US test ‘confirms’ N Korea claim

Preliminary results of scientific tests appear to confirm that North Korea did carry out a nuclear test last Monday as it claimed, US officials have said.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Oct 14 2006 8:43 utc | 3

Aaron Russo releases America: Freedom to Fascism online!

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Oct 14 2006 9:14 utc | 5

US ‘head shot’ kills Brit cameraman

An investigation in the U.K. has found evidence that U.S. troops fired on a civilian vehicle killing a ITN cameraman.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Oct 14 2006 9:39 utc | 7

p.s. yes, I know this (the above)has been discussed on moon previously, just posted to remind folks. Moon seems to be always ahead of the curve.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Oct 14 2006 10:20 utc | 9

nice one annie, the still photos were excellent. love the non-linear narrative of the trailer (as the movie is?)too, as like the stills, allows you to absorb the moment, the flesh of the people.

Posted by: anna missed | Oct 14 2006 19:08 utc | 11

Why? Why is all this happening?
Surely Bush invading two countries – Afgh. and Iraq – cannot be ascribed to Bush’s idiocy, or Republican madness, or hate for Saddam, or Bush wanting revenge for his dad, or 19 shadows with box cutters buying 19 plane tickets..
If any of these nonsensical explanations are correct, it implies that US democracy is rotten to the core and 98% or Americans are sub-normal rats.
That can’t be right! 🙂
The present is not an accident of history due to the pathological personality quirks of a small cabal of people.
Those who present it as such show that they themselves don’t believe it, as they don’t act on that vision. If it were true, it would be easy to affect, change, reverse events. The most obvious sign is the opposition party, the Democrats, who are not in opposition, but on occasion pretend to be. The Democrats know, as all western pols realise, that the path chosen was inevitable (after the early 70’s), and now all that can be done is to cover up, cover up, and whip up hate (for Muslims/Arabs), hope for the best, battle, fight, coerce – on every front; economic, diplomatic, soft power, propaganda, etc. – invade, attack, kill millions (yes millions), control, even if massive destruction is needed. The endless war …
The West cannot survive, that is, cannot dominate, which it needs to do to continue, without the essential resources to ensure technological supremacy, food dominance thru modern, energy-intensive agriculture and ripping off the 3rd world, military might with huge stocks of arms, matériel, soldiers (incredibly expensive in resources), control of media and international institutions (UN etc), economic growth (part and parcel of our capitalist world), management and oversight of transport routes – pipelines, shipping, trade routes, etc.-, the upholding of a ‘democratic’ lifestyle (eg basic education for all; some health care; pablum for the people, sexy froth, sweets, drugs and TV; revolution must be prevented at all costs) –
the energy must be found, stolen, controlled, taken over.
Fossil fuels, minerals, water, products of arable soil – the system needs more and more of all of these.

Posted by: Noirette | Oct 14 2006 19:15 utc | 13

anna missed #11. it’s opening 11/10 at the varsity if you want to meet. i imagine james will be there. i’ll find out from sara. i’m excited to meet him again, i guess he’s not the college kid i remember anymore. email me if you and k are up for it.

Posted by: annie | Oct 14 2006 20:23 utc | 15

Interesting article about China’s ‘new left.’

Despite his invocation of socialist principles, Wang was quick to tell me that he dislikes the New Left label, even though he has used it himself. “Intellectuals reacted against ‘leftism’ in the 80’s, blaming it for all of China’s problems,” he said, “and right-wing radicals use the words ‘New Left’ to discredit us, make us look like remnants from the Maoist days.” Wang also doesn’t care to be identified with the radical intellectuals of the 60’s in America and Europe, to whom the term New Left was originally applied. Many of them, he said, had passion and slogans but very little practical politics, and not surprisingly, more than a few ended up with the neoconservatives, supporting “fantasy projects” like democracy in Iraq.
Wang prefers the term “critical intellectual” for himself and like-minded colleagues, some of whom are also part of China’s nascent activist movement in the countryside, working to alleviate rural poverty and environmental damage. Though broadly left wing, Dushu publishes writing from across the ideological spectrum. Wang’s own work draws on a broad range of Western thinkers, from the French historian Fernand Braudel to the globalization theorist Immanuel Wallerstein. “Intellectual quality is important to me,” Wang said. “I don’t want to run just any left-wing garbage.” The magazine has carried abstract debates on postcolonial theory as well as, he claims, some of the most interesting analyses in China of how the government’s urban-oriented reforms have damaged rural society. There are restrictions on what Dushu can publish, of course, and Wang is frank about them. As with all intellectual journals in mainland China, authors and editors at Dushu have to exercise a degree of self-censorship. Articles cannot directly criticize the leadership or deviate much from the official line on subjects that the Chinese government considers most sensitive – Taiwan or restive Muslim and Buddhist minorities in Xinjiang and Tibet.
“I get asked in Western countries, ‘How do you define your position?”‘ Wang said. “‘Are you a dissident?’ I say no. What is a dissident? It is a cold-war category. And it has no meaning now. Many of the Chinese dissidents in America can return to China. But they don’t want to. They are doing well in the U.S. To people who ask me if we are dissidents, I say, we are critical intellectuals. Some government policies we support. Others, we oppose. It really depends on the content of the policy.”

Posted by: biklett | Oct 14 2006 22:53 utc | 17

@Noirette re:#13
From this article I read that, NATO has 31,000 international troops fighting in Afghanistan, coming from 37 countries, including Australia.
It made me question just, What is the overall plan of/for NATO?
I browsed recently to F William Engdahl’s website & found this article published October 9, 2006: The Emerging Russian Giant Plays its Cards Strategically.
It is a fascinating read (some excerpts below) & it suggests that the prize in the Great game is still Russia & it’s energy reserves. Interesting is the connections between the originators/facilitators of NATO expansionist plans & PNAC/AEI etc.

<...>
This surprising spread of NATO, to the alarm of some in western Europe, as well as to Russia, had been part of the strategy advocated by Cheney`s friends at the Project for the New American Century, in their ‘Rebuilding America`s Defenses’ report and even before.
Already in 1996, PNAC member and Cheney crony, Bruce Jackson, then a top executive with US defense giant, Lockheed Martin, was head of the US Committee to Expand NATO, later renamed the US Committee on Nato, a very powerful Washington lobby group.
The US Committee to Expand NATO also included PNAC members Paul (World Bank)Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Stephen Hadley and Robert Kagan. Kagan`s wife is Victoria Nuland, now the US Ambassador to NATO. From 2000 – 2003, she was a foreign policy advisor to Cheney. Hadley, a hardline hawk close to Vice President Cheney, was named by President Bush to replace Condoleezza Rice as his National Security Adviser.
The warhawk Cheney network moved from the PNAC into key posts within the Bush Administration to run NATO and Pentagon policy. Bruce Jackson and others, after successfully lobbying Congress to expand NATO to Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary in 1999, moved to organize the so-called Vilnius Group that lobbied to bring ten more former Warsaw Pact countries on Russia`s periphery into NATO. Jackson called this the ‘Big Bang.’
President Bush repeatedly used the term ‘New Europe’ in statements about NATO enlargement. In a July 5, 2002 speech hailing the leaders of the Vilnius group, Bush declared, ‘Our nations share a common vision of a new Europe, where free European states are united with each other, and with the United States through cooperation, partnership, and alliance.’
Lockheed Martin`s former executive, Bruce Jackson, took credit for bringing the Baltic and other members of the Vilnius Group into NATO. Testifying before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on April 1, 2003, Jackson claimed he originated the ‘Big Bang’ concept of NATO enlargement, later adopted by the Vilnius Group of Baltic and Eastern European nations. As Jackson noted, his ‘Big Bang’ briefing ‘proposed the inclusion of these seven countries in NATO and claimed for this enlargement strategic advantages for NATO and moral (sic) benefits for the democratic community of nations.’ On May 19, 2000 in Vilnius, Lithuania, these propositions were adopted by nine of Europe`s new democracies as their own. It became the objectives of the Vilnius Group. Jackson could also have noted the benefits to US military defense industry, including his old cronies at Lockheed Martin, with the creation of a vast new NATO arms market on the borders to Russia.
<…>
In brief, NATO encirclement of Russia, Color Revolutions across Eurasia, and the war in Iraq, were all one and the same American geopolitical strategy, part of a grand strategy to ultimately de -construct Russia once and for all as a potential rival to a sole US Superpower hegemony. Russia – not Iraq and not Iran – was the primary target of that strategy.
<…>
In the context of a United States which has actively moved the troops of its NATO partners into Afghanistan, now Lebanon, and which is clearly backing the former USSR member Georgia, today a critical factor in the Caspian Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan Turkey oil pipeline, in Georgia`s move to join NATO and push Russian troops away, it is little surprise that Moscow might be just a bit uncomfortable with the American President`s promises of spreading democracy through a US-defined Greater Middle East. The invented term, Greater Middle East is the creation of various Washington think -tanks close to Cheney including his Project for the New American Century, to refer to the non-Arabic countries of Turkey, Iran, Israel, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Central Asian (former USSR) countries, and Azerbaijan, Georgia and Armenia. At the G-8 Summit in Summer 2004 President Bush first officially used the term to refer to the region included in Washington`s project to spread ‘democracy’ in the region.
<…>
On October 3, the Russian Foreign Ministry warned that Russia would ‘take appropriate measures’ should Poland deploy elements of the new US missile defense system. Poland is now a NATO member. Its Defense Minister, Radek Sikorski was a former Resident in Washington at Richard Perle`s hawkish AEI think-tank. He was also Executive Director of the New Atlantic Initiative, a project designed to bring the former Warsaw Pact countries of eastern Europe into NATO under the guise of spreading democracy. The United States is also building, via NATO, a European Missile Defense System.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Oct 15 2006 0:26 utc | 19

air force “memorial”. fittingly ugly tribute to our brave bombers. the “bombburst” design evoking the thunderbird trademark showstopper and mushroom cloud–metonomies of death from above, but so lovely after all. as the rednecks crane their gaped mouth faces upward, in the sky just above the tiltawhirl and zipper at the statefair, they watch the spectacle of jets parting the heavens with comtrails and roars. halafuckinlujah, brothers.
they shoulda dropped anna missed a couple mil to do a statue from this.

Posted by: slothrop | Oct 15 2006 1:36 utc | 21

R.I.P. Freddy Fender.
HERE With the unforgetable and great Texas Tornados.

Posted by: anna missed | Oct 15 2006 3:17 utc | 23

Opps..
North Korea Opens New Front in Iraq War

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Oct 15 2006 3:52 utc | 25

Rich: The Gay Old Party Comes Out

The split between the Republicans’ outward homophobia and inner gayness isn’t just hypocrisy; it’s pathology. Take the bizarre case of Karl Rove. Every one of his Bush campaigns has been marked by a dirty dealing of the gay card, dating back to the lesbian whispers that pursued Ann Richards when Mr. Bush ousted her as Texas governor in 1994. Yet we now learn from “The Architect,” the recent book by the Texas journalists James Moore and Wayne Slater, that Mr. Rove’s own (and beloved) adoptive father, Louis Rove, was openly gay in the years before his death in 2004. This will be a future case study for psychiatric clinicians as well as historians.
So will Kirk Fordham, the former Congressional aide who worked not only for Mark Foley but also for such gay-baiters as Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma (who gratuitously bragged this year that no one in his family’s “recorded history” was gay) and Senator Mel Martinez of Florida (who vilified his 2004 Republican primary opponent, a fellow conservative, as a tool of the “radical homosexual agenda”). Then again, even Rick Santorum, the Pennsylvania senator who brought up incest and “man-on-dog” sex while decrying same-sex marriage, has employed a gay director of communications. In the G.O.P. such switch-hitting is as second nature as cutting taxes.
…
A Washington Post poll last week found that two-thirds of Americans believe that Democrats would behave just as badly as the Hastert gang in covering up a scandal like this to protect their own power. They are no doubt right. But the reason why the Foley scandal has legs — and why it has upstaged most other news, from the Congressional bill countenancing torture to North Korea’s nuclear test — is not just that sex trumps everything else in a tabloid-besotted America. The Republicans, unlike most Democrats (Joe Lieberman always excepted), can’t stop advertising their “family values,” which is why their pitfalls are as irresistible as a Molière farce. It was entertaining enough to learn that the former Christian Coalition leader Ralph Reed wanted to go “humping in corporate accounts” with the corrupt gambling lobbyist Jack Abramoff. The only way that comic setup could be topped was by the news that Mr. Foley was chairman of the Missing and Exploited Children’s Caucus. It beggars the imagination that he wasn’t also entrusted with No Child Left Behind.

Posted by: b | Oct 15 2006 5:34 utc | 27

LAT has two good ones today:
Ken Mehlman and Abramoff (not in bed together with Gannon, those pictures will come up later) Displease a Lobbyist, Get Fired

The e-mails show that Abramoff, whose client list included the Northern Mariana Islands, had long opposed Stayman’s work advocating labor changes in that U.S. commonwealth, and considered what his lobbying team called the “Stayman project” a high priority.
“Mehlman said he would get him fired,” an Abramoff associate wrote after meeting with Mehlman, who was then White House political director.

and an OpEd how Bush Unleashes the Nuclear Beast, i.e. proliferation.

Posted by: b | Oct 15 2006 13:27 utc | 29

“In that case, count me in. Because Democrats recognize that we’re headed for a far greater disaster in Iraq if we don’t change course — and soon. This is not defeatism. This is realism.”
How come nobody’s mentioned THIS?

Posted by: pb | Oct 15 2006 17:15 utc | 31

Sounds about right Uncle Scam. NATO has morphed from a defensive ‘cold war’ pact to a sloppy alliance that defends the West. It fought, for the first time of its long existence, in Yugoslavia, and that was a success, although from a military pov it wasn’t anything impressive – bombing the shit out of civilians in line with a Muslim separatist agenda is nothing much to write home about.
Now, after much hesitation and discussion, in Afghanistan, where it is a sort of umbrella for the various multiple countries who wanted to support USuk, or, for various reasons did not dare to refuse to do so, and made token offers of troops, in return for cash or other favors. Until very recently there were two forces in Afgh. Nato, a re-grouping of all those who ‘joined’ (including Australia, for example..) but who were set on peace-keeping and re-building as public policy rather than direct aggression and a second, the original coalition forces (Usuk with some hangers on) who went for the hard stuff, read bombing and killing Taliban, etc.
On 5 oct the whole lot of them were placed under NATO command. Tactically this decision was a necessity, (I have this only from reading the press, no expert me) as it became clear that coordination was deficient (no doubt because aims had never been clarified), no one wanted to take command or responsibility, and everyone, but everyone, is walking all over everything, including NGOs, who practically run civil society, in Kabul at least. The ‘reconstruction’ forces are also now under NATO. All mandated by the UN.
Nato’s communiqué is a model of brevity:
link
Pakistani students are for the first time following “nato courses.” (?)
nato PDF
(such small details are telling..)
/All this is way beyond the scope of laid down texts – just like the Geneva conventions, the US constitution, etc. – all tired ancient dusty documents that ignore new realities, necessity, and well, just, what, err cough cough, has to be done, if it can be dressed up in terms of humanitarianism, needs, calls for, wishes, moral principles, etc. all in airy double commas, wonderful./
It’s aim: defend US/EU interests against Russia and the ME. Viz. Russia, the situation is edgy for Europe; geography, energy, the stans, etc. Yes, the New Atlantic Initiative. Right. Which has its headquarters (according to Wiki) at the American Entreprise Institute.

Posted by: Noirette | Oct 15 2006 17:54 utc | 33

So, it was Goldman-Citibank that brought down gas prices to help Bu$hCo?
And don’t forget Japan’s critical role in Global Speculation, now that Indonesia has notified Japanese companies that it intends to halve exports of liquefied natural gas to Japan by as early as 2010

Posted by: jj | Oct 15 2006 19:20 utc | 35

Police want spy planes to fight anti-social behaviour
Oct 15, 06, from Breitbart com.
A police force is considering using unmanned aerial surveillance drones to fly over troubled local council housing estates to help tackle anti-social behaviour in respective areas.
The police force for Merseyside, in western England, has formed a new Anti-Social Behaviour Task Force which will have a budget of one million pounds (1.85 million dollars, 1.5 million euros), and a staff of 137, drawn from both the local police and fire services, The Sunday Telegraph reported.
“It’s a cheap way of doing aerial surveillance, it’s a cheap way of doing intelligence and evidence gathering. Put over an anti-social behaviour hotspot, it is quite a significant percentage cheaper than the force helicopter,” said Superintendent John Myles, the joint-head of the task force.
“There may be some hurdles. The Civil Aviation Authority may say that it is a no-no, but I don’t think it is at the moment,” he said.
link

Posted by: Noirette | Oct 15 2006 20:02 utc | 37

Lynndie England reveals a culture of warped violence

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Oct 16 2006 5:55 utc | 39

Uncle,
RE the bulldog post, I wonder how Lynndie, in the second post, might infer the same of Condi — all after the fact, of course.
England, 23, described how her sexually charged relationship with Graner – who she now describes as a “shithead” – focused on her efforts to please him.

Posted by: anna missed | Oct 16 2006 7:15 utc | 41

@anna missed
I can’t explain it, but I have some lingering empathy for Lynndie England, possibly because she is from the same type background I was fortunate enough to escape from, desperate poverty, soaked in a vat of uneducated, mean spirited inbred bigots.
Perhaps, it was something in Joe Bageant’s prose in his “Girl with the Leash” article that moved me. Bageant writes, “Lynndie England never had a chance. Abu Ghraib, or maybe something even worse (an RPG up the shorts, for instance) was always her destiny. Nearly half of the 800 Americans killed in Iraq to date came from small towns like hers, like mine. Forty-six percent of the American dead in Iraq came from towns of less than 40,000. Yet these towns make up only 25% of our population. Most of the young soldiers were fleeing economically depressed places, or dead end jobs like Lynndie had at the chicken processing plant. These so-called volunteers are part of this nation’s de facto draft—economic conscription. Money is always the best whip to use on the laboring clasess. Thirteen hundred a month, a signing bonus and free room and board sure beats the hell out of yanking guts through a chicken’s ass.”
I too, have done some really awful things in my life, looking back now, they were due to wanting to be validated i.e liked, mostly directed out of fear, shame, poverty, feeling dehumanized my self and in turn dehumanizing others, many things I regret though I can say now, out of spiritual void of feeling objectified myself and in turn passing that on.
Having sd, that, I guess time, maturity, healing etc, leads one to personal transformation, innner redemption. I have always had the need, nay, a longing to understand the human condition.
On a simular note, you may want to acquaint yourselves with the works of the Marquis de Sade, who so well understood human depravity and sadism and who remains for me the unparalleled Dark Angel of Western philosophy.
I recommend the definitive Grove Weidenfeld edition of Justine, Philosophy in the Bedroom and Other Writings, compiled and translated by Richard Seaver and Austryn Wainhouse.
I am a man: nothing human is alien to me.
— Publius Terentius Afer (Terence)

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Oct 16 2006 8:14 utc | 43

Billmon comments on the return of Riverbend (Baghdad Burning). She had been silent since the 5th of August. I had missed her voice and feared that bad things might have happened. Her last post in August dealt with Iraqis who were getting out while they could. Does anyone know anthing about this woman who writes so well with a remarkable command of English? Her quotes from Emily Dickenson, her command of American vernacular – at times I wondered if she were the creation of a talented American living in Baghdad. But her tales sound so authentic that it is tempting to believe in her — which means to worry about her after you have been reading her for a while.

Posted by: stonevendor | Oct 19 2006 5:18 utc | 45