More Bad News
I'm afraid so.
The US has (quietly) decided to withdraw its troops from the North/South Korean border (the 38th Parallel, where they have been stationed since the Korean War) leaving the way open for a pre-emptive or counter strike against North Korea. Wolfowitz (or Nutty Wal as I call him, in a futile attempt to feel better about things, like my own little counter strike at the mounting madness) was out in Seoul this week saying that the removal of his troops would rule in the possibility of an immediate strike at Pyongyang in the event of outbreaking hostilities. One of those subtle tactical manoeuvres that goes virtually unremarked, but the implications ricochet forward into our future, a strategic action that mutates into a psychological step towards the Idea of War, that moment you realise (early or too late; usually both for me) that shit, they are actually going to do this (you thought that even they wouldn't be so stupid as to attack this crumbling, desperate nuclear-armed communist state, or that they would even bother transplanting their Iraq rhetoric onto Iran within a matter of two months...but then that would be to underestimate the strange dynamic that pulses between the White House and the Pentagon right now, the mysterious schisms and alliances and almost occult ferment of ideals and agendas at the heart of the administration, like an allegiance of evangelism and freemasonry, as well as to ignore the pressures of Money married to Technology married to Power that drive the US military-industrial complex and push war on every time so that war will never end, US war is permanent until dominance is dust and all power expires, ...).
My esteemed foreign correspondent Gavin Watkins - currently doing time out in a small Chinese town called Liuhe, jamming his brain full of JG Ballard and Mao, hitting the hard liqueur and the locals in the city bars whenever he can get into town (but it's hard with SARS raging), leaving a trail of broken bones and hearts beneath blurred sunsets, whose whole trip out there seems to be morphing into some kind of Burroughs-in-Tangier misadventure under the ever-watchful eye of the communist state - has come through to inform me that Kim Jong-Il's current film favourite is Friday the 13th.
Best thing about North Korea is that it's the only state in the world ruled by a dead man (eternal leader, Kim il-sung, died 1994).