Maybe it is the US Army vs. the US Navy, but North Korea got a confusing message/non-message from the US government regarding their joint military exercises with South Korea.
On Thursday, Gen. Walter L. Sharp, the top U.S. military commander in South Korea, was quoted by Associated Press: “These defensive, combined training exercises are designed to send a clear message to North Korea that its aggressive behavior must stop.” (emphasis added)
Less than 48 hours later, the commander of the military exercises, Adm. Richard W. Hunt, told the same Associated Press that the focus of the exercises was training to combat terrorism, not sending a message to North Korea. (empasis added)
Can you say “doublespeak”?
It is a version of carrot and stick , also doublespeak, and perhaps a potential doublebind completed by the unstated cryptotype of defining North Korea as a "terrorist state".
The Obama adminstration pursued a similar strategy with Cuba, first offering small, seemingly positive changes in American policy toward Cuba and the next day putting Cuba on the "Terrorist Nation" list.
An even more blatant example is the American rigmarole in regard to Iran.
Do these fantasts believe anyone is actually listening?
Duh. Sharp was talking about "Invincible Spirit", and Hunt was talking about RIMPAC. Nice try, tho.
Duh, what's the Korean for "Duh"?
Not least of the US miltiitary's little boy fantasies is that the rest of the world, especially Asia, gives a good goddamn about the US military's absurd operational names or the supposed distinction between "Operation Down And Out" and RIMJOB.
To the North Koreans it all comes to the same thing.
Ever feel like a sane person wrongly put into an insane aslyum? That is what thinking Americans are – living in a country that is delusional and paranoid. About 20% of Americans are rational people but they are living their lives in the close company of feces-eating lunatics. The doctors and nurses who should be controlling things are zombied out on Thorazine; the lunatics are in charge. All day long they scream out “God Bless America” at the top of their lungs and walk around in a pack trying to find the “bad guys”.
Afghanistan – we have no reason to be there but we can’t leave because they are (even the ones in rags) a threat.We destroyed Iraq beyond recovery and we are damn proud of the job we did there. Venezuela – they are bastards that we need to get because their President called ours names. Iran – we need to f–k up because our equally crazy buddies in Israel are living out some 2,500 year old revenge fantasy. We can’t discuss this as Israel is rolling on the floor wailing hysterically demanding Iranian blood. Ditto Syria and Lebanon. Somalia is asking for a punch. Pakistan is treasonous because they resent our killing of their citizens in what we consider a free fire zone. North Korea and Cuba are bad guys – always have been, always will be. The French are jerks. Someday we need to get those Ruskies. Damn Limeys still owe us for Lend-lease.
Hang around this place long enough and you will go nuts too.
Herbert Marcuse made the same point more generally in various works–to wit, that the psychologists and psychiatrists were "treating" patients to allow them to adapt happily to contemporary conventional insanity. Deleuze and Guattari go further in the works that begin with their Anti-Oedipus, that is, that Capitalism itself generates schizophrenic.
Marcuse also nailed aggression in advanced industrial societies.
Their argument is close and clear though it may strike most Americans as bizarre, exactly because, as you say, most Americans, feigning some strange rationality, are bizarre, and collectively schizophrenic, probably even beyond what Capitalism requires.
Note also that Herbert Marcuse in discussing the substantialities of acronyms like NATO was the first to suggest how and why the " North Atlantic" dropped out of NATO, as in the insanity of the pillage of Yugoslavia, which was covered with low-level radiation, and now in Afghanistan.
The "North Atlantic" has certainly been "growing", hasn't it?
Herbert Marcuse, Aggressiveness in Advanced Industrial Society (1967), available online here:
http://www.wbenjamin.org/marcuse.html
Note that Marcuse is mainly concerned with Vietnam, during a period in which the US appeared comparatively "affluent".
The appearance was more surface than even Marcuse would have guessed.
In fact the US is now a fully developed predatory Capitalist State in the Finance Capitalist stage defined nicely–as Paul Craig Roberts also notices–by Lenin.
It is also on the way to the poor house for ninety-nine percent of Americans so that the cachet of seeming "affluence" covering wholesale bats in the belfry makes the real deal all the more obvious.
hey man , it was a "clear message " to send a "clear message ":…………….lolololol….to a lunatic who could care less .
Reminds me of the parking lot confrontation between The Dude , Walter and Donny with the German Rock Band , in The Big Lebowski
BTW , if anyone hadn't noticed , since North Korea invaded South Korea in 1950 or so , they are indeed the epitomy of "The Bad Guy " . If there was a Worst of the Worst Award …N.Korea would win it hands down . Makes Venezuela , Cuba and the rest look like boyscouts . N.Korea and its leader is in a class of it's own .
True, but so what? Does Mexico have its troops there? Does Canada? N.K. is no threat or danger to America so bring the troops home.
You're delusional R/T: "since North Korea invaded South Korea in 1950 or so" … that's the beggining of the delusion: How can a country invade itself? NK never invaded SK, the Koreans attempted to re-unite their country which had been divided by the Russians and the USA, same as the north vietnamese never invaded south vietnam: they merely tried to reunite a country that had been divided by western powers. It kills me to see this lie perpetuated 60 years after the truth: That NK was an invading power in it's attempt to capture SK…
Note the schizophrenia above. The US protects the acknowledged terrorist Posada, who, among other things, blew up a Cuban civilian airliner killing scores, and refuses to extradite him to Venezuela for long years, because "he might be tortured".
The same US puts Cuba on the Terrorist Nation list.
Yet Cuba and Venezuela, with North Korea, are "bad guys", not the US?
LOL….this guy's a real boy genius here!!!
Arch Mangle , you "mangle history " of course , the people of South Korea had nothing to say about the "attempt at reunification " ?
And of course history speaks for itself , as there is "contrast " between the Two countries ….or hadn't you noticed that ?
As for Posada , I agree , he should be in jail , and I made no mention ,other than an analogy to Cuba and Venezuela [left out Syria ] How do you compare those nations , as to WHO Nis a bad guy ?
As good guys and bad guys go , North Korea qualifies for neither , for North Korea is an abberation , a peversion of any describable community tribe or nation . North Korea's psychosis originates from Maoist doctrine of the Red Chinese who btw were not divided by the "evil western powers ", but came to their perversion , murdering countless millions of their own , all by themselves . North Korea being their bastard step child .
The US finance Captialists owe the Communist Chinese trillions.
Other than that you are historically an ignoramus.
Carry on, private.
North Korea is no threat to America. Lets just go.
But hey , if you guys wanna be fans of North Korea , simply because you try to denigrate your own country , go right ahead , it's your right .
Good luck with that .
But if you lived in Cuba or Venezuela , you may bhe facing jail time , and in N.Korea ….probably "something worse " .
And Posada?
Actually, what's facing the oligarchic classes in Venezuela is what their untrammeled greed and exploitation of their own people produced over long generations.
Have a nice day.
Ah, not letting out hosannahs and Amens when R/T gives his sermon and says, "X is a DEMON" is logically equivalent to asserting, "I am a FAN of X"–according to R/T at least.
Have you considered the rabbinate or ministry as a vocation?
"You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye."
Matthew
Who cares R/T? I DON'T LIVE IN NORTH KOREA and i don't care about Korea period. Lets just come home and leave Korea alone.
The Boxer Rebellion:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boxer_Rebellion
if there is perceived confusion now, the results remain fairly clear if history nevertheless variously prevails. –cdmcl3
Hey Costa , why don't you move to Venezuela with it's dictator for life Chavez . This is about N. Korea , the other countries were brought by another poster as analagous "bad guys " .Although I'm sure you'd like to find a "western culprit " as an excuse for the abberation of North Korea, you'll need some more of your revisionism and self -righteousness .
And what's this ? Are you attempting to blame Maoists' slaughter of millions of Chinese on the "Boxer Rebellion " ? Hey Costa , why not just blame Columbus for discovering America .
Korea has a very curious and idiosyncratic culture and history. That remains true of both North and South. Many westerners' fancy they understand the Chinese or the Japanese or the Vietnamese without acquaintance with their language culture, and history in great depth. In regard to the "Hermit Kingdom" even other Asians allow there is much that does not meet their eye.
Granting there is such a thing as a triangle, and the angles of a triangle are 180 degrees, it is otiose to get emotional about it.
It remains obvious you are historically an ignoramus and a jingo to boot.
Both the Nationalists and the Chinese Communists trace their ancestry to the Republic and Sun Yat-sen, and Sun is honored by both. They also both see the Boxer rebellion, and British and western Imperialism, including American, as a decisive event in all that followed.
And, it almost goes without saying, they are right.
The old China lobby aside, which played to American Capitalist anti-Communist ideology, most Americans would be shocked about how much the Nationalists and Chinese Communists admit they have in common vis-a-vis "the West" and Americans in particular.
One suspects, with some exceptions (Moon) the same can be said about the Koreans.
If the "South Koreans" seem to have been the Americans' puppets and running dogs for a long while,. they are very strong and independent running dogs, who will bite the real invaders (the US and UN) on the ass when the time is ripe.
N.K. is a bad place. Agreed. N.K. is not a free country. Agreed. N.K. is no threat or danger to America and we should vacate the Korean peninsula. Agreed?
…and there seems to be a religious tone to your rants Costa , you a preacher or something ?
North Korea can not be defended ideologically , excuses can not be made for the way it is , save for the psycopaths running that country …yes it is a "Bad Guy " ….if you are unable to recognize that , the reason must be congenital .
I recognize N.K. is a "bad guy". If that is your point you have made it. But just being a "bad guy" is no justification for deploying American troops in an unimportant place for sixty years.
Ah, R/T is absolutely sure of his "demon."
One of these days it might be useful ofr a serious researcher to total up how many tens of millions the British and Americans and other European Capitalists have killed, directly and indirectly, around the world.
The Right Wing is now retailing utterly false figures about Stalin and Mao.
True figures about Capitalism and Imperialism are, even roughly known, mind-boggling and completely ignored by the Right Wing and Libertarian ideologues.
The Irish famine was deliberately engineered by the British Capitalists, for example–there are contemporary records to the effect. How many millions died?
In fact starvation through economic warfare is a peculiarly British, and now American, tactic, and quintessentially Capitalist.
But this is just one of a myriad of aspects.
"The Irish famine was deliberately engineered by the British capitalists"….Sources?
andy,
http://www.greenleft.org.au/node/10513
The biography of Colonel Tsuji Masanobu, one of the prime engineers of the capture of Singapore, is also suggestive. He is reported to have ended his career, curiously enough, fighting with the Communists against the Americans in Vietnam.
The quotation often attributed to Stalin, probably falsely, ""The death of one man is a tragedy; The death of a million is a statistic", in fact sums up the Capitalist position, in which those killed and maimed economically by the Capitalists themselves, are indifferent statistics, in which they had no personal role.
Such is one of the little discussed psychological uses of the Capitalists' mythical Invisible Hand, just as mass murder by technology, as discussed by Marcuse, is not considered murder at all by the Capitalists' robotic mercenaries in the military.
you are one ingnorant power .why are you so angery. what is wrong with you
Angry indeed ! Costa do you kick yourself to sleep at night ? Only to wake up and find yourself STILL in the midst of the capitalistic imperialistic Empire !
Funny , but even at the height of the Cold War , grain shipments to the Soviet Union exceeded exports to any other country , and yes even the bad guys ,N.Korea imparticular have and still are recipients of grain shipments from the US .
Must be that "mythical invisible hand " huh Costa ?
Chill costa , chill !
It will all come out in the wash.
You are too much of an ignoramus to be worth discussion.
Have a nice day.
LOL….and there-in lies the impotenbcy of your argument , that ole' treusty stand-by- ad hominem attracks . good luck costa , you'll need it , and uh …don't hurt yourself chump
Come again–who's arguing? Don't play the debate or argument game.. You'll just have to play with yourself.
Hey costa , I thought you said goodbye ? Costa ….."argument " = discussion , comment position ,debate ,opinion…..I know with you, that may mean posting links and calling people names, ad hominem attacks etc . Do you think everyone here is supposed to agree with the flavor of the week ….lol…or your views ?
You got unresolved psychological issues costa , go seek counseling .
warfare is a peculiarly British, and now American, tactic, and quintessentially Capitalist.
But this is just one of a myriad of aspects. hackett
Maybe it is the US Army vs. the US Navy, but North Korea got a confusing message/non-message from the US government regarding their joint military exercises with South Korea.sports limo
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