arabs and tried to destroy their culture and habitat, including US and Ozzie attempts to exrtirpate their continental indigenes], these guys may consider that mass poverty, suffering, starvation, mass death, things that any sane person would find disastrous — are actually desirable, and that these outcomes prove that their System is Working. Whether this in fact lines up with their public rhetoric is irrelevant. They’re Straussians: public rhetoric is merely a product for sale, or the pretty wrapping around a defective product for sale.
On some earlier thread last night I said that the wrecking of Iraq might well be a pissy whiteboy racist response to dusky persons “getting above themselves” (i.e. having a modern nation with industrial infrastructure, wealth, medical technology etc.). And I said we should never underestimate the depth of American racism. In support of my theory, Tim Wise recounts a conversation overheard in an airport lounge, on the subject of Ward Churchill:
One of the men, fuming about the article that now has Ward facing down the barrel of a Board of Trustees looking for any reason to fire him, despite tenure, turned to the other and said: “Just when you thought we’d killed all the Indians, one pops up talkin’ some shit like this, and reminds you that we didn’t finish the job after all.”
White guy number two laughs, in fact, damn near spits Dewar’s and soda all over the leather barca lounger he’s plopped down in, finding this affable romanticizing of genocide to be the funniest fucking thing he has apparently had the luxury of hearing, at least since the last time he and his buddies sat around in a sports bar, farting, and trading jokes about fags, or some such thing.
I was stunned, because just one day before, I had speculated, only half-seriously, during an interview with KPFK in Los Angeles, that this anti-Indian sentiment might lay beneath some of the vitriol aimed Ward’s way. After all, the attacks on him have seemed so personal, so vicious, so much worse than even the histrionics normally leveled at white leftists like Chomsky, or Parenti, or Zinn, who said much the same thing about 9/11 after that fateful day. The bombast has seemed to include an unhealthy dose of racial resentment–absolute rage–at the notion that a person of color and an Indian no less, should dare to condemn the American empire.
“Didn’t we get rid of those people years ago?” One can almost hear the refrain, as if broadcast from a loudspeaker.
rest of “Reflections on Empire and Uppity Indians” is worth a read imho.
I am forever astonished and frustrated by the many writers/speakers/bloggers who take the Straussians’ word at face value and then argue about it as if it had some mysterious credence. By now all should know that NOTHING said by a neocon deserves a response. Other than, that is, a counterterrorism plan which includes kneecapping.
Posted by: rapt | Feb 9 2005 18:40 utc | 25
ward churchill’s status as an indian does not go unquestioned – the american indian movement organization calls him a fraud
http://www.aimovement.org/moipr/churchill05.html
Posted by: mistah charley | Feb 9 2005 19:02 utc | 26
i did mention last week or so that the smear against ward was b/c the colorado AIM chapter & a couple hundred indigenous-rights activists were aquitted in a showcase trial in denver. i’ve read that the source of this media campaign comes from a couple white “conservative” radio talkshow hosts, also in denver. the settler mentality still thrives on the frontier.
Posted by: b real | Feb 9 2005 19:11 utc | 27
JMF:
Bernhard and Jerome decided to continue this enterprise together, working very succesfully in tandem.
Good to see you found your way back.
Posted by: A swedish kind of death | Feb 9 2005 19:16 utc | 28
The American Indian movement was taken over by the CIA’s cointelpro. What does that tell ya?
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Feb 9 2005 19:18 utc | 29
the bad guys got to keep the original name & they’ve tried to smear ward & glen morris w/ the same arguments over the years. here’s some of the story on aim — Why do you think we call it struggle?
Posted by: b real | Feb 9 2005 19:22 utc | 30
Just wanted to encourage everyone to read the Outsourcing Terror article. Amazing:
Yoo also argued that the Constitution granted the President plenary powers to override the U.N. Convention Against Torture when he is acting in the nation’s defense—a position that has drawn dissent from many scholars. As Yoo saw it, Congress doesn’t have the power to “tie the President’s hands in regard to torture as an interrogation technique.” He continued, “It’s the core of the Commander-in-Chief function. They can’t prevent the President from ordering torture.” If the President were to abuse his powers as Commander-in-Chief, Yoo said, the constitutional remedy was impeachment. He went on to suggest that President Bush’s victory in the 2004 election, along with the relatively mild challenge to Gonzales mounted by the Democrats in Congress, was “proof that the debate is over.” He said, “The issue is dying out. The public has had its referendum.”
These dudes sleep like babies.
Posted by: slothrop | Feb 9 2005 19:26 utc | 31
Kate: Here is Bush version, and I seriously doubt that no penguin was hurt this time 😉
slothrop: One can only hope that a future administration will think it’s fine to put Yoo to torture, so that he gets a first-hand experience of what he promotes.
Posted by: Clueless Joe | Feb 9 2005 19:40 utc | 32
mistah charley
i am not a genetic specialialist but it is an old game of power – especially with indigenous people – is to question their ethnicity . it has been used all over the world to seperate activists from their people especially in cultures where a metisse or a person of ‘mixed’ parentage has more possibilities educationally & otherwise. attack on the aboriginality of this or that activists has been true in australia, in canada & in scandinavia. to question someone’s ethnicity to me is degrading
even if it were the case that a person so identifies with a struggle that he ‘becomes’ that struggle – i find in that a certain beauty as well as a certain sadness
what churchiil said stands. his right to say it must be defended
are we to mimic the discourses of the murdoch whores & pimps who have already diminished journalism’s function
we are living already in a degrade world. a world where everything has been turned into a breughel painting full of the screaming heads of ‘current affairs’ who have made activism in any sense a dirty word & try their best to turn it to shame & where they can to harsher methods
what world of wonder has been turned to shit
Posted by: remembereringgiap | Feb 9 2005 21:05 utc | 33
Ick. Ick. Ick. That’s horrible, Joe. Um… thanks for sharing. 🙁 Poor little beastie.
Posted by: Kate_Storm | Feb 9 2005 21:26 utc | 34
Another interesting site on SS is USAnext.org. Art Linkletter at 93 tears old is a spokesperson. Linkletter must be pretty senile by now, but maybe not. But look at the resume of Mr. Jarvis the executive. This whole organization is a shill for SS privatization. It claims to be 14 years old and has taken direct aim at AARP. But I have never heard of it before today. I would like to know the funders.
Posted by: jdp | Feb 9 2005 22:14 utc | 35
In 2002 John Robert Smith said, “We literally spend more collecting road kill off the nation’s highways than we spend on the entire passenger rail system.”
btw John Robert Smith is a Republican.
On a related note I have discovered that Google’s new N Am maps feature (in beta) shows addresses of airports, all major highways, and can pinpoint street addresses rather well. But it shows not one train, bus, BART or light rail station. In the Seattle to Vancouver BC area it shows only those ferry termini and routes that carry cars — passenger ferries are omitted. If you hit the San Francisco area map and search for “BART” (the famous SF area lightrail/subway system), you get listings for lawyers called “Bart Somebody”, but not one BART station. Search for “San Jose airport” and you get a good set of hits. Search for “San Jose Amtrak” and you get nothing, even though San Jose Diridon Amtrak station is what passes for a major rail nexus in this third world country.
Evidently Google’s latlong database was supplied by BushCo 🙂 only cars and airplanes exists. All other travel modes are censored! Further down the rabbit hole we go…
@A swedish kind of death
Bernhard and Jerome, Jerome and Bernhard.
Smells like a Franco-German Axis!
Posted by: Greco | Feb 10 2005 5:36 utc | 37
N. Korea Announces It Has Nuclear Weapons
North Korea on Thursday announced for the first time that it has nuclear weapons and rejected moves to restart disarmament talks any time soon, saying it needs the armaments as protection against an increasingly hostile United States.
…
“We … have manufactured nukes for self-defense to cope with the Bush administration’s ever more undisguised policy to isolate and stifle the (North),” the North Korean Foreign Ministry said in a statement carried by the state-run Korean Central News Agency.
…
But Thursday’s statement was North Korea’s first public acknowledgment that it has nuclear weapons. North Korea makes all important statements in the name of its Foreign Ministry spokesman and spreads them through KCNA, the isolated state’s main news outlet.
North Korea’s “nuclear weapons will remain (a) nuclear deterrent for self-defense under any circumstances,” the ministry said. “The present reality proves that only powerful strength can protect justice and truth.”
I am all for breaking down the regime in North Korea (when it breaks down and we will see their reality we will all be sorry for not having pressed harder.)
The adminsitartion has taken exactly the wrong way to faciliate this and now the heat turned up a bit more.
When will they to a test explosion?
When will the Japanes announce their weapon?
DeAnander,
Bushes new 2006 budget allocates 360 million for Amtrak. With apparent ignorance to the fact that in the NE corridor more people use rail service than fly, and that Amtraks 2005 operating budget was 1.2 Billion, the new budget will effectivly kill intercity rail service in the USA. This bizarre and recurrent expectation that rail service should be “self sufficent” makes no sense with respect that no other transport system (airports, highways,etc) survives independent of taxpayer support. Just how many billions in taxpayer money was handed over to airlines after 911, Amtrak could have operated for years with the bailout money alone — so much for the self sufficient excuse.
Posted by: anna missed | Feb 10 2005 9:48 utc | 39
@b
I am all for breaking down the regime in North Korea (when it breaks down and we will see their reality we will all be sorry for not having pressed harder.)
Why? I am certainly no expert on North Korea, but I have been trying over the last year or so to understand a little bit more about it.
Why do you want to break the regime? This is, after all, a sovereign nation, and how they choose to organize their society is not really anyone else’s business.
Do you believe all of the propaganda? Does it really matter that they have ‘Dear Leader’ and an undemocratic dynasty? Was not Western Europe feudal and undemocratic for much of it’s history (as is the Middle East today)? Isn’t Bush I and Bush II some sort of a dynasty.
There are a few other KPI’s that I would judge a society on (if indeed it was any of my business to pass a judgment) – and one of these is the way that a society treats it’s least fortunate. From what I can glean, children in North Korea are especially well treated, and compares most favourably to the experience in a country like (say) the Philippines, where I have witnessed children who spend their days scavanging on Smokey Mountain. Of course, the Philippines is a model democracy, with a cloned American political system, with a President, a Senate, a Congress, and a Supreme Court. Nothing wrong here!
America has been at war with North Korea since the Korean war. Although it is clear that there has been great privations in recent years (apparently resulting from a combination of drought, economic sanctions, and their compelling need to spend their entire GNP fending off America) – I doubt that America will succeed in breaking down the regime any time real soon (and even so, I think a unified Korea would not be such a compliant American client-state anyway).
They may not need to test their nukes (if they really have them) as long as America is not sure. There is probably little need for Japan to announce what is a reasonable assumption. This maintains the MAD balance, the only thing that guarantees sanity.
Anyway, America has no “good intentions”. It is all a geopolitical game where we can absolutely discount anything other than America’s interests. To my mind, it makes little difference how they go about facilitating the breakdown of the regime. Either way, it is not the prerogative of America or anyone else to do this. They have no more genuine concern for the welfare of North Korean citizens than they do for Iraqi citizens.
We may sneer at North Koreans and their ‘Dear Leader’, but do we really have something better to offer (other than lifting trade sanctions and allowing economic development) ?
Posted by: DM | Feb 10 2005 9:53 utc | 40
But Anna, trains are a communist device inherited from Old Europe. Cars and Airyplanes are the American way.
Trains are seen as public transport, even when they’re not, and the free-market crowd hate public transport, despite what Prophet Smith had to say about such things.
@DM – Why do you want to break the regime? This is, after all, a sovereign nation, and how they choose to organize their society is not really anyone else’s business.
“how they choose to organize” – is where my problem starts. Do they have a chance to choose?
Note: I am against any attempt to regime change by war or clandestine means. I am all for open communication and controlled trade. The way South Korea is trying to engage the North is a good start. Only open communication can make sure that North Koreans as we all have the information to review their choice and probably make a new one.