Korea: A Settlement? Very Possible, Highly Unlikely, But—
Dean Rusk, Secretary of State (1961-1969).
[dropcap]N[/dropcap]orth Korea will never give up its nuclear weapons and its right to maintain them, indefinitely. After all, if the three states that have not signed the Nucelar Non-Proliferation Treaty , India, Pakistan, and Israel, can have them, why not North Korea? The excuses for India and Pakistan are primarily each other, for Israel, its size and its geographical isolation. For North Korea, the reason is a rather different one. Rather, it is several reasons. Let me count (some of) them: North Korea (1950-53), Iran (1953), Guatemala (1954), Vietnam (1954), Hungary (attempted, 1956), Brazil (1964), the Dominican Republic (1965), Chile (1973), Afghanistan, (1978-86), Nicaragua (partial, 1980s), the Soviet Union (which, despite having nuclear weapons, succumbed to the 75 Years War Against the Soviet Union, 1917-1992), Iraq (2003), Cuba (since 1961, unsuccessful, but still trying), (Iran, presently, still trying), Libya (2012), Venezuela (2017: http://www.globalresearch.ca/large-scale-manoeuvres-encircling-venezuela/5607619 ). And so on and so forth.
..
This is a partial list of countries in which the U.S. has attempted, often but not always with success, what is politely called "regime change." The interventions have ranged from the frank overthrow of a freely elected government (Iran, 1953), to direct military invasion of a supposedly "threatening" military dictatorship which, however, presented no threat to the United States other than what was put out in the government propaganda of the time (Iraq, 2003).
It is very important to note that there has never been a peace treaty, either between North and South Korea nor between the North and the United States following the conclusion of the armistice that ended the fighting in 1953. The North has been asking for such a treaty for many years, as have many elements in South Korea. Under neither Democratic nor Republican Presidents has the U.S. ever shown any inclination to negotiate one. And so, as far as the North Koreans are concerned, the number one objective for the U.S. has been the overthrow of their government, with the likely "unification" (and man, would that be a bloody affair) under South Korean rule. That of course would put a close diplomatic, commercial and military ally of the U.S. on both the Chinese and Russian borders.
Kim inspecting missile mockups with his staff.
As I said at the beginning of this column, the North Koreans are never going to give up their nuclear weapons. Those weapons are the only guarantee they have against U.S.-sponsored "regime change" and the complete loss of their hard-earned sovereignty. (For obvious reasons, as is well known, neither the Chinese not the Russians want that to happen either.) Nevertheless, the outlines of a deal are on the table. 1. A peace treaty is negotiated. (In early 2016, North Korea did say that in return for a peace treaty, it would end nuclear testing. And that had to have been an opening negotiating position.) 2. Relations between North Korea and South Korea and the United States are normalized. 3. All sanctions are lifted. 4. North Korea re-joins the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, agrees to a freeze on its ballistic missile development program, and subjects itself to regular International Atomic Energy Agency inspections (like Iran), including [perhaps] its military facilities (unlike Iran).
Important references:
1. Bruce Cumings, "A Murderous History of Korea," London Review of Books, May 18, 2017,https://www.lrb.co.uk/v39/n10/bruce-cumings/a-murderous-history-of-korea?utm .
2. Tim Shorrock, "Diplomacy With North Korea Has Worked Before, and Can Work Again,"The Nation, Sept. 5, 2017, https://www.thenation.com/article/diplomacy-with-north-korea-has-worked-before-and-can-work-again/
3. Darrell Prince, "North Korea situation Sept 3 2017: You catch more flies with honey, than vinegar,"http://thecallforunity.org/north-korea-situtation-sept-3-2017/.
Senior Editor, Politics, Steven Jonas, MD, MPH is a Professor Emeritus of Preventive Medicine at StonyBrookMedicine (NY) and author/co-author/editor/co-editor of over 35 books. In addition to his position on The Greanville Post, he is: a Contributor for American Politics to The Planetary Movement; a “Trusted Author” for Op-Ed News.com; a contributor to the “Writing for Godot” section of Reader Supported News; and a contributor to From The G-Man. Furthermore, he is an occasional contributor to BuzzFlash Commentary Headlines and The Harder Stuff. Dr. Jonas’ latest book is Ending the ‘Drug War’; Solving the Drug Problem: The Public Health Approach, Brewster, NY: Punto Press Publishing, (Brewster, NY, 2016, available on Kindle from Amazon, and also in hardcover from Amazon.
His most recent book on US politics is The 15% Solution: How the Republican Religious Right Took Control of the U.S., 1981-2022: A Futuristic Novel (Trepper & Katz Impact Books, Punto Press Publishing, 2013, Brewster, NY), and available on Amazon.
STEVEN JONAS—There are give-ups on both sides here [despite the fact that Korea holds the high ground morally speaking and did not create this insufferable situation, product of US attempts at regional and global domination), but such a resolution would be very beneficial to the North as well as to Russia and China.
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THE BULLET—“Whoever expects a ‘pure’ social revolution will never live to see it. Such a person pays lip-service to revolution without understanding what revolution is,” wrote Lenin in 1916 about the Easter Rising. Today, we are not facing a revolution, but his words nevertheless apply to the Catalan reality. Faced with the imperfections of the Catalan independence movement, the Left has two options: opt for a passive policy that will involuntarily exacerbate the movement’s deficiencies, or follow an active policy that intervenes in reality and pushes the process in a more progressive direction.
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WANTED: MEDIA FELONS
All abject servants of the plutocracy
ABC Byron Pitts
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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
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As the empire and its vassal states try to suffocate North Korea, Russia Provides New Internet Connection to the Besieged Nation
Authored by Martyn Williams via 38North.org,
A major Russian telecommunications company appears to have begun providing an Internet connection to North Korea. The new link supplements one from China and will provide back-up to Pyongyang at a time the US government is reportedly attacking its Internet infrastructure and pressuring China to end all business with North Korea.
The connection, from TransTeleCom, began appearing in Internet routing databases at 09:08 UTC on Sunday, or around 17:38 Pyongyang time on Sunday evening. Internet routing databases map the thousands of connections between telecom providers and enable computers to figure out the best route to a destination.
Until now, Internet users in North Korea and those outside accessing North Korean websites were all funneled along the same route connecting North Korean ISP Star JV and the global Internet: A China Unicom link that has been in operation since 2010.
Global Internet connectivity to Star JV. The orange denotes the China Unicom connection and blue the TransTeleCom. The graphic shows the Russian connection coming online around 0900 UTC, a short period of instability then a stable connection with two networks. (Dyn Research)
“The addition of Russian transit would create new internet path out of the country, increasing its resilience and international bandwidth capacity,” said Doug Madory, who analyzes global Internet connectivity at Dyn Research.
The new link comes at an interesting time.
On Saturday, The Washington Post reported that US Cyber Command has been carrying out denial of service attacks against North Korean hackers affiliated with the Reconnaissance General Bureau. The attacks attempt to overwhelm their computers and the Internet connection with traffic making them slow or impossible to use.
The US cyber attack was due to end on Saturday, reported the Post. That means the new Russian connection went online just after the US Cyber Command attack ended.
TransTeleCom, or TTK, is one of Russia’s biggest telecommunications companies and a subsidiary of the Russian railway operator. Fiber optic lines are laid alongside the railway and, according to a map on its website, on a route from Vladivostok right up to the North Korean border.
A map of the TTK network shows a link running right up to the North Korean border.
That’s presumably at the Friendship Bridge, a railway crossing over the Tumen River that connects Khasan in Russia with Tumangang in North Korea. It’s the only connection between the two countries.
The Friendship Bridge connecting Russia (right) and North Korea (left). Photo: GoogleEarth.
This isn’t the first time North Korea has had alternate routes for Internet connectivity.
From 2012 for about a year, a second link to Star JV existed via Intelsat, an international satellite telecommunications operator, but in recent years the Chinese link has been the sole connection to Star JV.
Relying on one Internet provider has always left North Korea in a precarious situation.
More than once the link has been the target of denial of service attacks. Most were claimed by the “Anonymous” hacking collective, but on at least one previous occasion, many wondered if US intelligence services had carried out the action.
North Korea has few Internet users, but access to the network is available at major universities, to foreigners via smartphone, at government departments and major companies. Elite families are also suspected of having access. The cyber units of North Korea’s military also enjoy access.
The link is also vital for overseas researchers and academics who rely on access to North Korean state media websites for information.
ZEROHEDGE— More than once the link has been the target of denial of service attacks. Most were claimed by the “Anonymous” hacking collective, but on at least one previous occasion, many wondered if US intelligence services had carried out the action. North Korea has few Internet users, but access to the network is available at major universities, to foreigners via smartphone, at government departments and major companies. Elite families are also suspected of having access. The cyber units of North Korea’s military also enjoy access.
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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
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US coroner finds no evidence that North Korea tortured or poisoned US prisoner
The US coroner has not been able to conclude why Otto Warmbier fell ill in the DPRK. His early release coincided by a visit to Pyongyang from Dennis Rodman.
When North Korea arrested and later sentenced the US national Otto Warmbier over his attempted theft of real property belong to the North Korean government, there was surprisingly little media attention.
It is widely thought that on his recent visit to Pyongyang, former professional basketball star and self-described friend of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, Dennis Rodman helped to secure an early release of Warmbier, earlier this year.
It was at this time that it became clear that Warmbier’s health had deteriorated and that the US citizen was comatose. He died in a US hospital shortly after being flown out of North Korea.
North Korea has insisted that Warmbier was neither beaten, tortured nor malnourished and that DPRK media teams assisted Warmbier as his health deteriorated.
A recent coroner’s report conducted by Dr. Lakshmi Sammarco in the United States, concluded that there were no signs that Warmbier was beaten, tortured, suffered head trauma or was poisoned. These were various theories which circulated in US mainstream media when it became known that Wambier had lost consciousness while in prison.
According to Dr. Sammarco,
“The fact is that he had anoxic encephalopathy, or brain damage caused by the lack of oxygen to the brain; we don’t know what the root cause of that (lack of oxygen) is”.
Dr. Sammarco also sated,
“here is no evidence of trauma to the lower teeth or mandible on imaging or by physical examination. Now, that being said, I will tell you that the forensic dentist did let me know that the front incisors often will have a rounded root and they will sometimes twist as they’re developing, but I’m not an expert on that. But I can tell you that we didn’t see any evidence of trauma to the teeth”.
A further report on medical findings from US doctors, originally published in the Washington Post, shortly after Warmbier’s death,states:
“Rather, Daniel Kanter, medical director of the neuroscience intensive care unit at University of Cincinnati Medical Center said, the pattern of brain injury they see on magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) results appeared consistent with a cardiopulmonary arrest, with damage to brain tissue caused by lack of blood flow to the brain.
The doctors said they are not aware of anything from his previous medical history, prior to his time in North Korea, that might cause cardiopulmonary arrest. One of the more common causes of cardiopulmonary arrest is respiratory arrest, said Jordan Bonomo, neurointensivist and emergency medicine physician at UC Health. That cessation of breathing could be triggered by several things, including intoxication or a traumatic injury”.
The coroner’s report is therefore consistent with the original medical examination of Warmbier. This is also consistent with North Korean medical reports. Each source agrees that Warmbier suffered from a lack of oxygen to the brain which was caused by apparent cardiac failure, but it is still not clear why Warmbier’s heart suffered an apparent breakdown.
The publication of the coroner’s report has led North Korea to blast Donald Trump for politicising Warmbier’s death as being due to North Korean negligence.
RT reports,
“North Korea has accused “old lunatic” Donald Trump of exploiting the death of US student Otto Warmbier. Warmbier was released in June after 17 months in North Korean custody and died in a US hospital a few days later.
Warmbier suffered no torture during his detention, said North Korea’s foreign ministry spokesman as cited by KCNA news agency. The spokesman insisted that Pyongyang had provided medical care to the US student despite his “hostile acts“.
Warmbier’s death led to the Trump administration forbidding US tourists from visiting North Korea, in spite of the fact that most tour groups to North Korea encounter no dangerous incidents in the DPRK.
ADAM GARRIE—The coroner’s report is therefore consistent with the original medical examination of Warmbier. This is also consistent with North Korean medical reports. Each source agrees that Warmbier suffered from a lack of oxygen to the brain which was caused by apparent cardiac failure, but it is still not clear why Warmbier’s heart suffered an apparent breakdown. The publication of the coroner’s report has led North Korea to blast Donald Trump for politicising Warmbier’s death as being due to North Korean negligence.
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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
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U.S. Korea Policy, “Mutually Assured Madness”
Dateline: September 22, 2017
[“if you have nukes, never give them up–if you don’t have them, get them”. —Dan Coats, Director of National Intelligence.]
That is why North Korea is a nuclear power. Period. That is the reality and eventually the U.S. will have to accept “Mutually Assured Madness“. The U.S. has nobody to blame for its self-inflected wounds. It is called Blowback.
If there is any comfort in living with a nuclear armed North Korea, then be thankful that it is not even close to the dangers of the Cold War. The propaganda mill and the mainstream media greatly exaggerate the US national security risk to the American people, and it is for their own greedy self-interest to spread panic and paranoia among the American people.
If Kim Jong-un wanted to kill Americans out of insane hatred, he has that capability now with conventional weapons. There are over a quarter of a million American citizens living in Seoul, 100 miles from Pyongyang. Kim Jong-un has not attacked Seoul to kill Americans because he is not insane or suicidal, and that is according to experts on North Korea such as Dan Coats and Donald Gregg, and others.
Forget the propaganda, it is nonsense aimed at selling extremely expensive Thermal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) missiles and further encircle and threaten China and Russia . THAAD’s installed in South Korea at a cost of $1 billion are ineffective and useless against North Korean missiles in the early stage of launching.
It is the U.S. that is the most dangerous country and threat to the world, not North Korea. The U.S. has beaten its own world record as a serial mass murderer of the 21stcentury. That does not go unnoticed by small vulnerable countries, which is the kind that the U.S. likes to destroy for its own sick reasons. For North Korea to fear the U.S. is reality. To want a nuclear deterrent is sanity.
“if you have nukes, never give them up–if you don’t have them, get them“.
This week’s performance at the United Nations by Trump raises more questions of his sanity. We won’t know until he is kept under further observation. It is not looking good. Without knowing it, Trump gave the same message that Coats did. His raving has sent any vulnerable country back to the nuclear weapons-planning drawing board, if they know what is good for them. Trump’s speech has done more for nuclear proliferation than Iran and North Korea combined could ever do.
Trump should have listened to Steve Bannon when he said:
“There’s no military solution, forget it. Until somebody solves the part of the equation that shows me that ten million people in Seoul don’t die in the first 30 minutes from conventional weapons, I don’t know what you’re talking about, there’s no military solution here, and they got us.”
North Korea is not playing “gotcha”. For them it is not a game, like it is to the US planners. North Korea rightly fears for its life and its existence. We may not like the way they live, but that is not for us to decide. It is for the North Koreans to determine.
This is the 21st century not the 19th century of Kipling’s “white man’s burden” (which Theodore Roosevelt said “made good sense, from the expansionists point of view“). If the U.S. wants to do something good (instead of expansionism) for human rights it should start with its own cabal of right-wing dictators and their death squads.
Trump says he is going to succeed where Obama and Bush failed. He should take a page from President Bill Clinton who successfully negotiated with North Korea, until Bush destroyed the agreement. Trump talks big and the mainstream media and Trump backers love it. It is the cowboy image that so many Americans think they are in their own mind.
Trump says he is going to kick down Kim Jong-un’s door, take away his rockets and free his people. That is insanity, cowboy insanity. But it is nothing new for America. U.S. history is a history of wars of aggression, sold to the public as “making the world safe for democracy“, but really for the profits of tycoons.
When the Euro-American migrants followed their Manifest Destiny and hit the Pacific Ocean, they just kept on going until they got to Asia. When they got there they started kicking down doors. They discovered civilizations that did not know they were lost, and then kicked their doors down to sell them trinkets for treasures, and steal their resources of natural and human capital.
The Euro-Americans justified kicking down doors in order to teach the ‘heathens’ Christianity, free-trade (at the point of a gun) and table manners. It is now called nation building. First the U.S. destroys a nation, then sends in the contractors to rebuild, and turn a tidy profit too. It is war profiteering insanity and leaves a pile of human corpses in the rubble.
[dropcap]W[/dropcap]hen America discovered the 5,000 year civilization of Korea in the late 1800’s, the Koreans wanted nothing to do with the foreigners. So the Americans sent the gunboats to Korea’s Ganghwa Island and took it hostage. When the Koreans defended it, President Ulysses S. Grant sent the U.S. Korean Expeditionary Force in 1871. Night raids and kicking down doors followed until they changed their behavior. All the Koreans wanted were to be left alone. During their long history they had learned from experience that no matter how friendly foreigners seemed at first, eventually they brought war, conquest and subjugation. North Korea is simply remembering the lessons inflicted on the nation over centuries by abject invaders and aggressors.
Skip forward to 1945. There is a lot of U.S. history in between, and most of it is repetitions. Only the names and dates change, but not the plot. Invasions followed by invasion.
During the early 20th century, the U.S. proxy Japan had bitten off more of Asia than the U.S. thought they should chew, the U.S. wanted to chew on it themselves. The U.S. appetite for empire did not end in 1945’s end of WW2. It was just getting its second wind.
At the end of WW2, both the U.S. and Soviet Russia had liberated Korea from Japan. So the Americans and the Russians split the difference at the 38th parallel.
In the north half of Korea the Soviets established Kim Jong-un’s grandfather, Kim Il-sung to head the communist government. The Grandfather Kim had been a communist revolutionary and freedom fighter against Japanese occupation. Later he fought in China with Mao Zedong’s communist against the U.S. backed Nationalists of Chiang Kai-shek. After Chiang’s defeat, the deposed autocrat fled to the Chinese island of Formosa, along with his entourage of Chinese wealthy, businessmen and intellectuals. With U.S. blessing, Chiang ruled as a brutal military dictator, committing hundreds of massacres of his own people. He imprisoned, tortured and executed thousands; anybody that he suspected of being a dissident to his dictates. Today Formosa is Taiwan; it is not a member of the UN and has formal diplomatic relations with few countries, not even the U.S.
If Trump is so concerned about “Rocket Man’s” human rights record, then Trump would make a good start by reading U.S. history, and correcting the behavior of the dozens of U.S. backed right-wing dictators. He could learn from history about the military dictatorships and human rights violations of U.S. backed military dictatorships of South Korea. After the U.S. military rule from 1945 to 1948, the U.S. installed the military dictatorship of Syngman Rhee, and later Park Chung-hee. You won’t hear about it from “Hair Man” Trump or Fox News.
Nor will you hear much about the new progressive president of South Korea Moon Jae-in. He ran on a popular campaign of bettering relations with North Korea, much like the “Sunshine Policy” of former president Kim Dae Jung (1998 to 2003), for which he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2000.
Better relations between South Korea and North Korea is not what the U.S. wants. Bush killed it, Obama embalmed it, and Trump is trying to bury it. The U.S. neocons could not be happier. Better relations, normalization, a peace treaty and eventual reunification are against the U.S. Empire’s interest. That is why South Korea’s wishes are never mentioned, except in rare staged events. Strange, since Koreans are said to be our thankful beneficiaries.
The U.S. is undermining and pressuring Moon to drop his efforts at better relations. Putting in THAAD’s before Moon could take office was an embarrassment and a loss of “face”. U.S. domineering is not unnoticed by the South Korean people, and anti-Americanism is on the rise again.
Most Americans believe that South Korea became an economic miracle by following the U.S. mythological example of democracy and free-market competition. The propagandists and repeaters never get tired of waxing eloquent that fairytale, singing the praises of capitalism and U.S.-style democracy. South Korea did not develop economically under democracy, free-trade and free-markets. It developed under military dictators, state-corporate monopolies and free-flowing U.S. economic aid. Ditto Taiwan.
Trump talks about “fire and fury”. Both North and South Korea know what U.S. fire and fury are from the 3 years of the Korean War (1950 to 1953). The history of the Korean War would be enough for the Nuremberg Tribunal to hang President Truman and all of his generals. Air Force Curtis LeMay and the State Department’s Dean Rusk tell the gores of the war. LeMay was in command of the bombing of Korea, and said about U.S. fire and fury:
LeMay: We went over there and fought the war and eventually burned down every town in North Korea anyway, someway or another, and some in South Korea too.” Over a period of three years or so, we killed off — what — twenty percent of the population of Korea as direct casualties of war, or from starvation and exposure?
Dean Rusk was the Assistant Secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs during the Korean War and later he was the Secretary of State. Here is what Dean Rusk had to say:
“The United States bombed “everything that moved in North Korea, every brick standing on top of another.” After running low on urban targets, U.S. bombers destroyed hydroelectric and irrigation dams in the later stages of the war, flooding farmland and destroying crops . (VOX.co)”
Kim Jong-un does not need teaching on fire and fury. In the past 30 years the U.S. has taught North Korea and anybody else about fire and fury. The U.S. has committed military aggression against approximately 20 countries in the past 30 years, (not including covert operations and support of proxies) and none of those countries had a nuclear deterrent.
The North Koreans especially observed Libya, as Bush advised them to. The North Koreans saw what happened to Muammar Gaddafi when he gave up his nuclear project. They saw the glee it brought Hillary. U.S. agreements are meaningless. How could they have missed George W. Bush’s message to listen up? It was specifically addressed to them:
“If a country like Libya was to show transparency and active cooperation, that can open the doors, a complete change of face, it is a lesson for North Korea to observe.”–Bush 2003
The mainstream media cannot stop saying that Kim Jong-un is “irrational, unstable, unpredictable and paranoid”. And that he refuses to come to the negotiation table. Many experts say that the former is not so, and the U.S. State Department confirms that it is the U.S. that refuses to negotiate. On August 15, 2017 a press conference at the State Department must be a record for insanity.
Here is a partial transcript of one of the strangest press conferences at the State Department, August 15, 2017. The spokesperson for the State Department is Heather Nauert:
Answer: I think so. I mean, the Secretary, I think, was pretty clear about that today. Just a couple days ago he spoke about this as well. He said, look, we’ll talk, but they have to take some serious steps. Susan Thornton, our acting assistant secretary for East Asia Pacific, who’s been very engaged with the Secretary on this issue, has said the same thing. Look, we’re willing to sit down and talk with them, but it appears that that’s not — that’s not going to happen imminently. They have to take some serious steps before we get there. — So just to be clear, not launching ballistic missiles towards Guam is not enough— the Secretary has been clear about we will see it — they know what they need to do to get us to come to the negotiating table
Answer: I think they would have to do quite a bit more
Amazing! Outrageous! It shows how low the public is held in the U.S. government’s esteem. It also shows how the mainstream does not report inconvenient facts. It is called contempt for the public. North Korea is willing to negotiate. They have negotiated in the past. They have made offers to negotiate. They have no preconditions. They want a peace treaty. The U.S. knows it. The mainstream media knows it. They are lying.
Kim Jong-un is not the insane one, Trump may be, but it is too soon to say. We will know for sure that he is if he uses the military option, which is called aggression and war.
Realistically, the most that the U.S. can hope for in negotiations is that North Korea agrees to freeze its nuclear program, accepts inspection, and signs the Non-Proliferation Treaty. The holdup is that the U.S. does not know what it is willing to give up in return, and is holding out for as little as possible. Or they do not know. If Trump is sane, which nobody is sure about, then all the outrageous rhetoric is to gain time so that the U.S. can negotiate from maximum strength. Trump’s top advisors know that North Korea will not agree to give up their nukes.
Donald Gregg is one of the best experts America has on North Korea (bio here). According to an interview reported in Time Magazine July 24, 2017 he said, “We can’t deal with them if we don’t understand them, and we won’t understand them if we aren’t talking to each other”. He says to forget preconditions. Gregg also says that Kim Jong-un is “smart, tough, and a risk taker” who sees his nuclear arsenal as protection against a U.S. attack. “The North Koreans aren’t suicidal. They don’t want a war—North Korea’s leaders are “thoughtful, well-educated pragmatists.” Like Coats, Gregg does not believe that North Korea will give up its nuclear weapons.
The other alternative to negotiations, the military option, “fire and fury”; that would be insane.
If the U.S. tries to wipe North Korea off the face of the earth with “fire and furry” not only will it kill tens of millions of North Koreans, but before they go they will take millions of South Koreans, hundreds of thousands of U.S. expats living in Seoul, and 25,000 U.S. troops with them. It could also lead to war with China, Russia and a nuclear holocaust which will take us all.
Whether the U.S. agrees to negotiations or not, North Korea is keeping its nukes. The old Cold War policy of mutually assured destruction is now Mutually Assured Madness.
Selected References:
, Bruce Cumings.
The Coldest Winter: America and the Korean War, David Halberstam.
The Hidden History of the Korean War: 1950-1951 (Forbidden Bookshelf), I. F. Stone.
Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism, Ha-Joon Chang.
The Imperial Cruise: A Secret History of Empire and War, James Bradley.
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David William Pear, currently serving as a senior contributing editor, is a progressive columnist writing on economic, political and social issues. He is also a regular columnist and commenter on OpedNews. His articles have been published by The Real News Network, Truth Out, Consortium News, Russia Insider, Pravda and many other progressive publications. David is a member of Veterans for Peace, St Pete for Peace, CodePink and International Solidarity Movement. In February of 2015 he was part of a people-to-people delegation to Cuba with CodePink. In November of 2015 he was a delegate with CodePink to Palestine to show solidarity with Palestinians. In 2016 David spent 10 weeks in Palestine with the Palestinian non-violent resistance group International Solidarity Movement (ISM). David frequently makes extended trips to Russia as a private citizen. After retiring from finance in 2009, David earned a certification as an Emergency Medical Technician. David is a Vietnam veteran having served as a member of the 5th Special Forces Group as a combat advisor to the Army of the Republic of (South) Viet Nam. David resides with his wife and three cats in Clearwater Beach, Florida.CARE TO KNOW MORE ABOUT DAVID?
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DAVID 2 PEAR—If there is any comfort in living with a nuclear armed North Korea, then be thankful that it is not even close to the dangers of the Cold War. The propaganda mill and the mainstream media greatly exaggerate the US national security risk to the American people, and it is for their own greedy self-interest to spread panic and paranoia among the American people.
The Russia-China plan for North Korea: stability, connectivity
Chinese President Xi Jinping (centre) and his wife Peng Liyuan welcome Russian President Vladimir Putin ahead of a banquet dinner during the BRICS Summit in Xiamen, Fujian province, on September 4, 2017.
Moscow has been busy building agreements that would extend Eurasian connectivity eastward. The question is how to convince the DPRK to play along
By PEPE ESCOBAR SEPTEMBER 13, 2017
The United Nations Security Council’s 15-0 vote to impose a new set of sanctions on North Korea somewhat disguises the critical role played by the Russia-China strategic partnership, the “RC” at the core of the BRICS group.
The new sanctions are pretty harsh. They include a 30% reduction on crude and refined oil exports to the DPRK; a ban on exports of natural gas; a ban on all North Korean textile exports (which have brought in US$760 million on average over the past three years); and a worldwide ban on new work permits for DPRK citizens (there are over 90,000 currently working abroad.)
But this is far from what US President Donald Trump’s administration was aiming at, according to the draft Security Council resolution leaked last week. That included an asset freeze and travel ban on Kim Jong-un and other designated DPRK officials, and covered additional “WMD-related items,” Iraqi sanctions-style. It also authorized UN member states to interdict and inspect North Korean vessels in international waters (which amounts to a declaration of war); and, last but not least, a total oil embargo.
“RC” made it clear it would veto the resolution under these terms. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told the US’ diminishing Secretary of State Rex Tillerson Moscow would only accept language related to “political and diplomatic tools to seek peaceful ways of resolution.” On the oil embargo, President Vladimir Putin said, “cutting off the oil supply to North Korea may harm people in hospitals or other ordinary citizens.”
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. Photo: Reuters
“RC” priorities are clear: “stability” in Pyongyang; no regime change; no drastic alteration of the geopolitical chessboard; no massive refugee crisis.
That does not preclude Beijing from applying pressure on Pyongyang. Branch offices of the Bank of China, China Construction Bank and Agricultural Bank of China in the northeastern border city of Yanji have banned DPRK citizens from opening new accounts. Current accounts are not frozen yet, but deposits and remittances have been suspended.
To get to the heart of the matter, though, we need to examine what happened last week at the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok – which happens to be only a little over 300 km away from the DPRK’s Punggye-ri missile test site.
It’s all about the Trans-Korean Railway
In sharp contrast to the Trump administration and the Beltway’s bellicose rhetoric, what “RC” proposes are essentially 5+1 talks (North Korea, China, Russia, Japan and South Korea, plus the US) on neutral territory, as confirmed by Russian diplomats. In Vladivostok, Putin went out of his way to defuse military hysteria and warn that stepping beyond sanctions would be an “invitation to the graveyard.” Instead, he proposed business deals.
Largely unreported by Western corporate media, what happened in Vladivostok is really ground-breaking. Moscow and Seoul agreed on a trilateral trade platform, crucially involving Pyongyang, to ultimately invest in connectivity between the whole Korean peninsula and the Russian Far East.
South Korean Prime Minister Moon Jae-in proposed to Moscow to build no less than “nine bridges” of cooperation: “Nine bridges mean the bridges of gas, railways, the Northern Sea Route, shipbuilding, the creation of working groups, agriculture and other types of cooperation.”
Crucially, Moon added that the trilateral cooperation would aim at joint projects in the Russian Far East. He knows that “the development of that area will promote the prosperity of our two countries and will also help change North Korea and create the basis for the implementation of the trilateral agreements.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin and his South Korean counterpart Moon Jae-in visit the Far East Street exhibition at Russky Island in Vladivostok. Photo: Sputnik / Mikhail Klimentyev
Adding to the entente, Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Kono and South Korean Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha both stressed “strategic cooperation” with “RC”.
Geo-economics complements geo-politics. Moscow has also approached Tokyo with the idea of building a bridge between the nations. That would physically link Japan to Eurasia – and the vast trade and investment carousel offered by the New Silk Roads, aka, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and the Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU). It would also complement the daring plan to link a
Trans-Korean Railway to the Trans-Siberian one.
Seoul wants a rail network that will physically connect it with the vast Eurasian land bridge, which makes perfect business sense for the fifth largest export economy in the world. Handicapped by North Korea’s isolation, South Korea is in effect cut off from Eurasia by land. The answer is the Trans-Korean Railway.
Moscow is very much for it, with Putin noting how “we could
deliver Russian pipeline gas to Korea and integrate the power lines and railway systems of Russia, the Republic of Korea and North Korea. The implementation of these initiatives will be not only economically beneficial, but will also help build up trust and stability on the Korean Peninsula.”
“We are not opposed to the trilateral cooperation [with Russia and South Korea], but this is not an appropriate situation for this to be implemented”
Moscow’s strategy, like Beijing’s, is connectivity: the only way to integrate Pyongyang is to keep it involved in economic cooperation via the Trans-Korean-Trans-Siberian connection, pipelines and the development of North Korean ports.
The DPRK’s delegation in Vladivostok seemed to agree. But not yet. According to North Korea’s Minister for External Economic Affairs, Kim Yong Jae: “We are not opposed to the trilateral cooperation [with Russia and South Korea], but this is not an appropriate situation for this to be implemented.” That implies that for the DPRK the priority is the 5+1 negotiation table.
Still, the crucial point is that both Seoul and Pyongyang went to Vladivostok, and talked to Moscow. Arguably the key question – the armistice that did not end the Korean War – has to be broached by Putin and the Koreans, without the Americans.
While the sanctions game ebb and flows, the larger strategy of “RC” is clear – a drive aimed at Eurasian connectivity. The question is how to convince the DPRK to play along.
FIRST ITERATION ON ASIA TIMES
Pepe Escobar (born 1954) is a Brazilian journalist. He writes a column – The Roving Eye – for Asia Times Online, and works as an analyst for RT, Sputnik News, and Press TV as well as formerly for Al Jazeera. Escobar has focused on Central Asia and the Middle East, and has covered Iran on a continuous basis since the late 1990s. Escobar has reported extensively from Afghanistan. In August 2000, Escobar and two other journalists were arrested by the Taliban, and accused of photographing a soccer match.[3] The following year, he interviewed Ahmad Shah Masoud, the military leader of the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance, shortly before Masoud was assassinated. On television, Escobar has commented on Russia's RT network, Iran's PressTV, and Qatar's Al Jazeera's The Stream. On radio, he has been a guest on Sibel Edmonds' Boiling Frogs Show, The Peter B. Collins Show, Anti-War Radio with Scott Horton, What Really Happened Show, Corbett Report, The Voice of Russia's Burning Point, and Ernest Hancock's FreedomPhoenix.com. PEPE ESCOBAR—The DPRK’s delegation in Vladivostok seemed to agree. But not yet. According to North Korea’s Minister for External Economic Affairs, Kim Yong Jae: “We are not opposed to the trilateral cooperation [with Russia and South Korea], but this is not an appropriate situation for this to be implemented.” That implies that for the DPRK the priority is the 5+1 negotiation table.
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
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