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"We'll be sure to deal a punishing blow if the North tries to repeat the kind of situation like the artillery shelling of Yeonpyeong," Brigadier General Ju Eun-shik said in a statement.
Top news (Foreign Policy Magazine): North Korea returned to its typical bellicose rhetoric today following massive military drills by the South.You'll note that the quote at the top is from a Brigadier General of the SOUTH KOREAN ARMY... There's "bellicose rhetoric" to go around... yet everyone's focusing on the North's defensive stand even as the US shows no interest in restarting the six party talks."To counter the enemy's intentional drive to push the situation to the brink of war, our revolutionary forces are making preparations to begin a sacred war at any moment necessary based on nuclear deterrent,"said Minister of Armed Forces Kim Yong-chun. [Foreign Policy Magazine]
The US Treasury Department announced new measures on Tuesday aimed at choking finances for Iran's military and for a shipping line that Treasury says engages in illegal activity....which DOES have a negative anti-American effect... in our Imperial war on the people of Afghanistan:
Treasury said it was targeting financial networks that support the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and its national carrier, the Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Lines (IRISL).
"Both the IRGC and IRISL are major institutional participants in Iran's illegal conduct and in its attempts to evade sanctions," said Stuart Levey, Treasury's under secretary for terrorism and financial intelligence [Ynet, Israel News]
Iran Stops Fuel Delivery, Afghanistan Says, and Prices Are Rising
By MICHAEL KAMBER and TAIMOOR SHAH
December 22, 2010
KABUL, Afghanistan — Government officials expressed alarm on Wednesday about what they described as Iran’s unexplained ban on fuel exports to Afghanistan, asserting that at least 1,400 loaded tankers were parked on Iran’s side of three border crossings.
Abdul Karim Barahwe, the governor of Nimroz Province in western Afghanistan, said the Iranian authorities had started halting tankers bound for Afghanistan about 10 days ago. The effect is driving up fuel prices just as winter is setting in.
“We really don’t know the exact cause of the ban; Iran doesn’t officially say the cause of the ban,” he said. [The NY Times]
AMERICA: Y UR PEEPS B SO DUM?
(Ignorance and courage in the age of Lady Gaga)
Ajijic, Jalisco, Mexico
If you hang out much with thinking people, conversation eventually turns to the serious political and cultural questions of our times. Such as:How can the Americans remain so consistently brain-fucked?Much of the world, including plenty of Americans, asks that question as they watch U.S. culture go down like a thrashing mastodon giving itself up to some Pleistocene tar pit.
One explanation might be the effect of 40 years of deep fried industrial chicken pulp, and 44 ounce Big Gulp soft drinks. Another might be pop culture, which is not culture at all of course, but marketing.
Or we could blame it on digital autism: Ever watch commuter monkeys on the subway poking at digital devices, stroking the touch screen for hours on end? That wrinkled Neolithic brows above the squinting red eyes?
But a more reasonable explanation is that
(A) we don't even know we are doing it, and
(B) we cling to institutions dedicated to making sure we never find out.
As William Edwards Deming (wikipedia entry // Razer) famously demonstrated, no system can understand itself, and why it does what it does, including the American social system.
Not knowing shit about why your society does what it makes for a pretty nasty case of existential unease. So we create institutions whose function is to pretend to know, which makes everyone feel better... [In Full]
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(Reuters) - South Korea announced land and sea military exercises on Wednesday including its largest-ever live-fire drill near North Korea just as tension on the peninsula was beginning to ease after Pyongyang's attack on a southern island.But the US doesn't seem concerned how tense it gets on the Korean peninsula and says it's "Not time for 6 party talks" (After all, we ARE THE weapons merchant to the planet and must sell weapons systems... since it's all America seems to have to offer the world in the way of industrial output)
The land drill, involving three dozen mobile artillery guns, six fighter jets, multiple launch rocket systems and 800 troops, the largest number of personnel in a single peace-time exercise, will take place on Thursday and is likely irritate the North.
The scale of the drill and the timing, coming right after the tensely staged a live-fire exercise on Monday, indicate South Korea's conservative President Lee Myung-bak sees more political mileage in taking a tough military stance rather than reverting to dialogue, despite overtures from Pyongyang.
Lee's government was heavily criticized at home for a perceived weak response to North Korea's shelling of the southern island of Yeonpyeong last month.
"We'll be sure to deal a punishing blow if the North tries to repeat the kind of situation like the artillery shelling of Yeonpyeong," Brigadier General Ju Eun-shik said in a statement.
[In Full with more at Foreign Policy Magazine]
Energy Policy in Iran Leaves Many Gasping
But even as such measures have begun to counter the worst of the pollution, a trickle of recent statements from politicians and officials have raised suspicions that the smog may have been of Iran’s own making, as officials ordered at least five of the country’s major petrochemical plants to switch production to gasoline after Western pressure led many of the world’s top refining companies to cut off Iran’s imports.
According to e-mails circulated to industry experts and reproduced on unofficial news sites and blogs, Iran’s new supply of domestic gasoline may contain high levels of aromatics — more than twice the level permitted by Iranian law. Burning aromatics in car engines produces exhaust packed with high concentrations of “floating particles” or “particulates” that, added to the typical smog caused by nitrous oxides and ozone, can cause a range of health problems from headaches and dizziness to more serious cardiac and respiratory complaints.
“Previous governments knew that petrochemical plants could produce this kind of gasoline,” said an oil industry expert who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of retribution. “But Ahmadinejad has gone ahead and done it — despite the consequences — for his own populist and political reasons,” [More @ The NY Times]
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...enough progress was being made in Afghanistan to begin withdrawing U.S. troops in July, even as he faces growing doubts about his war strategy.Which of course means the advertised pullout might yet again become a surge[tm], AKA a "reverse-pullout" (It's OK Barack, there IS NO "Winning Strategy"... just GET OUT!)
Obama, under pressure to show results after criticizing his predecessor George W. Bush for neglecting the war, insisted that U.S.-led forces were scoring gains against the Taliban and al Qaeda but warned they were fragile and reversible. [More @ Reuters]
"...that the Nixon administration had once considered firebombing the Brookings Institution building to destroy a copy of the Pentagon Papers, and that President Gerald Ford had vetoed the Freedom of Information Act in reaction to government leaks--only to be overruled by ...the U.S. Congress...Full testimony and linkage to the C/SPAN video, more, on site.
...He called on lawmakers to protect the First Amendment, rather than adopt a Chinese model of state control" of information."
L.A. dry run shows urban nuke attack 'a survivable event'Some nostalgia for the kiddies: Duck and Cover (1951) where Bert the Turtle shows us what to do in the event of a nuclear war, and apropos after a decade where we used US soldiers as lab rats to test nuclear radiation's effects on humans, , an optimistic take, like the USAToday piece... About Fallout (1963).
The plotters decided to trigger their bomb in Los Angeles during the morning rush, at a metro station a stone's throw from Universal Studios and the set where Steven Spielberg filmed scenes from "War of the Worlds."
This was no ordinary explosive. It was a 10-kiloton nuclear device packing roughly the destructive force of the Hiroshima bomb. A blast of that magnitude could engulf 50,000 to 150,000 people and reduce parts of L.A., Hollywood and Studio City — the historical heart of the movie industry — to radioactive rubble.
Al-Qaeda played no part in planning the July 28 attack. The conspirators were the leaders of a dozen state, local and federal agencies who were taking part in a simulated L.A. County security exercise code-named Operation Golden Phoenix. Their mission: to assure that if a terrorist does detonate a nuke in Los Angeles, first responders will be prepared to wade into the devastation and rescue survivors suffering from traumatic injuries, radiation sickness, shock and flash-blindness.
"This is a survivable event," says Brendan Applegate, of the Naval Postgraduate School Center for Asymmetric Warfare, who helped design and carry out the exercise. "L.A. isn't going to fall into the ocean and be gone forever. It will be a really bad day, but we need everyone to show up to work and save lives."
Do you feel better now? [Read the rest @ USAToday]
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Naomi WolfAlso see Naomi's book: "The End of America: A Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot" (Wikipedia entry), "...a historical look at the rise of Fascism, outlining the 10 steps necessary for a Fascistic group (or government) to destroy the democratic character of a nation-state and subvert the social/political liberty previously exercised by its citizens."
December 15, 2010
Sweden's Serial Negligence in Prosecuting Rape Further Highlights the Politics Behind Julian Assange's Arrest
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The fantasy is that somehow this treatment -- a global manhunt, solitary confinement in the Victorian cell that drove Oscar Wilde to suicidal despair within a matter of days, and now a bracelet tracking his movements -- is not atypical, because somehow Sweden must be a progressively hot-blooded but still progressively post-feminist paradise for sexual norms in which any woman in any context can bring the full force of the law against any man who oversteps any sexual boundary.
Well, I was in Norway in March of this year at a global gathering for women leaders on International Women's Day, and heard extensively from specialists in sex crime and victims' rights in Sweden. So I knew this position taken by the male-dominated US, British and Swedish media was, basically, horsesh-t.
But none of the media outlets hyperventilating now about how this global-manhunt/Bourne-identity-chase-scene-level treatment of a sex crime allegation originating in Sweden must be 'normative' has bothered to do any actual reporting of how rape -- let alone the far more ambiguous charges of Assange's accusers, which are not charges of rape but of a category called 'sex by surprise,' which has no analog elsewhere -- is actually prosecuted in Sweden... [Find Out How... Here]
Two local veterans journeying to Washington, D.C., for peace rally
Margaret Williams
December 12 2010
This will be the largest veteran-led civil resistance to the wars in recent history. On December 16, 2010, Veterans for Peace and other supporters will rally at Lafayette Park, then march in solidarity to the White House. They will refuse to leave the White House, demanding an immediate end to U.S. wars, whether conducted by occupation troops, drones, or proxy, in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and Palestine.
Two local veterans of Veterans for Peace Chapter 99 will be joining them in Washington, DC. Ken Ashe and Kim Carlyle intend to participate in this action of nonviolently refusing to leave the White House until arrested or dragged away... [In Full @ The Mounain Express]
The U.N. Security Council voted Wednesday to lift key sanctions on Iraq, in a major step to restore the nation to the international standing it had before Saddam Hussein's 1990 invasion of Kuwait.Still more at this Google News Search For "Iraq Violence" (One week view)
The council lifted restrictions aimed at preventing Iraq from developing weapons of mass destruction, opening the way for Baghdad to eventually build civilian nuclear plants. It also ordered the dismantling next June of the U.N. programs that since 1995 have given foreign powers control over how Iraq has spent its huge oil revenue.
Iraqi leaders have chafed at the sanctions as an affront to their sovereignty, and have pressed for years for their removal.
"The adoption of these important resolutions marks the beginning of the end of the sanctions regime, and restrictions on Iraq's sovereignty, independence and recovery," Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari told the council.
In addition, the council's action allowed the Obama administration to remind Americans that it is unwinding its relationship with an Iraq it hopes is moving toward stability seven years after the U.S.-led invasion that resulted in Hussein's ouster... [More @ The LA Times]
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"This is what happened when one homeowner tried to reverse engineer his mortgage to find out who actually owned it."
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"You've got to stop this war in Afghanistan," Holbrooke told his Pakistani surgeon before entering a 21-hour operation, the Washington Post reported.[Reality check: Whether his intent was to convince the Pakistanis, through the surgeon, that their support for the Talib was the context of that statement will stay with him to the grave now.]
Holbrooke was the Obama administration's special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, a man whose diplomatic skills and understanding of Afghanistan and Pakistan were a valuable asset to the United States. [More]
If released, Assange must surrender his passport and agree to travel restrictions, adhere to a curfew and wear an electronic tracking device. He must remain at a Sussex address and report into a local police station each evening. His bail was set at £240,000 ($320,000).
U.S. documentary filmmaker Michael Moore announced on his blog that he was contributing $20,000 to Assange’s bail. British heiress Jemima Khan and other celebrities have also offered to cover his bail.
The Guardian reports that the news of Assange’s bail was met with cheers inside and outside the courtroom.
But according to the Guardian Swedish prosecutors plan to launch an appeal against the court’s decision to grant Assange bail. They have two hours to file the appeal, which would be followed by a hearing within 48 hours. [In Full @ Wired, with linkage]
At least four prisons in Georgia remain in lockdown five days after prisoners went on strike in protest of poor living and working conditions. Using cell phones purchased from guards, the prisoners coordinated the nonviolent protests to stage the largest prison strike in U.S. history. There are reports of widespread violence and brutality by the guards against the prisoners on strike. [More]A Note on 'criminality and criminal behavior'... Some of these people may be in prison for, let's say Oxycontin... 'Hillbilly Heroin', possession and sales, and all that drug addiction implies. But the criminals at Perdue Pharma, the maufacturer, who LIED to doctors and the public about what the FDA permitted them to say in regard to it's addictiveness, creating through that act a GENERATION OF YOUNG PEOPLE HOOKED ON Oxycontin, setting them on a course for prison, WILL NOT do time.
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