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Kimilsungia

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A North Korean Flower Show with—What Else?—A Model of a Missile

A North Korean Flower Show with—What Else?—Models of Armed Missiles

The world is wondering where North Korea’s bellicose rhetoric will lead them. On one hand, some political analysts say that there will be a missile launch, but without a nuclear warhead, aimed in the general direction of South Korea and/or Japan. (John Kerry will be in the area on Sunday, and Monday is the birthday of Kim Il Sung, grandfather of present DPRK leader Kim Jong Un.) In this interpretation, the whole thing is merely a form of theater to exact concessions from South Korea and the United States.

My own feeling is that North Korea may attack some isolated island or other outlying piece of the peninsula not presently under their control, but claimed by them. In this case, there would be South Korean casualties aplenty; and the South will be attempted to launch a massive counterattack. In this event, the U.S. would probably get involved because of ongoing treaty obligations, though there would be a tug-of-war between Hawks and Doves as to the best response.

If Kim Jong Un is doing all this because he is comfortable wearing the vampire mantle of authority traditionally exercised by the Terrible Kims, he may be in some danger from forces inside his country, especially in the military. The North Korean army has not done any appreciable fighting in the last sixty years, and they have been a privileged and cosseted force within their country. Famines do not touch the DPRK armed forces: They get whatever they want. It kind of reminds me of the Praetorian Guard in the days of the Roman emperors.

Incidentally, the blossoms in the flower show illustrated above have been named Kimilsungia, after the eldest of the Kims.

 

Those Krazy Kims

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Kim III, Alias Kim Jong Unnnnhhh

Kim III, Alias Kim Jong Unnnnhhh

The nuclear era has been around for almost three-quarters of a century now, and we finally have a head of state threatening to begin a thermonuclear war against the United States. I think we have to take this wing-nut seriously. Even if it’s just empty tough talk, it’s the kind of tough talk that calls for a unblinkered response.

Why should we bother to send food to North Korea when they have identified themselves as our enemy? We should be planning airstrikes against Pyongyang and the various outlying nuclear weapons facilities, if we know where they are. Then I think we have to hold back on the trigger, unless, unless, Kim steps over the line in an overt way. Once he does that, he and his poor damned country will have to be vaporized.

Obviously, we will have to coordinate closely with China on this. I suspect that Beijing wants Kim out as much as we do, and may even take the first step. Seeing as how Chinese Communism has evolved into a form of capitalism, Beijing does not want to see its business partners threatened.

Right now, I see the DPRK (“Democratic” Peoples’ Republic of Korea) fully as dysfunctional as Somalia, Syria, the tribal areas of Pakistan, or any other failed state. Apparently, you don’t have to be Muslim to be totally wacko.

I have heard that Kim’s tough talk is occasioned by hard-liners in his military who think he is too soft on the West. Maybe, but I wouldn’t like to take that chance.

How Our Era Will Be Remembered

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Turmoil in the Middle East

Another Day of Turmoil in the Middle East

Clearly, Islam is undergoing a large-scale upheaval. Ever since the break-up of the Ottoman Empire after the First World War, most Muslims in the Middle East have been living in countries with ill-defined borders ruled by various strong men. There is a general feeling that all is not well with their part of the world.

Beginning in the peri0od between the two World Wars, American and European oil companies moved in on these strong men and made them an offer they couldn’t refuse: unlimited wealth and power, if only they would sign on the dotted line. They signed, all right, but after almost a century, that money has not filtered down to the Arab man on the street. (Most of it probably ended up in offshore banking accounts owned by the strong men and their families.)

What to do about it? Well, first of all, one could riot and cause mayhem. Even if they topple one strong men, like Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, there is always a Mohammed Morsi waiting in the wings to make himself and his family equally rich and powerful.

Or, another popular option is to blame the West for all their ills. “Ameriki” is the Great Satan and must be destroyed, along with its jackal partner Israel. If your country’s unemployment rate for young men is something like 75%, then blowing oneself up along with Islam’s enemies looks like a good career move. The Jihad Option is a popular one, especially the more the situation appears to be dire. The problem is, when all of Islam’s external enemies have been destroyed, then it will be necessary to move on the internal enemies, such as Shia, Alawite, or Sufi Muslims; Druzes; Baha’is; Copts and other Middle-Eastern Christians, and others. Other than filling graveyards, how does that solve their problems?

Islam has so very many enemies, and so few friends. If, by merely existing, Americans become enemies of Jihadists, what’s the point of trying to kiss up to them? The pity of it all is that, to quote Yeats:

The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

And the streets are teeming with the worst….

Syria’s Hezbollah Connection

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Hezbollah Fighters

Hezbollah Fighters

You may recall that, when Israel last invaded Lebanon in 2006, they got a bit of a surprise: the fighters of Hezbollah, “the Party of Allah,” fought them to a standstill. Long used to winning all their armed conflicts with the Islamic world, Israel found itself flummoxed at every turn by a well prepared military force based in undetectable underground bunkers all along the border.

Hezbollah is a Shia paramilitary group, founded and bankrolled by Iran, operating in several states in the Arab world that are mostly Sunni. To ensure their survival amid changing conditions, the Hezbollah made a devil’s bargain with Bashar al-Assad in Syria to help them against the anti-régime rebels. If Syria loses its conflict, Hezbollah fears it will lose its influence to a new Syria in which the political power will rest with the Sunni.

As a step to maintaining its power in Lebanon, Hezbollah has done something it never wanted to do: It became a political party. When you’re predominately an insurgent group, it’s difficult to take care of issues like healthcare, education, and sanitation. The Hezbollah legislators are a quietly sullen group doing what they feel they have to do to survive.

What could happen is that Hezbollah might find that politics are to its liking. And then they will become just another terrorist group (like Kenya’s Mau-Mau and South Africa’s African National Congress) that became legit.

A Terrible Mistake

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The Temptation to Kill the Wrong Person Can Be Overwhelming

The Temptation to Kill the Wrong Person Can Be Overwhelming

Right off the bat, I don’t know whether Oscar Pistorius is guilty of deliberately murdering his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp (shown above) South African cities are in fact dangerous, and the rates for murder, assault, robbery, rape, and other crimes are so high that many who leave the country do so for that reason. In the weeks to come, we shall see if the runner can convince the courts that a terrible mistake occurred.

A terrible mistake … that is an expression that frequently occurs in gun death cases. One of my former co-workers had a son in high school who found one of his father’s guns and accidentally shot himself to death. I knew the boy and thought it highly unlikely that he entertained any thoughts of suicide. His mother and father are now divorced, and the mother left California to be as far as possible from her ex.

A terrible mistake … It could well be that Oscar Pistorius thought the person in the bathroom was an intruder. In South Africa, the chances of that are fairly high. But, I’m sorry, if I had a gun, I would squirrel it away in an all but inaccessible place and use it only for target shooting. Spur-of-the-moment judgment is too chancy a faculty to use for deciding whether or not to take a life—any life. I think I would rather be killed by an intruder than, for example, to shoot Martine accidentally—an act which would forever darken my life.

A terrible mistake … No, I don’t think one out of a thousand shootings, especially within the home, are anything but a terrible mistake.

Perhaps the biggest cost of having guns ready at hand is the loss of the people we love. I think Reeva Steenkamp was a rare beauty. It’s a pity she won’t be around any more.

Anutha Dubya

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DubyaShower

George W. Bush Paints Himself Taking a Shower

As some of you may remember, I did not think very much of George W. Bush’s presidency. Since he yielded the office to a (somewhat) better man, he has faded from the limelight. For one thing, he has taken to painting. As Hrag Vartanian wrote at Salon.Com:

Maybe it shouldn’t surprise us that the man who brought us a vision of compassionate conservatism would turn to art to express the angst of a crappy presidency that got us into two wars; used homophobia, racism, and sexism as an electoral tool; crashed our economy; and made the world hate America. This is a man who is obviously feeling his mortality. He sits in the bathtub alone. Nothing to contemplate. Nothing to see beyond reflections of himself and his body. There is almost a melancholy in these images, with their grays, and he is not presented as a strong, heroic person — in fact, quite the opposite. This is not the George W. Bush of Fox News or Sunday morning talk shows. This is Bush the old man, with lots of time on his hands. Once the most powerful man in the world, Bush is now alone, exploring his immediate surroundings in these spurts of introspection. If only he had done this all along, maybe he would’ve been a better leader.

Above is one of his paintings, showing the artist taking a shower. Below, he is sitting in the bathtub:

Dubya in the Tub

Dubya in the Tub

Curiously, these paintings were part of a hacker’s raid into the Internet connections of the Bush clan. There was never an attempt by Bush to promote himself as an artist—although he has nothing to apologize for. In fact, his work seems not all that bad. This is one of those rare cases where an attempt to make the hacking victim look bad has backfired.

 

 

What Does It Really Say?

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Your Unfriendly Neighborhood Gun Freak

Your Unfriendly Neighborhood Gun Freak

Since we will soon be embroiled in a shouting match with the gun crazies of America, let’s see what the Second Amendment really says. The full text is as follows: “A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”

Let me begin by saying that I literally think this is correct. (Many other quotes the gun lobby uses to support their arguments are notoriously bogus.)

My interpretation of the Second Amendment is simple: The people who have guns should constitute a “well regulated militia,” complete with uniforms and officers. My suggestion for the uniform would consist of neon colors with shooting targets covering the vital organs. Every 4th of July, we should celebrate this amendment by organizing the militia into circular firing squads and having them engage in target practice with live ammunition. For this purpose, they could use assault weapons if they wish.

There should be a special Medal of Honor struck for militia members who fall during this drill with a pink ribbon with a spent shell casing dangling from it.

If you should run into some gun nut, keep trying to pin him down on the whole “well regulated” concept, because I do believe that must NRA fanatics are seriously in need of heavy and binding regulation.

Suburban Inferno

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Evil Lurks in the Suburbs of America

Evil Lurks in the Suburbs of America

The motto comes from Walt Kelly’s late cartoon strip: “We have met the enemy and he is us.”

Here I am, a white male, a member of a demographic segment that is causing incredible violence across the United States. We would much rather persecute gays, Muslims, African-Americans, Hispanics—but what about us? Adam Lanza, the Newport shooter, was one of us. Is it time to start profiling white males?

After the Second World War, while the people of Europe and Asia were picking up the pieces of their lives, we went through an unprecedented period of prosperity. We moved from the cities to the suburbs, thinking we could leave all our problems behind us. But that is not what happened: We took the problems with us, in the form of our children.

There we lived in our self-contained ranch houses on cul-de-sacs across the country, hiding the fact that inside our cute little homes were millions of dysfunctional families. When mental health care began to blink into non-existence in the 1980s, we hid our shame as much as we could. That, however, did not work. You can’t suppress the horror. It will out. It did out last Friday in a Connecticut suburb.

That Says It All

That Says It All

What to do about it? We can begin the long, slow road toward gun control. That wouldn’t have helped at Sandy Hook Elementary School because the weapons were legally obtained, and then stolen from the shooter’s mother, herself a victim. We could talk about better mental health care, but mental health in this country is at a strange crossroads, where we are repudiating many old methods and increasingly relying on anti-depressant medications to do all the heavy lifting.

Perhaps we just have to admit our vulnerability. The craziest people in America today are white males. And you are reading this blog post by a white male. Don’t worry about me, however, I not only don’t have any guns; but I never want to own any firearms. I’m all right, but watch out for all the other white males. Some crazy shit out there!

The NRA Is a Terrorist Organization

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Logo for America’s Newest Terrorist Organization

Logo for America’s Newest Terrorist Organization

I think it’s time to face the fact that—under the guise of allowing pudgy old white men to play with guns—the real intent of the National Rifle Association (NRA) is to facilitate the slaughter of innocents by confirmed lunatics.

The number of slaughtered innocents just went up today when a “shooter” (such a neutral term for such a hideous type of person) killed more than two dozen kids and teachers at a Connecticut school today.

Still, whatever happens, the Republican party will try to bury any negative response because so many of their supporters are pudgy old white men who like to play with guns. It doesn’t matter whether thousands of little boys and girls die under a hail of bullets, that’s just the price we pay for allowing pudgy old white men who like to play with guns to have a disproportionate say in the political process.

Perhaps what we need here is some computer matching: Camouflage clothing + body armor + assault weapons and, in general, multiple guns + young male + psychological problems + lack of education = possible “shooter.” It would take quite a bit of doing to link all that information together, but there does seem to be a pattern.

It’s a tough pattern to break. We look at ourselves as a nation of Marlboro Cowboys, whereas actually we’re a nation of psychopaths.

Throw the Guilty Parties Off the Fiscal Cliff

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Make the Guilty Parties Pay For It!

Make the Guilty Parties Pay For It!

Metaphors are dangerous things. During this month we have enough to worry about with the supposed end of the world on Friday, December 21, according to somebody’s misinterpretation of the Mayan calendar. And we also have the so-called “Fiscal Cliff,” a series of Draconian cuts that automatically go into action if Congress does not act by the New Year.

Now getting Congress to act quickly—even if there is widespread agreement that failing to act would have dire consequences —is well-nigh impossible. So naturally, I have a modest proposal.

Since approximately half the members of Congress are millionaires, the obvious solution is to make them pay for the mess out of their own funds. Those Senators and Representatives who are unwilling to pony up and make good should be deprived of their civil rights and sold into slavery. Perhaps they could raise a crop of sugar cane in Guantánamo or be sent to political re-education camps in some Blue State that would be willing to take on such a liability.

I think we have been mollycoddling Conservatives for far too long. They are making everything worse for the majority of us and should be made to pay. They could talk secession all they want, but I think that, for these Traitors (and I truly believe they are such), they should be given the “Man Without a Country” treatment.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with Edward Everett Hale’s 1863 short story, it tells of a man who repudiated the United States and was sentenced to be passed from ship to ship, never landing on American (or any foreign) territory as long as he lived. Also, he was deprived of access to news about his country. You can read the story at Gutenberg.Com by clicking here.