Hope Who?

Wow, two Curmudgeon posts in a row, suffused with joy. Can't have that. Where's the yang? Actually, focusing on small Pop Rocks of joy might be appropriate when the world seems so intent on showing that small instances of intelligent behavior on behalf of either government or people get overwhelmed by the continuous tide of bureaucracy and stupidity. The script gets so familiar, my sense of outrage is buried in ennui.

No, my problem with Washington bears little resemblance to the tea-party gang obsessed with deficits, though the deficit reduction plan does nothing to win Obama friends. I'm also through with worrying about how an Afghan surge will work, or when Gitmo might close. Rather, it's the constant fallback to the national-security position that often makes the Obama administration hard to distinguish from the previous one:

* A legal, nonviolent protest against a missile-defense test at Vandenberg Air Force Base Jan. 31 was met by greater repression than Bush initiated in the post-9/11 period. Military Police at Vandenberg went outside the gates to dismantle a demo on public property. Meanwhile, the missile test failed, while Obama planned on upgraded Patriot missile batteries throughout the Persian Gulf region. Bruce Gagnon blogs about the crackdown on MacGregor Eddy and compatriots here. (Update: Here's an article on the crackdown, with a photo showing a banner that was displayed for a total of five minutes before being pulled down.)

* Obama's nuclear-weapons budget, Pentagon budget ($708 billion), and Quadrennial Defense Review are more business-as-usual bids for more guns and less butter. At least Pell Grants are increased, but that can't make up for all the offensive parts of the present budget.

* The right wing has gone from crazy to downright dangerous, as revealed in the arrests at Sen. Mary Landrieu's office. But was it a CIA inside job? You'll never know. Just like you'll never know the death count from CIA-directed drone attacks inside Pakistan.

I almost got lifted from my sense of repressive-rerun boredom with Ruth Mowry's wonderful post on Black History Month. But then I remembered that even Woodrow Wilson supported D.W. Griffith and supported the Klan. I remembered that we still have racists who try to bury their hatred of a Black president under stories of Kenyan birth certificates. And I remember that our president who was to serve as an agent of change, isn't able to change much at all. I guess I had better chuckle as much as I can at the small stuff, because I am simply too tired and bored to engage in passionate outrage over a world that still seems bent on unraveling its better works.

Korea, Day 2 - The Conference

Friday, April 17 was exhausting - trying to stuff dozens of presentations on arms technology, regional military base issues, and arms-control policies into a single eight-hour day. Kudos to our Korean hosts for keeping people on a strict schedule. Foundation money allowed for a full perfect-bound proceedings book in English, Korean, and Japanese, as well as simultaneous translation in all three languages. For a full list of speakers and topics, take a look at the Global Network web site. I'm not going to reference all my videos, check my library on YouTube if you're obsessive.

We began with welcomes from Dave Webb of Global Network and Marte Hellema from GPPAC (Global Partnership for the Prevention of Armed Conflict). Then Bruce Gagnon of GN gave the general conference keynote:



Obviously, I didn't film my own talk, nor could I snare worthwhile videos of fellow panelists Dave Webb or Cheong Wooksik, though I snuck a few moments of Mary Beth Sullivan (who spent most of the conference under the weather, unfortunately). Lindis Percy grabbed a photo of our opening panel, inserted here.



Oh, and speaking of Lindis Percy, not only was she at her usual best decribing US bases in the UK, YouTube below, but the British government had the audacity to arrest her yet again as soon as she returned from Korea. Some people never learn. Morning region-specific talks included ones from J. Narayana Rao, Agneta Norberg, Tim Rinne, Hannah Middleton, Anna Polo (who had some outstanding videos of the Obama Prague trip, available at the Global Network site), Koji Sugihara, Katy Rose (YouTube below), and Kang Sung-Won (camera full).





I also wanted to post Katy Rose from AFSC, giving her observations on missile tech problems in Hawaii:



Afternoon speeches were dedicated to the problems of the Pacific Rim. Presentations included ones from Atsushi Fujioka, Kazuhiko Tamaki, and the wonderful Corazon Valdez-Fabros of the No-Bases Coalition in the Philippines. The main conference concluded with a fascinating speech on the sociology of the security state, from Francis Daehoon Lee of People's Solidarity for Participatory Democracy in South Korea:



We packed into a small bar Friday evening to give out awards for peace work, and to hear talks by Suh Sung, a former political prisoner in the Park Chung-Hee regime; and Dennis Redmond and Park Sung Yong, who gave details of next year's World March for Peace. Later, awards were given to J. Narayana Rao, Astsushi Fujiyoka, and the VERY deserving Sung-Hee Choi, who put this whole conference together.

And then it was on to the singing. The Korean organizers riffed on a popular political tune; Tim Rinne gave animated renditions of "Nebraskaland" and "Stickin' to the Union"; Jiho Park played guitar and sang; and Agneta Norberg twisted Frank Sinatra's "Makin' Whoopee" into "Makin' Missiles" (below). No, I didn't film her raunchy soprano Swedish pregnancy numbers.)

The Best Kim Chee in Pyeongtaek

Too tired to blog much now. Here is the front page of Hankyore newspaper in Seoul, with conference speakers at DMZ. Below is a video of some of us sampling the finest kim chee to be found in Pyeongtaek. Will have videos and observations of the conference and South Korea later on.