Night Train to Mundo Fine
Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
People are trapped in history, and history is trapped in them.
- James Baldwin
The media often makes me laugh. Not the sweet, summertime shady spot under an old oak tree [with a dangling tire swing and initials carved in a heart], missing-a-front-tooth childishly innocent, trapped in a living Ray Bradbury reminiscence dripping with nostalgia for his Great Depression youth, "I am a child of the Earth Goddess and I bask beneath the night sky and drink in the stars" sort of happiness, no. It's more a "I just stepped on a rusty nail and now it's jutting from the web of skin between my big toe and index toe," paper cut on your gums, out of ammo, ain't that a B, kind of a laugh. On September 19, CNN [meaning Clearly Not Neutral, ha! ha! ha! thanks to loyal reader Rush L. for that jape] was blaring from its website the following headline:
N. KOREA AGREES TO GIVE UP NUCLEAR PROGRAM
The article went on to breathlessly elaborate how George W. Bush had finally, finally, showed us liberals What For and rolled up those magical shirtsleeves of his [the better to tap those eldritch energies, methinks] and Gotten The Job Done. woohoo. Even I was mildly optimistic. Until, that is, I actually got past the opening paragraph.
"Nearly three years after ordering U.N. nuclear inspectors out of the country, North Korea Monday agreed to give up its entire nuclear program," CNN's anonymous stringer in Beijing reported. [Why don't news websites give bylines? It just says that some dolt named Stan Grant "contributed" to this report. Well, bully for you, Stan, but changing a colon to a semi-colon and wiping the actual reporter's chocolate fingerprints off of the copy with a moist towelette doesn't make you Edward R. Murrow. You suck-up, you can't write for shit, just give it up.] Well, hey, giving up its entire nuclear program. That sounds pretty sweet! North Korea is a xenophobic pocket tyranny world-renown for its near-total lack of cuisine [Pyongyang's only 4-star restaurant's specialty of the house is their "Pyongyang Surprise," a lumpy casserole made of porridge, parsley, and iron rations] but they seem to make a darn good, or at least fissionable, nuclear explosive. Luckily for us here in America, they can't possibly use them against us. By us, I mean any Americans not living in the Hawaii-Aleutian, Alaska, or Pacific Standard Time Zones.
[no, I wish I was kidding; analyses differ, but apparently their Taepodong-2 long range intercontinental ballistic missile has a theoretical range of somewhere between 3650 and 6000 kilometers. That's 2268 to 3728 miles to you and me.]
Anyway. Good news right? We don't need to worry about North Korea's striking capacity...as, I'm certain the well-informed and thirsting-for-knowledge American populace was. We can go back to not paying attention. [cough]
hrm...there does seem to be a single gloomy little raincloud in the sky, though: "While the joint statement has Pyongyang giving up nuclear weapons and existing nuclear programs, it also acknowledges that North Korea has stated that it has the the right to 'peaceful uses of nuclear energy' and that the provision of a nuclear light-water reactor will be discussed at 'an appropriate time.'" huh. So, they're giving up their nuclear program...but...they want another nuclear reactor. um. Yeah. Something...something doesn't seem to fit here. Let's see...giving up nuclear power...but they want a reactor, which they can't use, because...well, I'm fairly certain that that would be nuclear. uhh...
Oh the heck with it. The heck I say! It would just be defeatist and unconstructive and downright Democratic of me to suggest that this very minor sticking point could in any way prove to be a major obstacle to finalizing denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. Right? Right?
Wellllll....maybe not so much.
CNN headline 14 hours later:
NORTH KOREA DEMANDS REACTOR FIRST
Pyongyang: Ending weapons program tied to civilian power
Hey, wait a second. I thought Bush solved the problem? I could have sworn I saw shirtsleeves being rolled up. "North Korea said Tuesday it would begin dismantling its nuclear program only if the United States provides a light-water reactor for civilian power." oh. Oh no. This does not sound good at all. "'Without this physical guarantee of the (light-water reactor), our position is not to even dream of us giving up our nuclear deterrence,' the official KCNA news agency quoted a spokesman for the North Korean Foreign Ministry as saying." Hey. Crap. This is not good at all. I mean this is exactly what happened 11 years ago, when as part of the US-DPRK Agreed Framework we agreed to give the North Koreans two light water reactors to replace their archaic graphite-moderated nuclear plants which were capable of making plutonium. [Got all that? I don't. I'm as lost as you are.]
That whole 1994 agreement was a mess. First of all, it wasn't actually a treaty, just an informal and unenforceable "arrangement." Secondly, no side seems to have followed through on anything they promised. Well, not completely. Part of the Agreed Framework was a US pledge to not use nuclear weapons against North Korea, and so far as I know we haven't actually done that. But otherwise, both sides lied and stalled and reneged. DPRK was supposed to get these new light water reactors to replace their old ones, and while they were waiting for them to be built, we were supposed to ship them fuel oil to make up for the electricity lost from shutting down the old plants. Before that was done, the International Atomic Energy Agency had to sign off on the DPRK as being up to spec for their safeguards and waste storage. Before that, the US was supposed to end economic sanctions and normalize diplomatic relations with the DPRK. Well, I don't think any of that was done. We haven't started exchanging ambassadors, we eased up slightly on sanctions then renewed them in full, the light water reactors that were supposed to go online in 2003 have not even been built, and in total contravention at least of the spirit of this agreement, the North Koreans gave up their plutonium-based program and practically the next day started an enriched-uranium program. Oh, with help from Pakistan. Yes, that Pakistan. So, everybody's an asshole, seems to be the lesson for today.
[Sidebar: Why would our buddies in Pakistan help out those fuckhead North Koreans? Especially since Pakistan has long been a geostrategic ally of the People's Republic of China - mainly because both Pakistan and China agree that they hate India. So why would they help give nukes to that festering wound along China's northeast coast? Answer: because North Korea had some very nice ballistic systems for sale. And Pakistan, while it had been a "secret" [shh, don't tell] nuclear power since the 1970s, was falling behind in the South Asian arms race when it came to ballistics systems. India's Prithvi and Agni series of ballistic missiles were operational and deployed, and Pakistan needed to level the playing field for their upcoming once a decade flare-up with India over Kashmir. Enter Abdul Qadeer Khan, called the father of Pakistan's nuclear bomb - picture Dr. Strangelove as played by Omar Sharif. Khan, "unbenownst" to the Pakistan government [that's our story and we're sticking to it, look over there, an elephant!] had sold [or engaged in talks with to discuss the sale of] nuclear research, technology, and quantities of uranium hexafluoride to Libya, Iran, elements of al-Qaeda, and North Korea. Khan confessed to helping give nuclear technology to our enemies in January of 2004, but, don't worry, our loyal ally Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf pardoned him in February of 2004. So everything's cool.]
[is anyone still reading this? Christ, this must be boring for anyone who's not me. But I shall continue regardless, because I can't sleep.]
Okay. So the ball, as they say, is in our court. North Korea is really serious this time, they're not kidding, they want that reactor. We promised and they waited and we didn't give it to them and they cried and stomped their feet and told Mom and let about a million of their own people starve to death, and now, they're not going home until they get their reactor. This is largely a matter of face-saving for them, I think. The stakes are higher now, because instead of a nascent nuclear weapons program with potential, they now have [or claim to have] an actual nuclear arsenal. They have a lot more to lose, so they have to try and make a big deal out of this light water reactor thingee. They're not waiting, they want a firm agreement to get it before abandoning the one wild card they have in this poker hand.
All is not lost. We just can't take the bait and let these talks blow up. It's up to our diplomats to suck it up, give them an inch, and, whatever they do, to keep an iron grip on this official, for-real, legally binding commitment to disarm, and not let Pyongyang scuttle the talks and walk away with their nukes. Because if that happens, they're just going to double their efforts at uranium enrichment, because they know that the Emperor is on his way and he's just not as forgiving as Vader. But I for one have every confidence in Secretary Rice and her elite staff of Bush-appointed Republican loyalists.
...hoo boy.
CNN headline September 20:
U.S., RUSSIA REJECT N KOREA DEMAND
Pyongyang: Ending weapons program tied to civilian power
Okay, so. um. I guess this is the Cheney Doctrine in action. "Go fuck yourselves, Stalinist dictatorship with an army of one million plus, and half a dozen nuclear weapons, and the missiles to use them." Greeaat.
Our own Condi Rice, let's hear it for Condi, ladles and germs:
"'We will stick to the text of the Beijing statement and I believe that we can make progress if everybody sticks to what was actually agreed to,' Rice told reporters at the United Nations Tuesday." So, North Korea is really stressing this...but I'm going to pretend that I can't actually hear them. huh? huh? Get it? Now, THAT is something they just don't teach in Secretary of State School. You have to pick that up on the streets.
"'The text of the agreement says that we'll discuss a light-water reactor at an appropriate time. There were several statements afterwards that make clear what that sequence is.'" You should just tell Kim Jong Il that it depends on what the meaning of is, is.
So basically, the "five powers" [everyone but the DPRK] say that A, B, C have to happen before Kim gets Z, and Kim is saying that he must have Z before he can do A, B, and C. Shock. Dismay. No One Could Have Foreseen This.
...except, of course, that this was all COMPLETELY OBVIOUS to anyone who had bothered to read the first news article covering this. Is everyone just fucking stupid, or what? I mean I expect stupidity from the Bush State Department, but CNN is supposed to have at least a couple of smart people sitting around, maybe making coffee for the anchors, I dunno. I don't even want to look at the MSNBC [a division of General Electric; GE - We bring good wars to life!] or Fox News [Sieg heil!] websites, they've probably photoshopped Bush into the Roman triumph from Gladiator in cock-slathering adulation. You know, they never just want to report the facts...it's either the Second Coming of blah blah blah, or Countdown to Armageddon, no inbefuckingtween. It's irresponsible and it tends to erode people's interest and trust. When every story is huge, but the world doesn't seem to change all that much, then ordinary people stop paying attention. I wish I could believe that this wasn't deliberate. When you pare away the sober and serious and complex coverage of news stories, the only audience you have left are the dullards who need a "storyline" to follow, a simple narrative to world events that they can follow and hopefully clap along to. Luckily, these people tend to watch a lot of fucking TV. And then the media can wash their hands and say, "Well, we're giving our viewers what they want." bah.
As for our government itself, for fuck's sake, this is the same retarded square dance we promenaded through over a decade ago, only now we don't even have the threadbare excuse of rose-tinted naïvete. Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, the President's TelePrompTer cuts out and he fumbles to finish his sentence with a lyric from The Who because he's so fucking clueless. So after all this hemming and hawing, all Bush's lame-ass insistence on six-power talks, six-power talks, six-power talks will solve all the problems, and make you taller, and richer, and girls will talk to you if you engage in six-power talks...after that sad shuffling about during last year's debates, mocking Kerry for not knowing how grownups handle problems [by making China fix them, apparently], this is the best deal they can provide, the same goddamned warmed-over shit from 1994. I take that back, they seem to be on the fast track to fucking it up even more than the Clinton Administration did. At this rate, unless we bite the bullet, or unless [less likely but possible] Pyongyang gives in, the North Koreans are going to go home, tell the world, "Hey, we tried, not our fault," and churn out warheads like they were...um...easily manufactured items that were something different. And since we jumped out and took all the credit for the so-called breakthrough a couple days ago, if it blows up we're going to get all the blame.
I'm sure that, somehow, in the next few days, we'll find out that the Mayor of New Orleans is really the one at fault here.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
People are trapped in history, and history is trapped in them.
- James Baldwin
The media often makes me laugh. Not the sweet, summertime shady spot under an old oak tree [with a dangling tire swing and initials carved in a heart], missing-a-front-tooth childishly innocent, trapped in a living Ray Bradbury reminiscence dripping with nostalgia for his Great Depression youth, "I am a child of the Earth Goddess and I bask beneath the night sky and drink in the stars" sort of happiness, no. It's more a "I just stepped on a rusty nail and now it's jutting from the web of skin between my big toe and index toe," paper cut on your gums, out of ammo, ain't that a B, kind of a laugh. On September 19, CNN [meaning Clearly Not Neutral, ha! ha! ha! thanks to loyal reader Rush L. for that jape] was blaring from its website the following headline:
N. KOREA AGREES TO GIVE UP NUCLEAR PROGRAM
The article went on to breathlessly elaborate how George W. Bush had finally, finally, showed us liberals What For and rolled up those magical shirtsleeves of his [the better to tap those eldritch energies, methinks] and Gotten The Job Done. woohoo. Even I was mildly optimistic. Until, that is, I actually got past the opening paragraph.
"Nearly three years after ordering U.N. nuclear inspectors out of the country, North Korea Monday agreed to give up its entire nuclear program," CNN's anonymous stringer in Beijing reported. [Why don't news websites give bylines? It just says that some dolt named Stan Grant "contributed" to this report. Well, bully for you, Stan, but changing a colon to a semi-colon and wiping the actual reporter's chocolate fingerprints off of the copy with a moist towelette doesn't make you Edward R. Murrow. You suck-up, you can't write for shit, just give it up.] Well, hey, giving up its entire nuclear program. That sounds pretty sweet! North Korea is a xenophobic pocket tyranny world-renown for its near-total lack of cuisine [Pyongyang's only 4-star restaurant's specialty of the house is their "Pyongyang Surprise," a lumpy casserole made of porridge, parsley, and iron rations] but they seem to make a darn good, or at least fissionable, nuclear explosive. Luckily for us here in America, they can't possibly use them against us. By us, I mean any Americans not living in the Hawaii-Aleutian, Alaska, or Pacific Standard Time Zones.
[no, I wish I was kidding; analyses differ, but apparently their Taepodong-2 long range intercontinental ballistic missile has a theoretical range of somewhere between 3650 and 6000 kilometers. That's 2268 to 3728 miles to you and me.]
Anyway. Good news right? We don't need to worry about North Korea's striking capacity...as, I'm certain the well-informed and thirsting-for-knowledge American populace was. We can go back to not paying attention. [cough]
hrm...there does seem to be a single gloomy little raincloud in the sky, though: "While the joint statement has Pyongyang giving up nuclear weapons and existing nuclear programs, it also acknowledges that North Korea has stated that it has the the right to 'peaceful uses of nuclear energy' and that the provision of a nuclear light-water reactor will be discussed at 'an appropriate time.'" huh. So, they're giving up their nuclear program...but...they want another nuclear reactor. um. Yeah. Something...something doesn't seem to fit here. Let's see...giving up nuclear power...but they want a reactor, which they can't use, because...well, I'm fairly certain that that would be nuclear. uhh...
Oh the heck with it. The heck I say! It would just be defeatist and unconstructive and downright Democratic of me to suggest that this very minor sticking point could in any way prove to be a major obstacle to finalizing denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. Right? Right?
Wellllll....maybe not so much.
CNN headline 14 hours later:
NORTH KOREA DEMANDS REACTOR FIRST
Pyongyang: Ending weapons program tied to civilian power
Hey, wait a second. I thought Bush solved the problem? I could have sworn I saw shirtsleeves being rolled up. "North Korea said Tuesday it would begin dismantling its nuclear program only if the United States provides a light-water reactor for civilian power." oh. Oh no. This does not sound good at all. "'Without this physical guarantee of the (light-water reactor), our position is not to even dream of us giving up our nuclear deterrence,' the official KCNA news agency quoted a spokesman for the North Korean Foreign Ministry as saying." Hey. Crap. This is not good at all. I mean this is exactly what happened 11 years ago, when as part of the US-DPRK Agreed Framework we agreed to give the North Koreans two light water reactors to replace their archaic graphite-moderated nuclear plants which were capable of making plutonium. [Got all that? I don't. I'm as lost as you are.]
That whole 1994 agreement was a mess. First of all, it wasn't actually a treaty, just an informal and unenforceable "arrangement." Secondly, no side seems to have followed through on anything they promised. Well, not completely. Part of the Agreed Framework was a US pledge to not use nuclear weapons against North Korea, and so far as I know we haven't actually done that. But otherwise, both sides lied and stalled and reneged. DPRK was supposed to get these new light water reactors to replace their old ones, and while they were waiting for them to be built, we were supposed to ship them fuel oil to make up for the electricity lost from shutting down the old plants. Before that was done, the International Atomic Energy Agency had to sign off on the DPRK as being up to spec for their safeguards and waste storage. Before that, the US was supposed to end economic sanctions and normalize diplomatic relations with the DPRK. Well, I don't think any of that was done. We haven't started exchanging ambassadors, we eased up slightly on sanctions then renewed them in full, the light water reactors that were supposed to go online in 2003 have not even been built, and in total contravention at least of the spirit of this agreement, the North Koreans gave up their plutonium-based program and practically the next day started an enriched-uranium program. Oh, with help from Pakistan. Yes, that Pakistan. So, everybody's an asshole, seems to be the lesson for today.
[Sidebar: Why would our buddies in Pakistan help out those fuckhead North Koreans? Especially since Pakistan has long been a geostrategic ally of the People's Republic of China - mainly because both Pakistan and China agree that they hate India. So why would they help give nukes to that festering wound along China's northeast coast? Answer: because North Korea had some very nice ballistic systems for sale. And Pakistan, while it had been a "secret" [shh, don't tell] nuclear power since the 1970s, was falling behind in the South Asian arms race when it came to ballistics systems. India's Prithvi and Agni series of ballistic missiles were operational and deployed, and Pakistan needed to level the playing field for their upcoming once a decade flare-up with India over Kashmir. Enter Abdul Qadeer Khan, called the father of Pakistan's nuclear bomb - picture Dr. Strangelove as played by Omar Sharif. Khan, "unbenownst" to the Pakistan government [that's our story and we're sticking to it, look over there, an elephant!] had sold [or engaged in talks with to discuss the sale of] nuclear research, technology, and quantities of uranium hexafluoride to Libya, Iran, elements of al-Qaeda, and North Korea. Khan confessed to helping give nuclear technology to our enemies in January of 2004, but, don't worry, our loyal ally Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf pardoned him in February of 2004. So everything's cool.]
[is anyone still reading this? Christ, this must be boring for anyone who's not me. But I shall continue regardless, because I can't sleep.]
Okay. So the ball, as they say, is in our court. North Korea is really serious this time, they're not kidding, they want that reactor. We promised and they waited and we didn't give it to them and they cried and stomped their feet and told Mom and let about a million of their own people starve to death, and now, they're not going home until they get their reactor. This is largely a matter of face-saving for them, I think. The stakes are higher now, because instead of a nascent nuclear weapons program with potential, they now have [or claim to have] an actual nuclear arsenal. They have a lot more to lose, so they have to try and make a big deal out of this light water reactor thingee. They're not waiting, they want a firm agreement to get it before abandoning the one wild card they have in this poker hand.
All is not lost. We just can't take the bait and let these talks blow up. It's up to our diplomats to suck it up, give them an inch, and, whatever they do, to keep an iron grip on this official, for-real, legally binding commitment to disarm, and not let Pyongyang scuttle the talks and walk away with their nukes. Because if that happens, they're just going to double their efforts at uranium enrichment, because they know that the Emperor is on his way and he's just not as forgiving as Vader. But I for one have every confidence in Secretary Rice and her elite staff of Bush-appointed Republican loyalists.
...hoo boy.
CNN headline September 20:
U.S., RUSSIA REJECT N KOREA DEMAND
Pyongyang: Ending weapons program tied to civilian power
Okay, so. um. I guess this is the Cheney Doctrine in action. "Go fuck yourselves, Stalinist dictatorship with an army of one million plus, and half a dozen nuclear weapons, and the missiles to use them." Greeaat.
Our own Condi Rice, let's hear it for Condi, ladles and germs:
"'We will stick to the text of the Beijing statement and I believe that we can make progress if everybody sticks to what was actually agreed to,' Rice told reporters at the United Nations Tuesday." So, North Korea is really stressing this...but I'm going to pretend that I can't actually hear them. huh? huh? Get it? Now, THAT is something they just don't teach in Secretary of State School. You have to pick that up on the streets.
"'The text of the agreement says that we'll discuss a light-water reactor at an appropriate time. There were several statements afterwards that make clear what that sequence is.'" You should just tell Kim Jong Il that it depends on what the meaning of is, is.
So basically, the "five powers" [everyone but the DPRK] say that A, B, C have to happen before Kim gets Z, and Kim is saying that he must have Z before he can do A, B, and C. Shock. Dismay. No One Could Have Foreseen This.
...except, of course, that this was all COMPLETELY OBVIOUS to anyone who had bothered to read the first news article covering this. Is everyone just fucking stupid, or what? I mean I expect stupidity from the Bush State Department, but CNN is supposed to have at least a couple of smart people sitting around, maybe making coffee for the anchors, I dunno. I don't even want to look at the MSNBC [a division of General Electric; GE - We bring good wars to life!] or Fox News [Sieg heil!] websites, they've probably photoshopped Bush into the Roman triumph from Gladiator in cock-slathering adulation. You know, they never just want to report the facts...it's either the Second Coming of blah blah blah, or Countdown to Armageddon, no inbefuckingtween. It's irresponsible and it tends to erode people's interest and trust. When every story is huge, but the world doesn't seem to change all that much, then ordinary people stop paying attention. I wish I could believe that this wasn't deliberate. When you pare away the sober and serious and complex coverage of news stories, the only audience you have left are the dullards who need a "storyline" to follow, a simple narrative to world events that they can follow and hopefully clap along to. Luckily, these people tend to watch a lot of fucking TV. And then the media can wash their hands and say, "Well, we're giving our viewers what they want." bah.
As for our government itself, for fuck's sake, this is the same retarded square dance we promenaded through over a decade ago, only now we don't even have the threadbare excuse of rose-tinted naïvete. Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, the President's TelePrompTer cuts out and he fumbles to finish his sentence with a lyric from The Who because he's so fucking clueless. So after all this hemming and hawing, all Bush's lame-ass insistence on six-power talks, six-power talks, six-power talks will solve all the problems, and make you taller, and richer, and girls will talk to you if you engage in six-power talks...after that sad shuffling about during last year's debates, mocking Kerry for not knowing how grownups handle problems [by making China fix them, apparently], this is the best deal they can provide, the same goddamned warmed-over shit from 1994. I take that back, they seem to be on the fast track to fucking it up even more than the Clinton Administration did. At this rate, unless we bite the bullet, or unless [less likely but possible] Pyongyang gives in, the North Koreans are going to go home, tell the world, "Hey, we tried, not our fault," and churn out warheads like they were...um...easily manufactured items that were something different. And since we jumped out and took all the credit for the so-called breakthrough a couple days ago, if it blows up we're going to get all the blame.
I'm sure that, somehow, in the next few days, we'll find out that the Mayor of New Orleans is really the one at fault here.
posted by Patrick at 6:52 AM
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