North Korea tests rockets

North Korean watchers in Washington and Seoul exhibit uninterested concern in the DPRK's testing of short range missiles. They dismiss it without much fanfare when before they would be ringing the tocsin that Pyongyang might very well be preparing a rain of terror something not short of Nazi V-2 rockets falling on London.

Why this display of unconcern when hardly 10 days ago Washington and Seoul were banging pots and pans of warning that the rise of Kim Jong eun was a prescription for regional instability and possibly war?

These nervous nellies have come to the conclusion that, one, the transition to power has gone on without a hitch; two, there is hardly cause for crying wolf since the only ones who through the sky was falling were the US and its ally and client South Korea; and three, short range rockets do not make for a war now.

Of course, context is missing, for, unlike US media, we, the audience, do not hear the other side of the argument. It may come as a surprise that North Korea is a leader in advanced rocketry. In the past, even America's 'trusted' ally the Egyptian military upon whom us$3 billion in taxpayer contribution is lavished on it, has bought advanced DPRK rockets. How could this happen without the knowledge, if not the tacit consent of Washington?

Nonetheless, we do hear that Pyongyang has sold rockets to another 'axis of evil' state Iran. GuamDiary has no need to flesh out the fodder that this accusation feeds the propaganda mills.

An interesting question comes up: if North Korea is consolidating gains inside the country a month after the death of Kim Jong il, why aren't Washington and Seoul coming up with a policy which nurtures a new direction in North Korean affairs?

On another front in the propaganda war, North Korean refugees in South Korea are floating rumours that the North is ferreting out and punishing North Koreans who showed insincerity in their display of sorrow for the passing of Kim Jong il. Looking at the footage shown worldwide on television, how can you discern in a sea of tearful mourners the real mourners from the false?

'Self inflicted wounds'--US military

Editorials lament the black mark the video of four Marines urinating on the bodies of Taliban in Afghanistan that 'stained yellow' the honour of the US military.

Now a general will now conduct an inquiry of this sordid affair. War is hell, we all know, but an army with low moral, questionable superiority in fighting skills, and a military which allows, if not encourages, dehumanisation of the enemy so that he is no longer human but a feral animal ripe for killing, spell disaster and criminal activity.

US troops in war in Afghanistan or Iraq vent their spleen not only on the enemy but even on fellow Americans. The death of private Danny Chen is instructive. A Chinese American who enlisted right out of high school, he was sent to Afghanistan. There, he suffered the slings of blatant racism and humiliating behaviour which drove him to take his own life.

Seven soldiers and one junior officer are under investigation for manslaughter and willfully engaging in conduct worthy of barbarians.

My Lai, Abu Gharib, Guantanamo...names and places which dredge up heinous conduct of US misconduct and, yes, crimes, in wars undeclared.

Punishment in the case of the Marines and Chen's tormentors will be quick, but the problem is one which hang like an albatross around the US high command.

The US has an all volunteer army. Saying this, it should have in place a rigorous programme of training and instruction in the dos and don'ts of war. Superficially, it probably does; fundamentally, it does little to foster a fighting force with high morale and excellent fighting skills. The Marines are a proud lot and boast of such virtues, but the four Marines who 'pissed' on dead Afghans are symptomatic that the 'esprit de corps' or 'semper fidelis' has broken down.

Two cases are indicative of behaviour exhibited by mercenaries.

'Why do we fight?'

'Why do we fight' is the title of a series of propaganda films from the US war department during world war two. The famous Hollywood director Frank Capra was 'enlisted' to direct this effort which was aimed solely at the men and women in the US military to fight the country's enemies in Europe and the Asia Pacific. The Roosevelt administration realised that broadly speaking the American public had little or no idea why they were waging war, the attack on Pearl Harbour notwithstanding.

Capra's series had many faults: the segment on Japan played heavily on racial stereotypes and prejudices.

Why does GuamDiary bring up Capra's 'why do we fight?' Look at today's headlines in the US and foreign press: a photo of four marine urinating on the bodies of dead Taliban fighters.

The horror and the endless discussions which either, one way or another, excuse the soldiers although everyone agrees they should be punished, or simply sidestepping an endemic problem that has plagued the US military and any administration occupying the White House.

During Vietnam, we had 'My Lai', in Iraq, Abu Gharib and Guantanamo, and in Afghanistan, well ...

The US military in no way has an adequate programme to 'educate', some say 'indoctrinate' its troops in 'why do we fight?', other than a raw gut appeal to the meanest instincts of stereotypes, skimming the edges of racialism, which has but one goal--total dehumanisation of the enemy. Since the 'enemy' is no longer human, well, anything goes, and boy does it. And when the YouTube exposes the results of US pride the Marines engage in acts stripped of any human qualities, well, the whole bandwagon of excuses and inadequate explanations pump up the hype that deserves no further explanation.

Yep, the four Marines will be disciplined, but not the officer corps going all the way to the top for condoning, perhaps encouraging, this 'way we fight'. And in the end, the question 'why do we fight?' is no clear than Capra's attempt 70 years ago to give cogent reasons why.

Bradley Manning: on the way to jail

GuamDiary cannot think of anyone who thought the military tribunal that heard evidence against Bradley Manning wouldn't recommend a general court martial. And that's exactly what the military commission did recommend. The verdict is a foregone conclusion: long years, or maybe life, in prison under the strictest of conditions. If anyone thinks that military justice mirrors civilian justice, well, we recommend the reading of Robert Sherrill's 'Military justice is to justice as military music is to music', if he can still find a loanable copy in a public library or take his chances on ordering it on the web for a reasonable price. ['MJJMMM's origin is found in the Vietnam War, but Sherrill's argument obtain even today.]

Bradley Manning is 'alleged' to have supplied a quarter million diplomatic cables to 'Wikileaks' Julian Assange. The full publication of these documents, many declassified and others of a low order of classification, greatly embarrassed the US government. Yet, in spite of getting egg on its face and bruising an inflated ego, little harm was done. In fact, the public got a good whiff of commonsense of behind the scenes assessment by US diplomats of the countries to which they were accredited, even when, for reasons of state, the US looked the other way on violations of human rights, corruption, and the like, so long as these less than 'kosher' governments marched to the tune of US foreign and military policy.

Since the Obama administration cannot get its hands on Assange who is fighting extradition to Sweden from England, Bradley Manning is a convenient surrogate. And the White House intends to take full advantage in prosecuting him and then locking him up and throwing the key away.

To many, the 24 year old intelligence analyst is a 'hero', and in his name a lot of small donations have flowed in to defray his court costs. He doesn't stand a tinker's chance: consider that the military tribunal who recommended a general court martial denied Manning's defence team to call 48 witnesses, allowing only two. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that the cards are stacked against Manning.

There is a slightly bright note in this affair: Obama had signed the NDAA before Manning's arrest. Otherwise, he wouldn't even get a court martial, only sequestration for an undetermined period without recourse to the rights of an American citizen. The NDAA is yet another step in America's quick march to an American form of 'gleichschaltung' which the Nazis used to silence dissent and trample on the rights accorded under the Constitution. Money and military power, not honour or honestry, rule the American Republic, it seems.

Kim Jong eun wants to talk

Whilst the main street media in the US and ROK and elsewhere harp on the threat a 'nuclear' North Korea poses for the world as Kim Jong eun assumes leadership, it blithely downplays his willingness to pick up his father's moves to talk to the US.

North Korea's desire to talk should quiet the nervous nellies in the US and ROK, but it doesn't, the more especially as GuamDiary has long documented these two allies with a single minded purpose to topple the rulers of North Korea press unreasonable demands.

The Obama administration and the revanchist South Korean regime, headed by the lame duck Lee Myung bak have tied food aid to political demands. Translation, they are pressing an 'advantage' to stare North Korea into submission through sanctions and bad faith in negotiations limited as they are. Not only that, the US pledged us$900 million in food aid which it dropped on hearing the news of Kim Jong il's death. Instead of honouring it, the US announced that new talks are needed with the new North Korean leaders? Why? In order to take advantage of a situation where Washington thought it could bully the new kid on the block as US North Korean clerics call Kim Jong eun. If such is the thinking of those who advise Obama & co., they misread the will of the North Korean leaders and people. And they always have. Instead of living up to its promises of food aid, as a gesture to a change in leadership in Pyongyang, and thus signal a willingness towards a new tack, the Obama administration reverted to its old tricks of going back on its word.

As GuamDiary has never stopped saying, Kim Il Sung, Kim Jong il, and now Kim Jong eun wants to negotiate with the US, but the US has mulishly resisted reversing engines and sailing in fresher channels.

Still, North Korea has not stopped trying to talk to the US. And by resisting, the US has not moved from A to A prime in dealing with the DPRK.

And the loser is not so much North Korea but the US and its 'client' South Korea.

Class in America

Maybe in universities Richard Sennett and Jonathan Cobb's 1973 'Hidden injuries of class' is still be read and discussed, but until 'Occupy Wall Street' came along the issue of class in America was conveniently swept under the carpet.

Fed on the pap that America is the land of opportunity and by the dint of hard labour, you could spring up the social ladder is no more than dregs in a bottle of wine that has turned sour.

Today, if anything that myth rings hollow. You know it; I know it; everyone knows it.

Recent studies, governmental or private, document the growing economic and social inequality existing in today's America, still the richest country in the world. Social mobility is stagnant as the 'middle classes' lose traction and find that the worst fears are realised: they're being forced down into the rungs of the hardworking poor and the impoverished. A fertile ground for the growing anger and cheap change for the right wing demagogues to pick up.

Today's young---the country's future--will live less well than their parents unless they come from wealth or marry into it [highly unlikely].

It is astounding to note that Americans know little of the world outside and care less, so brainwashed are they.

Corporate America rules supreme, it seems. Take media. It's all glamour and glitz and the life style of the rich and famous. PBS' second installment of 'Downtown Abby' has stimulated the appetite for books by maids and footmen and butlers who worked for the titled, parasitic British titled class. And the sales soar. Kaching, kaching, kaching sings the cash register!

Public radio and television shine the shoes of the capitalists with programmes on finance, the market, stocks and bonds, and the like. But, pray tell, where are the shows devoted to labour or to the working classes? Unimportant! Why devote time and money to a class of wage slaves who have to sell their sweat for the ruling classes? Tis better to shock and awe them with celebrity and life styles as though they were visions of sugar plums and fairies that they will never hope to live, unless by a fluke of nature. Let them eat 'pie in the sky', by and by, as the Woody Guthrie song goes.

Yet the immiserisation of America's working classes are there to see in every town and hamlet, in every city large or small. You taste it in the bitterness of your morning coffee.

And if the Republican battlefield for the party's nominee in 2012 presidential election is an indicator: jobs are 'hors de sujet', but not social issues or belief in a god or hollow boasts of returning the US to the mighty past. The candidates are rich men and even the lone woman who dropped out of the race is hardly one of the 'hoi polloi'. The watch word is not the nation's honour or its promise, but money, money, money. The programme is reactionary up and down the line, and yet the Republican party has attracted into its fold, the angry white men and women who are more ordinary working stiffs and remember an America which was predominantly white and had digested and assimilated millions of eastern and southern Europeans, once considered 'children of the dust'. And these very people want jobs for their children whom the plutocrats who hold the purse strings of the party do not give a tinker's damn for. The mixture is explosive in the medium run and it is little wonder that the party has embraced an Dixiecrat mentality.

GuamDiary uses the Grand Old Party or the moss backed Republicans as a bellwether, for it is the more revealing of a country that has turned its back on the commonweal and bribed by the finance capitalists who brought us the 2008 global recession, defend resolutely a class that would abandon them in a thunder storm.

Thanks to 'Occupy Wall Street' class has risen from the muck and mire of a concerted campaign to push the old pieties which today sound as hollow as a drum. OWS shifted the political course back to the working class. And rightly so. Class is a 'hidden injury' to the workers but not the rich. It is time for the working class to boldly organise and proclaim their due for it is they who create the wealth.

Occupy Wall Street returns to Zuccotti Park

New York's mayor Michael Bloomberg may deny it: he and his praetorian guard the New York City Police have suffered a stinging setback.

In November in the first hours of the morning the police used stormtrooper tactics to evict OWS from Liberty Plaza or Zuccotti Park. The cleansing of the park clearly violated the law and raised constitutional issues such as freedom of assembly and speech.

With much satisfaction the billionaire mayor and his plutocratic friends on Wall Street smile and winked, for had they not crushed OWS? Wrong.

OWS did not take the ousting sitting down, even though cities throughout the land employed police in riot gear to shut down peace protest.

Now, Bloomberg and the police will have to think twice: the courts have ruled in favour of OWS to 'occupy' Zuccotti Park; thus, once again the very presence of protesters in Wall Street, an open indictment of the rule of finance capitalism which brought the world to the brink of economic ruin; the presence of OWS on Wall Street's very threshold will cause ill ease in the stock exchange and the boardroom of the big bracket banks and venture capital firms, because the call for economic justice and jobs will redound when they thought that the police had done their work for them. Wrong again, old darlings!

Now that the spot light is on Romney as a finance capitalist, the laser beam of searing disclosure will singe hot firms like Bain and McKinsey and the like. And although Romney & co. talk of the economy, they hardly mention jobs, and the record shows venture capitalists and the Wall Street financiers thrive on throwing people out of work.

So welcome back OWS to Wall Street!