(no subject)

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said Thursday that a successful North Korean nuclear weapon test would show weakness on the part of the international community.
"And that failure ... is something that the international community would have to register and ask itself how comfortable are we being that ineffective in this situation," Rumsfeld said.


Last time I looked:
a) the US was part of "the international community"
b) the US has faffed around for the last 4 or 5 years -- rather than trying to deal with this tiny loony state, they've just issued empty threats and provocative statements
c) "weakness" implies that someone "strength" is the thing that's needed, instead of, say, any form of plan (the "Green Lantern Theory of Geopolitics" strikes again)
d) there's 3/8ths of fuck-all the US can do about it in any case. With nearly 30,000 troops in the firing line in South Korea, and no spare military capacity (it's all tied up in Iraq and in threatening Iran), any threats are extremely empty, and the nasty little psychos in charge of North Korea know this
e) there were 3 states in the "axis of evil". The one that got invaded for WMDs (including nukes) didn't have them. The one being threatened right now doesn't have them, and most sensible analysis says it's 10 years away, if ever. The one that was left alone is the one who went nuclear under their watch. Priorities much?
f) Rumsfeld's passive voice shtick is getting seriously old. You're the fucking secretary of defence! This happened under your watch. Take some responsibility, you tool.

updates: In case you're not aware, North Korea has apparently tested one of their nuclear bombs. These are the bombs most likely made with plutonium which, under Clinton, was under seal and unused. Bush, being the anti-Clinton, chose a completely different path - one of bluster and not following through. Yay! Josh Marshall lays out some of the rather damaging facts here. A cut from it:

Talking tough is great if you can make it stick and back it up; it is always and necessarily cleaner and less compromising than sitting down and dealing with bad actors. Talking tough and then folding your cards doesn't just show weakness it invites contempt. And that is what we have here.
The Bush-Cheney policy on North Korea was always what Fareed Zakaria once aptly called "a policy of cheap rhetoric and cheap shots." It failed. And after it failed President Bush couldn't come to grips with that failure and change course. He bounced irresolutely between the Powell and Cheney lines and basically ignored the whole problem hoping either that the problem would go away, that China would solve it for us and most of all that no one would notice.
Do you notice now?

crying censorship

Miss S. pointed me at this article about a blogger being "censored" by youtube. There's something I don't understand here (and I emailed the piece's author to ask this).

clip:

The video also contains some graphic images — file clips of Mr. Fortuyn’s and Mr. van Gogh’s newly dead bodies laid out on the streets, for instance.

Does that mean it should be banned?

Since when is youtube forced to carry anyone's videos? Last time I looked, they were a private company, offering a free service. Those servers and bandwidth cost real money (last I saw estimated youtube was spending over US$1M/month on bandwidth alone). It's not like there's not plenty of other places on the internet, both free and paid, to host videos.

Wah wah this free provider provides crappy service! In that case, ask for a refund of the money you paid them.

Oh... wait. You didn't pay them anything. Then STFU.

Yes, I'm a progressive in a lot of areas, but in others I'm quite libertarian. And this is one of them.

There's an argument to be made that refusing to carry certain videos is a bad business decision, and it might lead to adverse effects when the customers get annoyed and choose an alternative. That's a different issue. It's also not censorship in any meaningful sense of the word.

And arguing that youtube's popularity somehow makes it different is stupid. Particularly in this case, where we're talking about one of the 2 most popular right-wing bloggers in the world, with a great big loud megaphone already.

There's a lot of censorship and repression in the world today. For instance, an extremely prominent journalistic critic of Putin's Russia was executed in a most brazen way over the weekend. Now that is censorship. This isn't. This is not censorship, it's not "banning" it as the author's piece put it.

Here endeth the rant.