Enemy Combatant
Saturday, March 22, 2003
Daniel Ellsberg was arrested at an antiwar demonstration in DC today. He said he wanted to stay the weekend because there is no TV. Then he read from a great early American whom the rightwing seems to have entirely forgotten: Henry David Thoreau:
Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison. The proper place to-day, the only place which Massachusetts has provided for her freer and less desponding spirits, is in her prisons, to be put out and locked out of the State by her own act, as they have already put themselves out by their principles. It is there that the fugitive slave, and the Mexican prisoner on parole, and the Indian come to plead the wrongs of his race, should find them; on that separate, but more free and honorable ground, where the State places those who are not with her, but against her -- the only house in a slave State in which a free man can abide with honor. If any think that their influence would be lost there, and their voices no longer afflict the ear of the State, that they would not be as an enemy within its walls, they do not know by how much truth is stronger than error, nor how much more eloquently and effectively he can combat injustice who has experienced a little in his own person. Cast your whole vote, not a strip of paper merely, but your whole influence. A minority is powerless while it conforms to the majority; it is not even a minority then; but it is irresistible when it clogs by its whole weight. If the alternative is to keep all just men in prison, or give up war and slavery, the State will not hesitate which to choose. If a thousand men were not to pay their tax-bills this year, that would not be a violent and bloody measure, as it would be to pay them, and enable the State to commit violence and shed innocent blood. This is, in fact, the definition of a peaceable revolution, if any such is possible. If the tax-gatherer, or any other public officer, asks me, as one has done, "But what shall I do?" my answer is, "If you really wish to do anything, resign your office." When the subject has refused allegiance, and the officer has resigned his office, then the revolution is accomplished. But even suppose blood should flow. Is there not a sort of blood shed when the conscience is wounded? Through this wound a man's real manhood and immortality flow out, and he bleeds to an everlasting death. I see this blood flowing now.
Thursday, March 13, 2003
Wish I could write like this: Some lacerating truths from Paul Krugman:
Mr. Bush's inner circle seems amazed that the tactics that work so well on journalists and Democrats don't work on the rest of the world. They've made promises, oblivious to the fact that most countries don't trust their word. They've made threats. They've done the aura-of-inevitability thing ó how many times now have administration officials claimed to have lined up the necessary votes in the Security Council? They've warned other countries that if they oppose America's will they are objectively pro-terrorist. Yet still the world balks.
Saturday, March 08, 2003
Well, I think we've underestimated the "persuasiveness" of pRess ConFronts II:
for example, two prominent erstwhile fence-sitting/pro-war bloggers whom I read regularly -- Josh Marshall and Calpundit -- have, as of today, joined the ANTI-war camp . . .
. . . glad to have you guys. Grab a protest sign, and a cup of coffee. Demonstration lines form to the rear . . .
Friday, March 07, 2003
It occurred to me the other day, the seeming barbarians who run North Korea could do us all a HUGE favor, and score brownie points with the civilized world (well, minus the US and UK anyway), by just playing "the Pyongyang gambit" over the next few days, and calling Bush on his "preemptive" bluff.
They could say, "Well, the day the US invades Iraq is the day all the old rules go out the window, and we have to keep up. Therefore, once the shitstorm of gore they laughingly call Shock and Awe begins, we in North Korea assert our OWN right to preemptively strike, if we in our own estimation feel 'threatened.'
"Which we do -- or will, the moment Shock and Awe is launched.
"So we'll THEN strike the United States West Coast. With nukes.
"We're not defending Iraq OR Saddam, per se. We're just defending ourselves -- you know -- preemptively."
If Georgie wants to play geopolitical chess, he ought to think a few steps ahead.
Thursday, March 06, 2003
I recall, days after a bare majority of the Supreme Court committed an impeachable offense (and the source of all our present woe), having an email exchange with a Republican friend wherein I used the phrase "oceans of red ink" to describe what was to come . . .
P.L.A. does a fantastic job of "nailing" it:
Budget Deficit Balloons
The Bush administration has projected the budget deficit for this fiscal year to be slightly more than $304 billion. The fiscal year started last October and runs through next September. The New York Times reports, that even that dismal projection is no longer operative:
The federal deficit is growing much more quickly than expected, even before Congress takes up President Bush's tax-cutting proposals and without factoring in the costs of a war in Iraq, Congressional analysts have concluded.
Analysts for the Republican-controlled House Budget Committee have raised their estimates of this year's budget shortfall by about $30 billion, some 15 percent beyond the forecast that the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office issued only five weeks ago.
Those estimates do not include any cost of the looming war in Iraq or any occupation of Iraq.
* * * * * * * * *
It is a good thing this is the Responsibility Era. There is going to be a lot of responsibility to accept.
North Korea, I'm sure, is becoming a sore subject around the White House -- particularly as it points up everything that's incoherent and hypocritical about our policy toward Iraq. CalPundit has some good comments on that subject -- but why is it nobody in the Western press has even mentioned -- much less confirmed or debunked -- this cryptic story out of the South Korean press that a testfired (and presumably empty) North Korean warhead has been found in Alaska?
Hankooki.com > Korea Times > Nation
`NK Missile Warhead Found in Alaskaí
By Ryu Jin
Staff Reporter
The warhead of a long-range missile test-fired by North Korea was found in the U.S. state of Alaska, a report to the National Assembly revealed yesterday.
"According to a U.S. document, the last piece of a missile warhead fired by North Korea was found in Alaska," former Japanese foreign minister Taro Nakayama was quoted as saying in the report. "Washington, as well as Tokyo, has so far underrated Pyongyangís missile capabilities."
The report was the culmination of monthlong activities of the Assemblyís overseas delegation to five countries over the North Korean nuclear crisis. The Assembly dispatched groups of lawmakers to the United States, Japan, China, Russia and European Union last month to collect information and opinions on the international issue.
The team sent to Japan, headed by Rep. Kim Hak-won of the United Liberal Democrats, reported, "Nakayama said Washington has come to put more emphasis on trilateral cooperation between South Korea, Japan and the United States since it recognized that the three countries are within the range of North Korean missiles."
According to the group dispatched to the U.S., American politicians had a wide range of opinions over the resolution of the nuclear issue, from "a peaceful resolution" to "military response."
Doves, such as Rep. Edward J. Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat and co-chairman of the Bipartisan Task Force on Nonproliferation, called for a peaceful settlement of the current confrontation, by offering food, energy and other humanitarian aid to the poverty-stricken country, while urging the North to give up its nuclear ambitions.
Rep. Markey also said the North should return to the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and the U.S. should make a nonaggression pact with the communist North.
Hardliners, however, warned that the Northís possession of nuclear weapons will instigate a nuclear race in the region, provoking Japan to also acquire nuclear weapons. Rep. Mark Steven Kirk, an Illinois Republican, said the U.S. might have to bomb the Yongbyon nuclear complex should the North try to export its nuclear material to other countries.
Over the controversy concerning the withdrawal of U.S. forces stationed here, most American legislators that the parliamentary delegation met said U.S. troops should stay on the peninsula as long as the Korean people want, the report said.
jinryu@koreatimes.co.kr
03-04-2003 17:27
Sunday, March 02, 2003
Every Napoleon has his Waterloo, and every Nixon his Watergate.
(Let's hope, anyway.)
A shiny new doubleplusgood national anthem, as envisioned by Eric Idle:
We're much better than you are.
We're much bigger than you.
We're much stronger than you are.
Our God is much bigger, too.
We've more money than you have.
Our girls have much bigger tits.
We're much better than you are.
You're just a nation of shits.
We're much tougher than you are.
We're much rougher than you.
We're much butcher than you are.
Our boys are better hung, too.
We're much prouder than you are,
And if you stand in our way,
We'll be more pissed than you are
And we'll just blow you away.
