BS: Axis of Evil goes nuclear

Subject: RE: BS: Axis of Evil goes nuclear
From: Little Hawk
Date: 31 Oct 06 - 11:11 AM

Gwynne Dyer has a very interesting article on North Korea that might shed some light on the matter. Go here...


article on North Korea

Subject: RE: BS: Axis of Evil goes nuclear
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 31 Oct 06 - 10:26 AM

True enough, it's clearly a pretty horrible regime.   Equally clearly there is no prospect that an invasion from abroad would do anything other than make it worse - if Iraq is bad enough in that respect, an attack Korea would be far more devastating.

If the existence or the possible existence of nuclear weapons serves to rule out that option, that's a good thing. As Vaclav Havel says in that piece Wolfgang just linked to, the right thing now is to concentrate on the human rights issue.

The important thing though is that this shouldn't be done as a way of carrying on domestic policy in other countries, making gestures to show how tough some poliotician is and so forth. There are ways of helping people in North Korea have better and freer lives, but sabre-rattling isn't one of them.

Subject: RE: BS: Axis of Evil goes nuclear
From: Wolfgang
Date: 31 Oct 06 - 09:48 AM

Turn North Korea Into a Human Rights Issue

(Open letter by Vaclav Havel et al.)

While the focus in recent weeks has been on North Korea's nuclear test, we shouldn't lose sight of the fact that the government there is also responsible for one of the most egregious human-rights and humanitarian disasters in the world today.

I could have started an extra thread but I think it fits here too.

Wolfgang

Subject: RE: BS: Axis of Evil goes nuclear
From: Lox
Date: 22 Oct 06 - 09:33 PM

I'm astonished at the phrase

"only a handful of nukes"

... Come on ...

How many nukes did it take to destroy Hiroshima?

How much devastation does "only a handful of nukes" cause?

What planet are you on?

Subject: RE: BS: Axis of Evil goes nuclear
From: Old Guy
Date: 22 Oct 06 - 09:34 AM

The statement above illustrates the position and mindset of the Palestinians. It is instilled in them by their leaders. It is taught to the children in school with books and at home through TV, cartoons, the Internet and by their religious leaders.

To say this is racist propaganda is to ignore the facts much as the Nazis were ignored. It was thought by many that the Nazis could be reasoned with and made peace with. They were wrong.

Islamic terrorists and extremists cannot be reasoned with. You cannot make peace with them. They want you dead. Furthermore they play the victim while slaughtering thousand of innocent people, even their own people while pursuing their insane objectives.

Khaled Mashal, most senior figure in Hamas: "The nation of Islam will sit at the throne of the world ... Muhammad is gaining victory in Palestine, in Iraq. ... The Arab and Islamic nation is rising and awakening. ... Tomorrow we will lead the world."


Hamas Website: High-Tech Hate for Kids

Brainwashing the younger generation of Palestinians with concepts of terrorism and hatred has great importance for Hamas. As part of its indoctrination effort, Hamas makes extensive use of the Internet, with approximately 20 Internet sites in seven languages. One sites is an children's magazine called Al-Fateh ("The Conqueror"), www.al-fateh.net.

The magazine has attractive graphics and contains comic-like drawings and photographs to make it "friendly" and attractive to its target audience of young children. There are poems, articles about religious subjects, and tales of heroism from Arabic and Islamic history.

Side by side with these "innocent" items are articles preaching the perpetration of terrorist attacks, extolling the suicide bombers and presenting them as role models, and encouraging hatred for Israel and the Jewish people.

Examples:

(1) Turning the terrorist who perpetrated the 2001 suicide bombing attack at the Dolphinarium into a role model for children. The attack resulted in the deaths of 21 Israeli civilians, mostly teenagers, and 83 wounded. The attack was widely praised in Al-Fateh, which published the text of the will written by the suicide bomber before he left to blow himself up. The will was intended to glorify and extol the image of the suicide bomber and to encourage others to follow in his footsteps, promising the pleasures of paradise in the hereafter. His writings and posters bearing his portrait are distributed by Hamas throughout the Palestinian Authority- administered territories.

(2) Issue No. 38 of Al-Fateh, Hamas' online children's magazine, displayed a picture of a female suicide bomber next to a photograph of her decapitated head lying on the road. The caption praises the act and notes that she is now in paradise, a shaheeda like her male comrades. She killed two Israelis and wounded 17 in September 2004, at Jerusalem's French Hill junction.

(3) Issue no. 38 of Al-Fateh features a story about Muhammad al- Durra, a Palestinian child who died when he was trapped in crossfire between Israeli soldiers and armed Palestinians. Everything about the story is biased and a total fabrication intended to portray Israeli soldiers as a band of evil sadists who enjoy killing both adults and children, and to turn a tragic incident into a tool for inciting Palestinian children to hate Israelis and the Jewish people.

"...The soldiers' teeth protruded as they laughed aloud [when al- Durra was shot], like the protruding teeth of wolves grinding the bones of an innocent lamb they have hunted out of the arms of its mother..."

To intensify the children's hatred for Israelis, the little girl in the story is depicted as having lost an eye when she threw stones at Jews in Al-Aqsa mosque.

"Israa' fought against the pain in her eye with exceptional bravery... She thought of herself as a soldier in the ranks of Allah's army, and was of the opinion that Allah honored her and counted her as one of the defenders of blessed Al-Aqsa mosque... Today her grandmother said�'Do you know, Israa', that your missing eye will be proof and like a medal of honor... proof of the crimes of the Jews, and a medal of honor for your having stood up to their crime of wanting to desecrate our holy places..."

One article says that the Jews were the first to produce magazines for children, using them "in order to brainwash children in the ways of the Torah, the Talmud and the 'Protocols of the Elders of Zion'" -- the libelous book purporting to contain the Jewish plot to take over the world.

Al-Fateh also includes a story which describes how Israeli soldiers demand that a boy, Mihnad, pull down a Palestinian flag flying above an olive tree. Mihnad refuses and does not give in even when he is shot at. When they force him to climb up the tree, Mihnad cries: "long live my land in freedom, long live the flag." The soldiers kill Mihnad in reaction and he is left clutching the flag, drenched in his own blood.

Another story speaks of martyrdom, as a suicide bomber declares that "there is nothing greater than killing oneself on the land of Palestine, for the sake of Allah."

* * *

The terrorist organizations frequently use militant Islamic messages to encourage children and teenagers to join the conflict and to participate in military operations, including suicide bombings. Some examples:

▪ Salah Shehada, who was one of the leaders of the Hamas in Gaza, stated in an interview (on the website Islam On-line, 26 May 2002), that children should be properly trained before they are sent on a mission and that they should be recruited into a special unit of the military arm of the Hamas in order to instill in them the culture of military jihad and to teach them to distinguish between good and evil.

▪ Dr. Padhl Abu Hin, a psychology lecturer, was interviewed on this subject for a television movie entitled "Child Patriots and a Martyrs' Death." He noted that the Palestinian child understands that, by means of the shahada (a martyrs' death for the sake of Allah), through the perpetration of attacks, he/she can win honor and appreciation, without life being ended. [The concept of] Shahada, according to him, encourages children to take an active part in the conflict against Israel (Palestinian TV, 27 June 2002).

▪ Rasha el-Rantissi, wife of Abed el-Aziz el-Rantissi, told the Arab media that she is educating her children to resistance and jihad. She added, "I hope that my husband, my children and I will receive the shahada so that we may prove that we are the first to sacrifice our children for Allah;" "Allah is generous with us, because our children die as fighters, and we wait with them for death for Allah's sake any minute" (el-Bian, 16 June 2003).

▪ Yasser Arafat's speech on the occasion of "Palestinian Child Day", broadcast by Palestinian television (1 June 2003), in which Arafat conveyed a militant Islamic message to the Palestinian child, based on Islamic tradition, encouraged the children to be fighters on Islam's front line (rabat) and to die as martyrs for Allah, while bestowing special status on the ones thus killed (shaheeds).

Subject: RE: BS: Axis of Evil goes nuclear
From: Bunnahabhain
Date: 22 Oct 06 - 08:35 AM

Old guy, the trouble is it's not the folk in the streets being quoted there. Stuff like that comes from the leaders of Iran and Palastine....

Subject: RE: BS: Axis of Evil goes nuclear
From: GUEST,ifor
Date: 22 Oct 06 - 08:17 AM

Comment on Old Guy
His statement written as "fact" that there are "needs of Palestinians for jewish blood" is a disgusting piece of racist bile. It should be removed from Mudcat. It is a line that could have been written by one of the leading nazi anti semites during holocaust.
ifor

Subject: RE: BS: Axis of Evil goes nuclear
From: Little Hawk
Date: 22 Oct 06 - 01:27 AM

One can always find quotes from the biggest idiots and fanatics on any side of any given issue, and use them to damn ALL the people on that side and justify one's own aggressive position. In fact, that is a standard technique of propaganda everywhere, isn't it? Don't quote them when they're reasonable, only quote them when they're foaming at the mouth about something.

That's how you can convince your own people to go out and have a war with someone.

Actions speak louder than words. Who has used the greatest amount of deadly force, and used it on other people's territory? The USA, Britain, and Israel. Over and over again. The Palestinians and Arabs have also used deadly force...but to a much lesser effect. Are they not the ones who should fear being attacked? They are the ones whose lands keep being invaded and occupied by vastly greater military power than their own.

It should not be surprising that many of their people have become fanatics in a response to what is, from their point of view, a totally humiliating situation that has been going on now for many decades.

They are the world's punching bag, Old Guy. That's why some of them say extreme things and do extreme things. It's a natural reaction to being kicked and beaten like a dog. After awhile the dog bites back.

Now go find some enlightening quotes from the enraged American Joe Public immediately after 911, calling for someone's blood...similar stuff, but it won't prove anything except this: ordinary people lose their heads when they're under extreme pressure and they sometimes say stupid things.

Subject: RE: BS: Axis of Evil goes nuclear
From: Old Guy
Date: 22 Oct 06 - 12:45 AM

I'm still wating for you to define what or who the other side is.

And there was the question about how you would address the needs of the Palestinians for jewish blood.

"U.S./Britain/Israel resume diplomatic relations and begin to address their concerns."

Now address these concerns Dianavan:

"We are a nation that drinks blood, and we know that there is no blood better than the blood of Jews."

"We will not leave you alone until we have quenched our thirst with your blood, and our children's thirst with your blood."

"We will destroy you, blow you up, take revenge against you, purify the land of you, pigs that have defiled our country This operation is revenge against the sons of monkeys and pigs."
"Jihad is the only way to liberate Palestine -- all of Palestine -- from the impurity of the Jews."

Subject: RE: BS: Axis of Evil goes nuclear
From: dianavan
Date: 19 Oct 06 - 09:19 PM

C'mon Old Guy - I'm waiting for your articulated response.

Subject: RE: BS: Axis of Evil goes nuclear
From: GUEST
Date: 19 Oct 06 - 01:31 AM

Old Guy - Kim Jong il threatened to fire a missle at ???

He threatened to "mercilessly wipe out" US forces in case of war.
Isn't that what people say when they feel threatened? Sounds defensive if you ask me.

What I was suggesting was that Kim Jong il may be crazy but not crazy enough to make a first strike.

I have read nothing that suggests that he will attempt to invade any other nation unless he is protecting his cultish empire.

Subject: RE: BS: Axis of Evil goes nuclear
From: Lonesome EJ
Date: 18 Oct 06 - 11:40 PM

Bearded Bruce

I consider myself a liberal, but the irrational criticism of the US that comes from much of the left abroad and in this country never ceases to amaze me. You really are wasting your time arguing with people who see Bush as Hitler, or the American clusterfuck in Iraq as new British Colonialism, or NATO as an extension of the American Empire. These are the same people who think, if Britain and the US have nuclear weapons, it's only fair that North Korea, Iran, and South Yemen should have them. It's a way of thinking that sees everything on a shifting scale of relative guilt (how dare we criticize anyone else when we are guilty of...something), and wrong and right as only definable in a cultural context. There's no use approaching them rationally, because they approach the argument using the only rationale they can deal with : Instinctive cynicism.   
Between these knuckleheads and the neo-cons who see Bush as a noble defender of freedom and justice, I fear we'll see a world full of dictatorships, laden with ancient religious grudges, apocalyptic urges, and greedy little wars over ground promised them by god, all armed to the teeth with nukes inside of five years. Then those nasty American Imperialists will get what's comin to em...and so will we all.

Subject: RE: BS: Axis of Evil goes nuclear
From: Stu
Date: 18 Oct 06 - 05:23 PM

GUEST Date: 16 Oct 06 - 09:12 PM

"This ignorance and want puts you at one with some of the most objectionable men that ever left the womb -- the Pol Pots, the Hitlers, the Stalins."

Crikey - that's not nice now is it? It's nice to see we have a genuine belligerent right-winger back on the cat. Reminds me of the good old days.

Your neo-con posturing and reeling off of famous American military campaigns shows a distinct lack of understanding of the world outside your borders. Is this an attempt to gain the moral high ground from the lefties you'd so love to spank?

It's interesting though you state your country will alway has and will take "the side of liberty", how you ignore the fact that your mate Rumsfeld was a supplier of arms, intelligence and military advice to Saddam, his role in promoting torture in Abu Grahib etc etc.

And the guys you sold the stinger missiles too are shooting at you now. Osama was funded by the CIA (as well as the Saudis) so it looks like "our instinct to oppose oppressors" goes right out of the window when there's a vested interest.


"Democracies filter them out of the political picture, and a good thing too!"
Well said sir. Shame there's one in the White House at the moment then.

Subject: RE: BS: Axis of Evil goes nuclear
From: Bunnahabhain
Date: 18 Oct 06 - 04:38 PM

Guest Gaza, so a handful of Nukes isn't a meaningful threat? They might be lobbed at troops , and only kill tens of thousands, but are just as likley to end up in the centre of a big city, and kill millions.

A meaningful threat doesn't have to mean that North Korea can actually 'win' (not that anybody wins in in this context), just that it can inflict massiive casulties.

Subject: RE: BS: Axis of Evil goes nuclear
From: Urbane_Guerrilla
Date: 17 Oct 06 - 10:13 PM

No, Gaza, the Communists opportunistically picked up on nationalist movements -- Marx-come-latelies.

Subject: RE: BS: Axis of Evil goes nuclear
From: Old Guy
Date: 17 Oct 06 - 10:09 PM

Someone asks when NK threatend the US, I find two examples and post them and I am told to get real.

What did I do wrong?

What I was unable to find was a few years back some bigwig from the US visited NK and some bigwig there told him he was going to blow up his hometown in the US. I thought that was quite a nasty threat. Maybe someone here can remember the incident.

Subject: RE: BS: Axis of Evil goes nuclear
From: Urbane_Guerrilla
Date: 17 Oct 06 - 09:19 PM

Gaza, you're simply ignoring the evidence I presented. Can't do that and stay truthful, guy!

Subject: RE: BS: Axis of Evil goes nuclear
From: GUEST,Gaza
Date: 17 Oct 06 - 01:18 AM

If you can take seriously a military threat to the USA from a tiny little Asian nation with a handful of nukes at best, Old Guy, you'd take anything seriously I expect. Get real.

It is not the habit of the USA to resist oppressors, Guest. It is the habit of the USA to resist competitors, label all competitors as "oppressors" whether they are or not...and support any and all oppressors who will cooperate with the plans of the USA.

As such, that has been the habit of all conquering empires since the dawn of time. They all love oppressors as long as the oppressors are willing to do business with the empire on the empire's terms...and they only draw attention to the oppression when they want to get rid of an old leader and replace him with a new one who is MORE cooperative in some way.

The entire Vietnam War need never have happened if the French and the Americans had only been willing to LEAVE Vietnam to the Vietnamese after 1945! And there would not have been a division made into North and South at all, which was the cause OF the continuing war. The only thing that could end that war was for the French AND the Americans to get the hell out of that country for good. They had no business being there whatsoever, not any more than Hitler had any business being in Belgium, Holland or France.

Everyone in those days who tried to pursue an independent path in a small unaligned country was immediately called a Communist by Washington just for doing so. And then left with no choice but to get help from the Communists. So the USA in its incredible ignorance went around the world literally driving Third World people into becoming communists, because they couldn't get help anywhere else if they would not surrender to America.

Subject: RE: BS: Axis of Evil goes nuclear
From: Old Guy
Date: 16 Oct 06 - 10:41 PM

"When was the last time Kim Jong il issued a threat?"

North Korea threatens
U.S. with nuke missile
Official says Pyongyang will fire weapon
Unless Washington acts to resolve standoff
Posted: October 10, 2006
6:00 p.m. Eastern


© 2006 WorldNetDaily.com


North Korean leader Kim Jong-il
Communist North Korea has threatened to fire a nuclear-tipped missile unless the U.S. takes action to resolve its standoff with Pyongyang, according to the South Korean news agency Yonhap.


N Korea threatens to 'wipe out' US
Agencies
Sunday, June 18, 2006 22:33 IST         

SEOUL: North Korea on Sunday threatened to "mercilessly wipe out" US forces in case of war during a national meeting to mark leader Kim Jong-Il's 42 years' work at the ruling party. The threat, in a ruling party report carried by the Korean Central News Agency, came as North Korea was reportedly preparing to test-fire a long-range missile despite strong protests from the United States and its allies.

Subject: RE: BS: Axis of Evil goes nuclear
From: GUEST
Date: 16 Oct 06 - 09:12 PM

Okay, Stiggie:

America has been in some few wars in the past hundred years and more, right? On which side did we enter every war -- the side of greater and weightier, more oppressive government, or the side of liberty and governance that did not overween?

1898, the Spanish-American War -- allied with an insurgency of Cubans, against a moribund and thoroughly inefficient empire of the classically imperialist mode -- not an outfit that promoted civil liberties. We acquired, most notably, the Philippines -- and gave it to its native-born fifty years later.

1917, our entry into WW1 -- allied with Britain, Belgium, France, and incidentally Italy, against the Central Powers. And were the Central powers a great bastion of liberty and libertarian thinking? Hell no.

The "banana wars" of the twenties and thirties weren't much of a who's-better situation on either side, and none lasted long enough for moral contests to emerge along with martial contention.

1939-45, WW2: Allied with democracies and constitutional monarchies against three totalitarian regimes. Well known, and enough said.

1950, Korea: nascent and impure democracy south of the 38th Parallel, an unmistakeable Communist totalitarian state north of it, against which we fought. Refugees went SOUTH, not north. Had we been allowed to win, how much of the North would now prosper? Remember the Korean peninsula nighttime satellite photo. It tells you *everything.*

1965, Vietnam: same story, different parallel, even if the democracy wasn't particularly to be found in the Diem, Ky, or Thieu governments, for even less was to be found under Ho. One could blame the French, I suppose. You have to assess the goodness or lack of it of any given regime by how many refugees it generates, Stiggy. There weren't any from Diem, Ky, or Thieu, but a couple million Vietnamese fled south from the Hanoi government, and another couple million fled Vietnam entirely after 1973 when the totalitarian evildoers triumphed. What does it say of a regime that people would take to the sea in drifting rafts risking death by thirst and rape by pirates *in preference to* continuing to reside in the country of their birth? That said totalitarian evildoers were not entirely stupid is demonstrated by their abandoning Marxism, except as a sort of state religion, around 1983.

1961, Bay of Pigs, Cuba: against a declared Communist totalitarian dictator, no? Led fairly directly to the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, which put us in direct confrontation with another Communist totalitarian dictator.

It is our instinct to oppose oppressors.

Panama and Grenada: neither of our opponents in either case were at all about human liberty, were they?

And who did we ship the Stinger missiles to in Afghanistan? Somehow I don't think it was to the Soviets. For that matter, can *anyone* chain up the Afghans on their home ground? The record says no. Those boys do a very practical job of staying free.

Iraq, Chapters One and Two -- technically and legally, both brawls with Iraq are the same war, albeit one put on pause for eleven years if you ignore all the missiles Saddam's crew wasted shooting in the general direction of coalition aircraft. There was never a peace treaty, only a cease-fire. All this yelling about the Iraq war being illegal -- or even a separate war from Afghanistan -- is without any foundation, and a classic example of leftists trying The Big Lie -- to impair humanity's cause. Perhaps if we spanked the leftists, they'd stop it -- they tend not to be courageous.

So really, Stigweard, the only reason I can see for you to allege laughter is your own ignorance and your want of enthusiasm for the best of all likely systems of governance -- democracy, with liberal individual liberty. This ignorance and want puts you at one with some of the most objectionable men that ever left the womb -- the Pol Pots, the Hitlers, the Stalins. In a non-democracy, a sociopath may go far. Democracies filter them out of the political picture, and a good thing too!

Subject: RE: BS: Axis of Evil goes nuclear
From: Amos
Date: 16 Oct 06 - 01:10 PM

The U.S. has now announced they have detected the radiation expected and confirmed it is consistent with a <1kTon nuclear device. We are (wisely, I think) eliciting lots of cooperation from the Chinese in seeking to exercise economic sanctions on the Kim Jong government. Some experts now believe North Korea may have separated plutonium enough to develop an arsenal of four to 13 nuclear weapons, compared with estimates of one or two nuclear weapons in 2000 according to USA Today.

I say wisely because until now, the biggest deterrent against overthrowing the Kim government in North Korea has been their alliance with the Chinese. But the Chinese have a strong vested interest in the ability of the United States to make good on the huge holdings in US securities possessed by the Chinese. So they are less likely to be interested in back N. Korea if it were to come to a show-down; if the Chinese got on the wrong side of a fight with the United States, I imagine we would renege on any such debts rather instantaneously, no? Assuming we survived such an encounter...

A

Subject: RE: BS: Axis of Evil goes nuclear
From: Little Hawk
Date: 16 Oct 06 - 12:39 PM

Perhaps the wind is simply not blowing in their direction... ;-)

Subject: RE: BS: Axis of Evil goes nuclear
From: Stu
Date: 16 Oct 06 - 04:50 AM

"The Chinese assert they can find no trace of atmospheric radiation such as they would expect to see as a side-effect of a nuclear test"

Well, if the Chinese say it it must be true.

Subject: RE: BS: Axis of Evil goes nuclear
From: Little Hawk
Date: 16 Oct 06 - 02:11 AM

It's not the old-fashioned form of colonialism anymore, U.G. The Soviets were the last to try that, and it failed because it was too obvious. The corporate form of colonialism is unofficial, much more subtle, and just as brutally effective. It's done by controlling money and marketing and supposedly independent local political factions, not by establishing officially owned colonies. When you control the money (through organizations like the World Bank), when you control the flow of goods (through corporate contracts), when you have the US military to back you up if anyone doesn't cooperate with the economic colonization of the Third World...who needs official colonies?

You don't recognize the wolf, because he is wearing a sheep's costume, but he is still a wolf.

Official colonialism is out of style. De facto and absolutely real economic colonialism has never been more powerful than it is now.

You just control the big money and you back it up with the big guns. Everything else falls into line. The few rich grow richer, the many poor grow poorer, the dwindling middle class vanishes bit by bit. It's happening at home too on your own ground. You are witnessing the decline and fall of small scale capitalism, of a genuinely free market, and of a genuinely free society.

Subject: RE: BS: Axis of Evil goes nuclear
From: GUEST,Urbane Guerrilla
Date: 16 Oct 06 - 01:08 AM

{Seeing if I can still post in this thread}

The record shows that the United States, while not for all times and all places quite free of empire building, is nonetheless the *least* imperialist of any great power on record. America came late to imperialism, and very halfheartedly, never making a single tributary province. The longest hold we had on a significant-sized trust territory was of the Philippines, and that for not quite fifty years -- less than a man's lifetime.

And we've given all of it back to the natives -- and this after conquering more land area than some empires that were intended to remain permanently.

That is our habit; I don't see us changing. We have an instinctive avoidance of imperialism because we recognize it's quite bad for business -- our dominance on Earth is not through conquest but through trade.

Subject: RE: BS: Axis of Evil goes nuclear
From: Amos
Date: 16 Oct 06 - 12:37 AM

The Chinese assert they can find no trace of atmospheric radiation such as they would expect to see as a side-effect of a nuclear test. What gives with this situation?


A

Subject: RE: BS: Axis of Evil goes nuclear
From: Barry Finn
Date: 16 Oct 06 - 12:36 AM

Some small dogs nip & nip & nip for so long that the big dog finally realizes that if it wants to get out in one piece it better leave while it can. One dog's name was Iraq-Nam

The small dog has no choice but to continue to fight till it's dead the big dog can always leave.

Barry

Subject: RE: BS: Axis of Evil goes nuclear
From: Little Hawk
Date: 16 Oct 06 - 12:25 AM

Yes, it's odd to see the one country that DOES invade other people quite frequently (the USA) yelling about threats from other countries all the time. Those other countries are deeply afraid of the USA, and that's why they arm themselves and bluster. It's exactly what a small dog does when he's scared. He barks and shows his teeth, in hopes that the big dog won't kill him. It may be a forlorn hope, but it's the best hope the little dog has in his armoury.

Subject: RE: BS: Axis of Evil goes nuclear
From: GUEST
Date: 16 Oct 06 - 12:15 AM

Kim Jong il may be a crazy Stalinist but last I heard, he never invaded another nation. He needs nuclear power for defense.

Why is everyone so afraid of N. Korea? They may be crazy but their crazy in their own backyard, not mine.

The North Korean 'threat' is just another assumption that plays on the fear and paranoia of the American public.

When was the last time Kim Jong il issued a threat?

Subject: RE: BS: Axis of Evil goes nuclear
From: Little Hawk
Date: 15 Oct 06 - 07:30 PM

Yeah, the USA started out in the 1770's by fighting the British Empire...and ended up in the 20th century by taking over its mandate! ;-) The old freedom-fighting revolutionaries became the new imperialists. It's happened that way a number of times in history.

Subject: RE: BS: Axis of Evil goes nuclear
From: Bunnahabhain
Date: 15 Oct 06 - 06:16 PM

I really don't know if it was real or not, but every scrap of evidence, circumstancial or not, makes full scale war that little less likley, Which is probably good.

BTW Little Hawk, 'The White Mans burden' had the introduction 'The United States and the Philippene Islands'
A new white mans burden isn't actually possible...

Subject: RE: BS: Axis of Evil goes nuclear
From: Little Hawk
Date: 15 Oct 06 - 03:58 PM

Nobody fools me "throughly". ;-)

Thoroughly, maybe...but not throughly!

Subject: RE: BS: Axis of Evil goes nuclear
From: Old Guy
Date: 15 Oct 06 - 03:52 PM

Yeah, you could ask a lot of questions of a lot of people like Fidel who has throughly fooled Itty Bitty Hawk.

Subject: RE: BS: Axis of Evil goes nuclear
From: Little Hawk
Date: 14 Oct 06 - 06:08 PM

"Does this jerk think he can get away with fooling the entire world?"

You could ask that same question about a great many well-known politicians! ;-)

Subject: RE: BS: Axis of Evil goes nuclear
From: Amos
Date: 14 Oct 06 - 01:41 PM

Well either it was a nuclear explosion or it was a fraudulent waste of conventional explosives intended to deceive. The seismograph only tells us it was an explosion. But all the rhetoric around it has sounded quite hollow to me -- fropm both sides -- so I wonder what the back-room sessions planning the event were like. You don't pull a bang like that out of nothing. If it was a sham it was a very expensive one. Cui bono? Korea is no better off. Maybe Kim Jong thought he could get the US to invade and then decimate his population, which is not self-sufficient annyway, and then make reparations and do a rebuilding thing.

Ijit.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Axis of Evil goes nuclear
From: Old Guy
Date: 14 Oct 06 - 01:01 PM

"Kim Jong mentally ill" is more than mere rhetoric.

Does this jerk think he can get away with fooling the entire world?

Subject: RE: BS: Axis of Evil goes nuclear
From: Amos
Date: 14 Oct 06 - 02:22 AM

The Mouse That Roared?



A

Subject: RE: BS: Axis of Evil goes nuclear
From: Old Guy
Date: 14 Oct 06 - 12:49 AM

Chinese official says no radiation found after North Korean nuclear test

he Associated Press

Published: October 13, 2006
BEIJING Chinese monitoring has found no evidence of airborne radiation from North Korea's claimed nuclear test, an official involved in the monitoring said Friday.

The official with the State Environmental Protection Administration said China has been monitoring air samples since the test-explosion Monday. "We have conducted air monitoring and found no radiation in the air over Chinese territory so far," said the official who requested anonymity because he was not authorized to publicly release the information.

The official declined to explain how the monitoring was conducted.

Experts and governments have been unable to confirm North Korea's claim of a successful nuclear test. Japanese planes have scooped up air samples, but detected no radiation. Seismic data shows that there was an explosion at the claimed test site but is inconclusive as to the size of the blast and whether it was caused by a nuclear detonation.

The lack of evidence raises questions about whether North Korea is capable of assembling an operating nuclear bomb.

South Korean monitoring showed that the underground test was conducted in Pungkyeri near North Korea's northeastern coast.

In the wake of the explosion, the Chinese environmental agency activated contingency plans requiring air, soil and water testing, the Chinese official said. Results from the soil and water tests were not yet available, he said.

Local environmental protection bureaus in China routinely monitor air quality for pollution. An official at the environmental bureau in the Chinese city of Dandong on the North Korean border said that since the test-explosion his agency had been scanning air samples for radiation. He declined to provide the results of the monitoring.


BEIJING Chinese monitoring has found no evidence of airborne radiation from North Korea's claimed nuclear test, an official involved in the monitoring said Friday.

The official with the State Environmental Protection Administration said China has been monitoring air samples since the test-explosion Monday. "We have conducted air monitoring and found no radiation in the air over Chinese territory so far," said the official who requested anonymity because he was not authorized to publicly release the information.

The official declined to explain how the monitoring was conducted.

Experts and governments have been unable to confirm North Korea's claim of a successful nuclear test. Japanese planes have scooped up air samples, but detected no radiation. Seismic data shows that there was an explosion at the claimed test site but is inconclusive as to the size of the blast and whether it was caused by a nuclear detonation.

The lack of evidence raises questions about whether North Korea is capable of assembling an operating nuclear bomb...

Subject: RE: BS: Axis of Evil goes nuclear
From: Old Guy
Date: 14 Oct 06 - 12:49 AM

"Why it's the Uneeda Biscuit made the trouble.

Uneeda, Uneeda, put the crackers in the package, in the package,

The Uneeda Biscuit in an airtight, sanitary package, made the cracker barrel obsolete, obsolete."

Subject: RE: BS: Axis of Evil goes nuclear
From: Old Guy
Date: 14 Oct 06 - 12:42 AM

Why it's the Model T Ford made the trouble, not the bomb
made the people wanna go, wanna get, wanna get up and go
seven eight , nine, ten, twelve, fourteen, twent-two, twenty-three miles to the county seat.
Yes sir, yes sir

Subject: RE: BS: Axis of Evil goes nuclear
From: Little Hawk
Date: 14 Oct 06 - 12:20 AM

100!

"Boink!"

(that was a little tiny nuclear explosion over in North Korea...)

Subject: RE: BS: Axis of Evil goes nuclear
From: Little Hawk
Date: 14 Oct 06 - 12:16 AM

Well, we talk because we like to. It keeps us busy. ;-)

Subject: RE: BS: Axis of Evil goes nuclear
From: Ron Davies
Date: 14 Oct 06 - 12:08 AM

It's the Model T Ford made the trouble--or maybe it's something different this time.

Subject: RE: BS: Axis of Evil goes nuclear
From: Old Guy
Date: 13 Oct 06 - 10:27 AM

Whaddaya talk?
You can talk, you can talk
You can bicker, you can talk
You can bicker, bicker, bicker
You can talk, you can talk
You can talk, talk, talk, talk,
Bicker, bicker, bicker
You can talk all you want
But it's different then it was
No it ain't, no it ain't
But you gotta know the territory

Subject: RE: BS: Axis of Evil goes nuclear
From: Little Hawk
Date: 12 Oct 06 - 09:21 PM

No, it's amazing that the damned things have been around ever since 1945, isn't it?

Subject: RE: BS: Axis of Evil goes nuclear
From: GUEST,lox
Date: 12 Oct 06 - 09:18 PM

Yes

I wasn't really just thinking of Kim's bomb (if it's real). More just having a moment of reflection on how fragile and wonderful life is, and how inconceivably destructive the bomb is.

I've always had too vivid an imagination. I daydreamed at school, and most things that I understand I've worked out by visualising them.

I've always been afraid of the bomb, but it's since I became a dad that I've really begun to grieve for what the bomb is - a little ball of metal with no consciousness or conscience from which there is no escape.

It sounds like sci fi, but in fact its sci history, and not even contemporary at that.

Subject: RE: BS: Axis of Evil goes nuclear
From: Little Hawk
Date: 12 Oct 06 - 09:11 PM

Well, yeah, but I've been figuring for quite some time that Kim had the Bomb. ;-) I am not more scared now because he says he tested one.

The bombs that scare me are the ones in America's and Russia's arsenals. Those are the bombs that can accomplish the destruction of civilization as we know it. America and Russia have that capability. Kim doesn't.

You're right that the bickering can seem like a protective bubble. Actually, there is no protective bubble. There is only the hope that our national leaders don't completely lose their judgement at some point and start firing those missiles at each other.

Subject: RE: BS: Axis of Evil goes nuclear
From: GUEST,lox
Date: 12 Oct 06 - 09:05 PM

Nice twist.

Sometimes it's useful too though to just take a breather, look at what's going on and say "oh shit, Kim's got the bomb" collectively, rather than just in the meek privacy of ones own mind.

Of course to do it for too long is to indulge it at the expense of other things, so keep working at peoples minds, but don't get too bogged down in that either.

You have to stay fresh, and that means varying your approach.

I don't mean to say you are specifically in need of advice LH, just that sometimes the bickering can seem like a protective bubble in itself.

Sometimes like a busy city, full of smog and people beeping their horns and telling each other to get out of the way, while the bomb hangs above it, suspended by ... is it a chaiin or a thread? I dunno!

Subject: RE: BS: Axis of Evil goes nuclear
From: Little Hawk
Date: 12 Oct 06 - 08:50 PM

That's right. They (Bush, Blair, Putin, Kim Jong Il, etc...) "don't even know we exist, let alone care". They are all playing large scale power politics, and playing to win...or if not that, to survive.

One comment, though. It is not normally the business of a people to "do something about" another country's leader (unless already at war with that other country, and on the point of decisively winning said war). It is their job to do something about their own leaders, if they can.

To suggest that Americans, for instance, bear a new "white man's burden" and have a moral responsibility to do something about other people's leaders in distant parts of the world is a blanket justification for America to do what Hitler did in the late 30's and early 40's...attack other countries whenever they feel like it. It's a justification for unprovoked aggression.

It would be no more justified than if Putin or Kim or some other foreign leader decided to "do something" about Bush (meaning assassinate him or take him prisoner by military invasion and defeat of the USA. Put the shoe on the other foot and all of a sudden you see exactly what it means. Outright lawlessness, all in the name of a supposed moral superiority over other people.

What would be the reaction of Americans if some other country felt strong enough to suggest in the world media their desire to bring about "regime change" in the USA by force, as the USA decided to do in Afghanistan and Iraq, for example. The reaction on the part of Americans would be outrage! Readiness to fight at a moment's notice.

That's how it works. Put the shoe on the other foot and you begin to see how outrageous such an attitude is and why the "occupied" will never stop fighting such an occupation.

Subject: RE: BS: Axis of Evil goes nuclear
From: GUEST,lox
Date: 12 Oct 06 - 08:30 PM

It all seems a bit silly to me to be arguing about who's worse.

The point is that Kim Jong Ill may have the bomb (I'm not up to date on the latest I have to confess)

Why does that worry us? because he is an inept egocentric fantasist with a sickening coldness in his heart that would have most likely have been arrested for assaulting youg children by now were he to be living in the USA.

"What do we do about him? - well he's not as bad as ... oh ... nothing then"

"what do we do about bush? well he's better than ... oh ... nothing then"

Bicker bicker bicker, and the bastards get on with it and don't even know we exist, let alone care.