[dropcap]S[/dropcap]entient Reaper drone Nikki Haley is now saying that North Korea is “begging for war” in a page borrowed from the classic “she was asking for it” courtroom defense of accused rapists. Pundits and politicians across all conceivable boundaries have as always found a way to set aside their differences to advocate for the interests of the US war machine in response to an alleged hydrogen bomb test by the DPRK, and mainstream America is lapping it up.
It’s just mind-boggling how they keep selling the same plotline over and over and over again. A mentally deranged dictator is threatening American safety and abusing his own citizens, and we need to take him out right now before he does any more harm! People buy into it again and again, like a bunch of kids watching Scooby Doo thinking “This monster’s real for sure this time!” Then it turns out the ghost was just the creepy old rich guy from scene three and the next episode they’re acting like it never happened.
Mattis to the fat psycho: Any threat to US or allies by North Korea "will be met with a massive military response" pic.twitter.com/WFa7jF0haY
North Korea conducted a nuclear test just now! The bomb was 50 times more powerful than the one USA dropped on Japan. Kim Jong-un is nuts!???? pic.twitter.com/cjKRSuLzgh
[dropcap]W[/dropcap]ords like “psycho”, “crazy” and “nuts” fly around whenever Kim Jong Un is mentioned in public discourse. Isn’t it a trip how mental illness happens to be so prevalent among leaders who refuse to fall in line with American interests? Isn’t it funny how Kim Jong Un inherited the exact type of “might press the button any minute now” psychosis that his father had, that Assad likes to gas children and drop barrel bombs on civilians for no reason even when it unites the western world against him, that Saddam was hell bent on giving weapons of mass destruction to terrorists so they could kill American noncombatants for no other reason than because he’s bat shit crazy? All these completely irrational behaviors are described as potential or probable outcomes by so-called experts in Washington and the Pentagon, so of course rank-and-file Americans are going to pick up ideas about those leaders being mentally ill since nothing else could explain such irrational and suicidal behavior.
In reality, Kim Jong Un has explicitly said that the DPRK won’t use nuclear weapons unless North Korean sovereignty is encroached upon; the United States has never offered the world any such assurance about its own nukes. The North Korean government is simply aware of the proxy role it plays in America’s struggle to keep China from challenging its world hegemony, and it has learned that nuclear weapons provide an effective deterrent to its being turned into another Libya in another geopolitical power grab. In fact, the DPRK has been open about the fact that relinquishing its nuclear arsenal would be on the negotiating table if America would only stop its menacing behavior toward them.
In short, there is no convincing publicly-available evidence that North Korea would be any threat to anyone if it were simply left to its own devices and its sovereignty respected.
The elite media's coverage of North Korea is almost as bad as its coverage of Iraq in 2003 and just as dangerous https://t.co/nHcBqqNB5D
These are not the bad guys. The bad guys are the ones refusing to respect the sovereignty of North Korea or any other nation under the sun. The bad guys are the ones invading sovereign nations at will and slaughtering civilians with explosives dropped from flying killing machines. The fact that something so simple and so obvious is not universally known in America speaks to the phenomenal efficacy of its corporate media propaganda machine. Because of that propaganda machine, Americans sincerely think that the bad guys are the tiny little nations that America bullies in proxy conflicts to maintain global hegemony. They’re watching Star Wars and cheering for the stormtroopers.
Because of the neoconservative American supremacist doctrine that the US power establishment has espoused, America has given itself the authority to intervene in any government’s affairs at any time and for any reason. This doctrine of American supremacy is founded on the belief that the United States was selected by destiny to lead the world when it won the Cold War, a divine right of sorts to dominion over the entire planet. This is the real evil.
The North Koreans aren’t the bad guys, and the South Koreans want to get along with them. They’re sick of being in a constant state of war, they want dialogue and diplomacy with North Korea by a nearly four to one margin, and they staged large protests against America’s missile defense system which at one point mobilized 8,000 riot police to remove protesters from a South Korean THAAD site. These are the people who are actually putting their lives on the line with Seoul’s close proximity to the DMZ, and they want peace and de-escalation. They should be allowed to have that, but their US-backed government is talking about bringing American tactical nukes back to the Korean Peninsula.
People sometimes ask me why I “hate America” so much, but I don’t hate America at all. I think it’s a great nation full of wonderful people and far more potential than it has been allowed to live up to. My sole objection is to the unelected power establishment which has loosely centralized itself in that country to use its military and economic might to bully the world into submitting to oligarchic interests. A few people were able to play their cards cleverly and take control of the most powerful government and military force in world history by grabbing up political power while duping Americans into thinking they live in a free and democratic nation, and they’re conducting themselves in a way that’s geared toward securing their power instead of working toward the greater good.
I do not blame the American people for believing the lies they’ve been fed. Pernicious belief systems have pervaded every society on earth since the dawn of civilization, and as any atheist from a devoutly religious family will attest, it can be very hard to escape from a belief system when you’ve been indoctrinated into it from the cradle. Americans are saturated in lies about their country from birth, throughout their schooling and by every screen they interact with throughout their day; it’s a testament to their good will that the elites are forced to put on this Scooby Doo haunted house song and dance every time.
Punching through these lies and killing the establishment propaganda machine is key to overthrowing the system which pours unfathomable amounts of money and resources into military interventionism while depriving Americans of the basic social safety nets accorded to everyone else in every other major country on earth. When this is done and the lie factory is crippled, the real bad guys will be visible to all.
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About the Author
Caitlin Johnstone is a brave journalist, political junkie, relentless feminist, champion of the 99 percent. And a powerful counter-propaganda tactician.
These are not the bad guys. The bad guys are the ones refusing to respect the sovereignty of North Korea or any other nation under the sun. The bad guys are the ones invading sovereign nations at will and slaughtering civilians with explosives dropped from flying killing machines. The fact that something so simple and so obvious is not universally known in America speaks to the phenomenal efficacy of its corporate media propaganda machine. Because of that propaganda machine, Americans sincerely think that the bad guys are the tiny little nations that America bullies in proxy conflicts to maintain global hegemony. They’re watching Star Wars and cheering for the stormtroopers.This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
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Parting shot—a word from the editors The Best Definition of Donald Trump We Have Found
In his zeal to prove to his antagonists in the War Party that he is as bloodthirsty as their champion, Hillary Clinton, and more manly than Barack Obama, Trump seems to have gone “play-crazy” -- acting like an unpredictable maniac in order to terrorize the Russians into forcing some kind of dramatic concessions from their Syrian allies, or risk Armageddon.However, the “play-crazy” gambit can only work when the leader is, in real life, a disciplined and intelligent actor, who knows precisely what actual boundaries must not be crossed. That ain’t Donald Trump -- a pitifully shallow and ill-disciplined man, emotionally handicapped by obscene privilege and cognitively crippled by white American chauvinism. By pushing Trump into a corner and demanding that he display his most bellicose self, or be ceaselessly mocked as a “puppet” and minion of Russia, a lesser power, the War Party and its media and clandestine services have created a perfect storm of mayhem that may consume us all.—Glen Ford, Editor in Chief, Black Agenda Report