Why Trump is Wrong About North Korea
Itinerant Philosopher and Journalist
Currently, as Donald Trump’s “armada” is speeding towards China and DPRK, I keep recalling those moments: the cliff, the lovers and a lone fisherman with his long rod at the other side of the river. Everything in my memory connected to those dawns is now motionless, serene.
ABOVE: MAIN COVER IMAGE—Pyongyang’s beauty and modernity is a city that would surprise most Americans, conditioned to believe stories about North Korean poverty and backwardness.
Sometimes I wonder whether words still have the power they once used to have. In the past, a beautiful poem, a confession, or a declaration of love, were capable of changing one’s entire life, and sometimes even the entire destiny of a nation. But is this still the case, in this time and age? As a writer I often feel futility, even despair. Still, as an internationalist, I refuse to succumb to pessimism, and I try to use words as my weapons, again and again.
I have already said a lot about North Korea. I have shown images. I have spoken about the unimaginable pain this country has had to endure. I have spoken broadly about its tremendous gesture – of helping to liberate and then to educate so many parts of the world, including the enormous and devastated continent of Africa.
Still the propaganda against the people of DPRK rules.
Let me try again; let me try again and again and again:
North Korea is a beautiful country, inhabited by human beings, with blood circulating through their veins. Despite what you are directly and indirectly told, these people feel pain and they are capable of experiencing great joy. Like others, they often dream, fall in love, and suffer when being insulted or betrayed or abandoned. They laugh and cry, they hold hands, get angry, even desperate. They have great hopes for a better life and they work very hard trying to build their future.
North Korea the way it really is
[metaslider id=118986]
So listen well, manager, or supervisor of what you yourself call the “free world”. Or how should I call you, President? Ok, fine, President… If you shoot your Tomahawk missiles at them, at DPRK, (as you recently did at Syria), or if you drop your bloody “Mother of All Bombs” on them (as you just did on some god-forsaken hamlet in Afghanistan, just in order to demonstrate your spite and destructive force), their bodies will be torn to pieces, people will die in tremendous agony; wives will be howling in despair burying their husbands, grandparents will be forced to cover the dead bodies of their tiny grandchildren with white sheets, entire neighborhoods and villages will cease to exist.
Of course you people do it everywhere; you think that you are the masters of the world, so used to spreading agony and desolation all over the world, but let me remind you one more time and put it on the record: it may all look like some fun-to-play computer game or a TV show, but it is not; it is all real, when your shit hits the targets, it’s damn real! I have seen plenty of it, and I have had really enough!
I know this is not what you have been told, and this is not what you tell the others.
North Koreans are supposed to look and behave like a nation of brainless robots, lacking all basic emotions and individuality, staring forward without seeing much, unable to feel pain, compassion or love.
You don’t want to see the truth, the reality, and you want others to be blind as well.
Even if you’ll blow the entire DPRK to pieces, you’ll actually not see much anyway, you’ll see almost nothing: just your own missiles shooting from battleships and submarines, your own airplanes taking-off from aircraft carriers, as well as some computer-generated images of powerful explosions. No pain, no reality, and no agony: nothing will get to you; nothing will reach you and your citizens.
It is you who is blind; it is not they.
You actually like it, don’t you? Admit you do. Let’s have it all in the open. And many citizens in the West like it as well – new titillating experiences, free ‘entertainment’, and a welcome break from the dire and empty, grey, loveless and meaningless routine of daily life in both North America and Europe. Hundreds of millions glued to their TV screens. Your popularity is going down, lately, isn’t it? The more missiles you shoot, the more bombs you drop, and the more countries you intimidate and confront, the broader your ‘support base’ gets.
You are a businessman, after all. The trade, the deal is simple, easy to grasp: you give to the majority of your people what they desire, and they give you support and admiration. True, isn’t it, if stripped of all that ‘political correctness’.
The psychologist Jung called this culture ‘pathological’. It has already destroyed basically all continents on Earth. It is now, perhaps, attempting to finish what is left of the world.
Still, you ought to know and understand and should be fully aware of the following: you might now get some generous endorsement from your fellow mentally ill citizens, but if you blow up the DPRK or any other country on Earth, sky-high, and if we as the planet Earth still somehow manage to survive, you and your ‘culture’ will be cursed for centuries and millennia to come! Think about it. Is it really worth it?
Perhaps you don’t give a damn. Most likely you don’t. Still, give it a try, try to think, and try to imagine: you will go down in history as a degenerate mass murderer and a bigot!
***
Three years ago, this is how I described the 60th anniversary of the Victory Day in the DPRK:
“The brass band begins to play yet another military tune. I zoom on an old lady, her chest decorated with medals. As I get ready to press the shutter, two large tears begin rolling down her cheeks. And suddenly I realize that I cannot photograph her. I really cannot. Her face is all wrinkled, and yet it is both youthful and endlessly tender. Here is my face, I think, the face I was looking for all those days. And yet I cannot even press the shutter of my Leica.
Then something squeezes my throat and I have to search in my equipment bag for some tissue, as my glasses get foggy, and for a short time I cannot see anything at all. I sob loudly, just once. Nobody can hear, because of the loud playing of the band.
Later I get closer to her, and I bow, and she reciprocates. We make our separate peace in the middle of the boiling-hot main square. I am suddenly happy to be here. We have both lost something. She lost more. I was certain she lost at least half of her loved-ones in the carnage of those bygone years. I lost something too, and now I also lost all respect and belonging, to the culture that is still ruling the world; the culture that was once mine, but a culture that is still robbing people of their faces, and then burns their bodies with napalm and flames.
It is the 60th Anniversary of Victory Day in the DPRK. An anniversary marked by tears, grey hair, tremendous fireworks, parades, and by the ‘memories of fire’.
That evening, after returning to the capital, I finally made it to the river. It was covered by a gentle but impenetrable fog. There were two lovers sitting by the shore, motionless, in silent embrace. The woman’s hair was gently falling on her lover’s shoulder. He was holding her hand, reverently. I was going to lift my big professional camera, but then I stopped, abruptly, all of a sudden too afraid that what my eyes were seeing or my brain imagining, would not be reflected in the viewfinder.”
This is how I still remember the event.
The West has already killed millions of North Koreans. How many more have to vanish, just for not surrendering? What is the price of not agreeing to serve the Empire? Would it be one million more, or ten million? The number, please: you are a businessman; so do define the price truthfully!
***
The DPRK has never attacked anybody. The United States which claims it now ‘feels threatened’, has attacked dozens and dozens of countries, robbed millions of people of life, and raped freedom, democracy and cultures all over the world.
There is one image inside my head, which I want to share with all my readers, even if I will be risking that this time my writing will be bordering on sentimentality. I don’t give a fuck, for once; this is no time for ‘polished and elegant style’. So here it is:
At one point I managed to break free from our delegation. It was in the capital, Pyongyang. I just walked and walked, along the mighty river, through an enormous park alongside ancient fortifications.
I spotted a girl, tiny, with a big ribbon in her hair. She was wearing white shoes. It was sunset. Her mother, a simple but beautiful lady, was talking to her. It was so obvious how much she loved and cherished her daughter. The two of them could not see me; I was observing them from some distance. There was so much tenderness, so much serenity between these two human beings. The mother was caressing her daughter’s face, explaining something, pointing at the trees. Their faces were totally relaxed, no fear, no tension, just love.
I walked further, and still in the park, I saw a couple surrounded by a group of people. It was a family photo session. A man and a woman were obviously getting married; he was wearing a formal suit, she was dressed in a wedding gown. Then I noticed that large black sunglasses were hiding a large part of the man’s face. He was blind. Most likely, he was badly burned behind the dark spectacles. His future wife was younger, and she was attractive. She was happy! She kept chatting, laughing cheerfully. I was stunned. In the West, people have been betraying each other, abandoning one another over the tiniest inconveniences or doubts, for the most egotistic reasons. And here, a young attractive woman was joining, happily, her badly injured man, so they could walk together, side-by-side, for the rest of their life journey.
***
I saw a lot of North Korea after those few hours in the park. I was faced with the most fortified border on Earth. I met and discussed philosophy and how the West tries to de-humanize its enemies, with Yang Hyong Sob, the Vice President of the Standing Committee of the Supreme People’s Committee. I discussed philosophy and existentialism with the great theologian and philosopher John Cobb, on board a bus that was taking us from Pyongyang to the borderline.
There were ‘big moments’ during that trip, great celebrations all around me. There were elaborate performances and speeches, marches and music. Yet, nothing touched me so deeply as those moments in the park. There, I observed enormous tenderness given to a child by her mother. And I witnessed that natural and beautiful, simplicity and joy of love, mixed with serenity and dignity radiating from a young woman marrying her blind and injured partner.
That is North Korea, which I have been privileged enough to have observed with my own eyes. That is North Korea which the manager wants to ‘take care of’, which means ‘to destroy’. And that is North Korea where I realized, as on so many other occasions, in so many countries, that there is still so much love that resides on this Earth, and that no barbarity, no cruelty, would ever be able to defeat it.
***
This essay is not my ‘usual stuff’. It is not a philosophy, or reportage. I don’t know what it is. I don’t care what it is. I just wanted to share something with my readers: something that is inside me right now, something that is breaking and shouting and rebelling against the state of things.
What I am certain of is that at this moment, I want to be there, in Pyongyang. I want to go back, although no one has invited me to return, yet.
If the supervisor, the manager, decides to attack, I want to be on my feet and alert and ready, facing his ships and missiles. Just like that, as always, without any cover or bulletproof vest, just with my cameras, and a pen and a simple notepad, as well as a tiny Asian dragon – a good luck charm – in my pocket.
I will not be afraid. I don’t think most of the people of North Korea would be afraid. Only those who are ready to commit mass murder, over and over again, in all corners of the world, are now most likely scared; at least subconsciously, at least in their own essence as well as of their own insanity.
Andre Vltchek
Philosopher, novelist, filmmaker and investigative journalist, Andre Vltchek has covered wars and conflicts in dozens of countries. Three of his latest books are revolutionary novel “Aurora” and two bestselling works of political non-fiction: “Exposing Lies Of The Empire” and “Fighting Against Western Imperialism”. View his other books here. Andre is making films for teleSUR and Al-Mayadeen. After having lived in Latin America, Africa and Oceania, Vltchek presently resides in East Asia and the Middle East, and continues to work around the world. He can be reached through his website and his Twitter.
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Currently, as Donald Trump’s “armada” is speeding towards China and DPRK, I keep recalling those moments: the cliff, the lovers and a lone fisherman with his long rod at the other side of the river. Everything in my memory connected to those dawns is now motionless, serene.
ABOVE: MAIN COVER IMAGE—Pyongyang’s beauty and modernity is a city that would surprise most Americans, conditioned to believe stories about North Korean poverty and backwardness.
Sometimes I wonder whether words still have the power they once used to have. In the past, a beautiful poem, a confession, or a declaration of love, were capable of changing one’s entire life, and sometimes even the entire destiny of a nation. But is this still the case, in this time and age? As a writer I often feel futility, even despair. Still, as an internationalist, I refuse to succumb to pessimism, and I try to use words as my weapons, again and again.
I have already said a lot about North Korea. I have shown images. I have spoken about the unimaginable pain this country has had to endure. I have spoken broadly about its tremendous gesture – of helping to liberate and then to educate so many parts of the world, including the enormous and devastated continent of Africa.
Still the propaganda against the people of DPRK rules.
Let me try again; let me try again and again and again:
North Korea is a beautiful country, inhabited by human beings, with blood circulating through their veins. Despite what you are directly and indirectly told, these people feel pain and they are capable of experiencing great joy. Like others, they often dream, fall in love, and suffer when being insulted or betrayed or abandoned. They laugh and cry, they hold hands, get angry, even desperate. They have great hopes for a better life and they work very hard trying to build their future.
North Korea the way it really is
[metaslider id=118986]
So listen well, manager, or supervisor of what you yourself call the “free world”. Or how should I call you, President? Ok, fine, President… If you shoot your Tomahawk missiles at them, at DPRK, (as you recently did at Syria), or if you drop your bloody “Mother of All Bombs” on them (as you just did on some god-forsaken hamlet in Afghanistan, just in order to demonstrate your spite and destructive force), their bodies will be torn to pieces, people will die in tremendous agony; wives will be howling in despair burying their husbands, grandparents will be forced to cover the dead bodies of their tiny grandchildren with white sheets, entire neighborhoods and villages will cease to exist.
Of course you people do it everywhere; you think that you are the masters of the world, so used to spreading agony and desolation all over the world, but let me remind you one more time and put it on the record: it may all look like some fun-to-play computer game or a TV show, but it is not; it is all real, when your shit hits the targets, it’s damn real! I have seen plenty of it, and I have had really enough!
I know this is not what you have been told, and this is not what you tell the others.
North Koreans are supposed to look and behave like a nation of brainless robots, lacking all basic emotions and individuality, staring forward without seeing much, unable to feel pain, compassion or love.
You don’t want to see the truth, the reality, and you want others to be blind as well.
Even if you’ll blow the entire DPRK to pieces, you’ll actually not see much anyway, you’ll see almost nothing: just your own missiles shooting from battleships and submarines, your own airplanes taking-off from aircraft carriers, as well as some computer-generated images of powerful explosions. No pain, no reality, and no agony: nothing will get to you; nothing will reach you and your citizens.
It is you who is blind; it is not they.
You actually like it, don’t you? Admit you do. Let’s have it all in the open. And many citizens in the West like it as well – new titillating experiences, free ‘entertainment’, and a welcome break from the dire and empty, grey, loveless and meaningless routine of daily life in both North America and Europe. Hundreds of millions glued to their TV screens. Your popularity is going down, lately, isn’t it? The more missiles you shoot, the more bombs you drop, and the more countries you intimidate and confront, the broader your ‘support base’ gets.
You are a businessman, after all. The trade, the deal is simple, easy to grasp: you give to the majority of your people what they desire, and they give you support and admiration. True, isn’t it, if stripped of all that ‘political correctness’.
The psychologist Jung called this culture ‘pathological’. It has already destroyed basically all continents on Earth. It is now, perhaps, attempting to finish what is left of the world.
Still, you ought to know and understand and should be fully aware of the following: you might now get some generous endorsement from your fellow mentally ill citizens, but if you blow up the DPRK or any other country on Earth, sky-high, and if we as the planet Earth still somehow manage to survive, you and your ‘culture’ will be cursed for centuries and millennia to come! Think about it. Is it really worth it?
Perhaps you don’t give a damn. Most likely you don’t. Still, give it a try, try to think, and try to imagine: you will go down in history as a degenerate mass murderer and a bigot!
***
Three years ago, this is how I described the 60th anniversary of the Victory Day in the DPRK:
“The brass band begins to play yet another military tune. I zoom on an old lady, her chest decorated with medals. As I get ready to press the shutter, two large tears begin rolling down her cheeks. And suddenly I realize that I cannot photograph her. I really cannot. Her face is all wrinkled, and yet it is both youthful and endlessly tender. Here is my face, I think, the face I was looking for all those days. And yet I cannot even press the shutter of my Leica.
Then something squeezes my throat and I have to search in my equipment bag for some tissue, as my glasses get foggy, and for a short time I cannot see anything at all. I sob loudly, just once. Nobody can hear, because of the loud playing of the band.
Later I get closer to her, and I bow, and she reciprocates. We make our separate peace in the middle of the boiling-hot main square. I am suddenly happy to be here. We have both lost something. She lost more. I was certain she lost at least half of her loved-ones in the carnage of those bygone years. I lost something too, and now I also lost all respect and belonging, to the culture that is still ruling the world; the culture that was once mine, but a culture that is still robbing people of their faces, and then burns their bodies with napalm and flames.
It is the 60th Anniversary of Victory Day in the DPRK. An anniversary marked by tears, grey hair, tremendous fireworks, parades, and by the ‘memories of fire’.
That evening, after returning to the capital, I finally made it to the river. It was covered by a gentle but impenetrable fog. There were two lovers sitting by the shore, motionless, in silent embrace. The woman’s hair was gently falling on her lover’s shoulder. He was holding her hand, reverently. I was going to lift my big professional camera, but then I stopped, abruptly, all of a sudden too afraid that what my eyes were seeing or my brain imagining, would not be reflected in the viewfinder.”
This is how I still remember the event.
The West has already killed millions of North Koreans. How many more have to vanish, just for not surrendering? What is the price of not agreeing to serve the Empire? Would it be one million more, or ten million? The number, please: you are a businessman; so do define the price truthfully!
***
The DPRK has never attacked anybody. The United States which claims it now ‘feels threatened’, has attacked dozens and dozens of countries, robbed millions of people of life, and raped freedom, democracy and cultures all over the world.
There is one image inside my head, which I want to share with all my readers, even if I will be risking that this time my writing will be bordering on sentimentality. I don’t give a fuck, for once; this is no time for ‘polished and elegant style’. So here it is:
At one point I managed to break free from our delegation. It was in the capital, Pyongyang. I just walked and walked, along the mighty river, through an enormous park alongside ancient fortifications.
I spotted a girl, tiny, with a big ribbon in her hair. She was wearing white shoes. It was sunset. Her mother, a simple but beautiful lady, was talking to her. It was so obvious how much she loved and cherished her daughter. The two of them could not see me; I was observing them from some distance. There was so much tenderness, so much serenity between these two human beings. The mother was caressing her daughter’s face, explaining something, pointing at the trees. Their faces were totally relaxed, no fear, no tension, just love.
I walked further, and still in the park, I saw a couple surrounded by a group of people. It was a family photo session. A man and a woman were obviously getting married; he was wearing a formal suit, she was dressed in a wedding gown. Then I noticed that large black sunglasses were hiding a large part of the man’s face. He was blind. Most likely, he was badly burned behind the dark spectacles. His future wife was younger, and she was attractive. She was happy! She kept chatting, laughing cheerfully. I was stunned. In the West, people have been betraying each other, abandoning one another over the tiniest inconveniences or doubts, for the most egotistic reasons. And here, a young attractive woman was joining, happily, her badly injured man, so they could walk together, side-by-side, for the rest of their life journey.
***
I saw a lot of North Korea after those few hours in the park. I was faced with the most fortified border on Earth. I met and discussed philosophy and how the West tries to de-humanize its enemies, with Yang Hyong Sob, the Vice President of the Standing Committee of the Supreme People’s Committee. I discussed philosophy and existentialism with the great theologian and philosopher John Cobb, on board a bus that was taking us from Pyongyang to the borderline.
There were ‘big moments’ during that trip, great celebrations all around me. There were elaborate performances and speeches, marches and music. Yet, nothing touched me so deeply as those moments in the park. There, I observed enormous tenderness given to a child by her mother. And I witnessed that natural and beautiful, simplicity and joy of love, mixed with serenity and dignity radiating from a young woman marrying her blind and injured partner.
That is North Korea, which I have been privileged enough to have observed with my own eyes. That is North Korea which the manager wants to ‘take care of’, which means ‘to destroy’. And that is North Korea where I realized, as on so many other occasions, in so many countries, that there is still so much love that resides on this Earth, and that no barbarity, no cruelty, would ever be able to defeat it.
***
This essay is not my ‘usual stuff’. It is not a philosophy, or reportage. I don’t know what it is. I don’t care what it is. I just wanted to share something with my readers: something that is inside me right now, something that is breaking and shouting and rebelling against the state of things.
What I am certain of is that at this moment, I want to be there, in Pyongyang. I want to go back, although no one has invited me to return, yet.
If the supervisor, the manager, decides to attack, I want to be on my feet and alert and ready, facing his ships and missiles. Just like that, as always, without any cover or bulletproof vest, just with my cameras, and a pen and a simple notepad, as well as a tiny Asian dragon – a good luck charm – in my pocket.
I will not be afraid. I don’t think most of the people of North Korea would be afraid. Only those who are ready to commit mass murder, over and over again, in all corners of the world, are now most likely scared; at least subconsciously, at least in their own essence as well as of their own insanity.
Philosopher, novelist, filmmaker and investigative journalist, Andre Vltchek has covered wars and conflicts in dozens of countries. Three of his latest books are revolutionary novel “Aurora” and two bestselling works of political non-fiction: “Exposing Lies Of The Empire” and “Fighting Against Western Imperialism”. View his other books here. Andre is making films for teleSUR and Al-Mayadeen. After having lived in Latin America, Africa and Oceania, Vltchek presently resides in East Asia and the Middle East, and continues to work around the world. He can be reached through his website and his Twitter.
Nauseated by the
vile corporate media?
Had enough of their lies, escapism,
omissions and relentless manipulation?
Send a donation to
The Greanville Post–or
But be sure to support YOUR media.
If you don’t, who will?
“Making America Great Again” by Reducing the World to Ashes?
Felicity Arbuthnot
“In the event of a nuclear war, there will be no chances, there will be no survivors – all will be obliterated… nuclear devastation is not science fiction – it is a matter of fact. The world now stands on the brink of the final abyss. Let us all resolve to take all possible practical steps to ensure that we do not, through our own folly, go over the edge.” Former First Sea Lord, Lord Louis Mountbatten (1900-1979) Strasbourg, 11 May 1979.”
As US threats ratchet up towards North Korea, the latest hinging on the accusation that the country attempted a further ballistic missile test on the annual Day of the Sun, the annual national holiday holiday commemorating the birth of the country’s founder and Kim Jong Un’s grandfather, Kim Il Sung.
Without the slightest proof produced by the US that such a test was attempted, yet alone a nuclear one, Donald Trump’s language and that of his fiefdom have been on the level of a bar room brawl rather than statesmanlike. The sabre rattling, intemperate recklessness in threatening to do “whatever it takes” with serially verbally challenged spokesman, Sean Spicer calling the invisible test “an unsuccessful military attack”, is sending shivers down governmental and national spines across the globe.
“All our options are on the table”, said National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster.
The Presidency being a family affair, Trump’s son Eric chipped in on Fox and Friends with:
“And you saw that quite frankly in Syria and you saw that in Afghanistan. And he will take action if he needs to take action.”
“You have to have massive backbone when it comes to dealing with awful, awful dictators who don’t like us, don’t like our way of life.”
Straight out of the George W. Bush handbook:
“They hate our way of life.” Wait for: “You are either with us, or you are with the terrorists.”
But again, why no proof of North Korea’s much vaunted threatening action? The US has: “an existing armada of spy planes and drones on and around the Korean Peninsula.”
North Korean kids on the street (Andre Vltchek). If not deterred, the idiots in Washington would condemn all these innocent creatures to a horrible death out of sheer imperial maliciousness and brutal ignorance. Meanwhile, the so-called liberals in the Democratic party ranks have been egging Trump on. America is a nation ruled by morons.
Moreover: “The Pentagon’s Space-Based Infrared System (SBIRS) employs multiple types of satellites and sensors to address some of these issues and provide greater coverage. According to defense contractor Lockheed Martin, the constellation can watch for the heat signature of enemy missile launches and track them in flight, gather details about those weapons and their capabilities …
South Korea: Mass execution of “commies”—were fully endorsed and facilitated by the US army. The heavy curtain of lies and demonization, which continues to date, has kept most Americans in the dark about what their government did in the Korean peninsula.
“Closer to earth, spy planes and drones are almost constantly zipping around North Korea. The Air Force and the Army have spy planes and unmanned reconnaissance aircraft permanently deployed in the region …
“Satellite data links, known as Senior Span and Senior Spur, mean the spy planes can send back some of this information back to base while still in flight so analyst can begin picking it apart. The Air Force has the 694th Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Group at Osan in part to help ‘exploit’ this kind of data.”
There is also:
“ … the U.S. Navy’s Task Force 72, the unit overseeing the U.S. Seventh Fleet’s aerial patrol and reconnaissance forces. P-3C Orion and P-8A Poseidon patrol aircraft and EP-3E Aries II spy planes rotate through deployments to the unit’s bases at Naval Air Stations Atsugi and Misawa Air Base in Japan. From there, they make routine trips to South Korea proper for training exercises. The EP-3E Aries IIs are dedicated intelligence gathers, but all three types could help monitor North Korean developments.”
Further:
“The RC-135S Cobra Ball and RC-135U Combat Sent have very different missions. The Air Force’s three Cobra Balls have specialized gear to track ballistic missile launches … The two Combat Sents have equipment to detect and analyze electronic emissions from sites on the ground.” The astonishing array of surveillance is comprehensively presented at (1.)
It is also worth quoting former UN weapons Inspector in Iraq, Scott Ritter back in 2002, seven months before the illegal invasion and destruction of Iraq (ongoing) describing sophistication of monitoring, with warning words on how politics can cause irreversible disaster:
“And we had in place means to monitor – both from vehicles and from the air – the gamma rays that accompany attempts to enrich uranium or plutonium. We never found anything. We can say unequivocally that the industrial infrastructure needed by Iraq to produce nuclear weapons had been eliminated.”
Further: “We eliminated the nuclear programme, and for Iraq to have reconstituted it would require undertaking activities eminently detectable by intelligence services.”Equally certain is that North Korea’s activities are equally detectible.
“It is not just heat”, states Ritter, “centrifuge facilities emit gamma radiation, as well as many other frequencies. It is detectable. Iraq could not get around this.”
“Our radar detects the tests, we know what the characteristics are, and we know there’s nothing to be worried about.” (2)
In 2015, Scott Ritter wrote a further detailed article with facts which surely apply to North Korea (3.) Arriving in Iraq their ground vehicles were accompanied above by: “… sensor-laden helicopters and U-2 high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft above and high-resolution spy satellites providing further imagery … satellite imagery detected a still existing covert missile force …”
He concludes:
“ … in Iraq … the end result was a war based on flawed intelligence and baseless accusations that left many thousands dead and a region in turmoil.”
If the US makes a nuclear attack on North Korea, the megalomaniacal, narcissistic and seemingly frighteningly ill informed Donald Trump – who, in an early telephone call to President Putin was reported as having to put his hand over the mouthpiece and ask someone what the START Treaty (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, 4) was – could trigger the unimaginable.
“In our new age of terrifying, lethal gadgets, which supplanted so swiftly the old one, the first great aggressive war, if it should come, will be launched by suicidal little madmen pressing an electronic button.
“Such a war will not last long and none will ever follow it. There will be no conquerors and no conquests, but only the charred bones of the dead on and uninhabited planet.”
Reference
William L. Shirer (1904-1993) The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany
Notes
2. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2002/sep/19/iraq.features11
3. https://www.lrb.co.uk/v37/n13/scott-ritter/we-aint-found-shit
4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/START_I
(If you haven’t yet, be sure to read this: Experts: “In a nuclear war between the US and Russia, everybody in the world would die.”)
Why contributing to the Greanville Post is urgent and makes sense.
LEGAL DISCLAIMER
What will it take to bring America to live according to its own self image?
The Problem is Washington, Not North Korea
By Mike Whitney
Washington has never made any effort to conceal its contempt for North Korea. In the 64 years since the war ended, the US has done everything in its power to punish, humiliate and inflict pain on the Communist country. Washington has subjected the DPRK to starvation, prevented its government from accessing foreign capital and markets, strangled its economy with crippling economic sanctions, and installed lethal missile systems and military bases on their doorstep.
B52 doing a recent North Korea nuke bombing drill. How would the Americans feel if they were the subject of such constant provocations and scare tactics by a nation that has shown no remorse at using such weapons?
Negotiations aren’t possible because Washington refuses to sit down with a country which it sees as its inferior. Instead, the US has strong-armed China to do its bidding by using their diplomats as interlocutors who are expected to convey Washington’s ultimatums as threateningly as possible. The hope, of course, is that Pyongyang will cave in to Uncle Sam’s bullying and do what they are told.
But the North has never succumbed to US intimidation and there’s no sign that it will. Instead, they have developed a small arsenal of nuclear weapons to defend themselves in the event that the US tries to assert its dominance by launching another war.
There’s no country in the world that needs nuclear weapons more than North Korea. Brainwashed Americans, who get their news from FOX or CNN, may differ on this point, but if a hostile nation deployed carrier strike-groups off the coast of California while conducting massive war games on the Mexican border (with the express intention of scaring the shit of people) then they might see things differently. They might see the value of having a few nuclear weapons to deter that hostile nation from doing something really stupid.
And let’s be honest, the only reason Kim Jong Un hasn’t joined Saddam and Gadhafi in the great hereafter, is because (a)– The North does not sit on an ocean of oil, and (b)– The North has the capacity to reduce Seoul, Okinawa and Tokyo into smoldering debris-fields. Absent Kim’s WMDs, Pyongyang would have faced a preemptive attack long ago and Kim would have faced a fate similar to Gadhafi’s. Nuclear weapons are the only known antidote to US adventurism.
There’s no country in the world that needs nuclear weapons more than North Korea. Brainwashed Americans, who get their news from FOX or CNN, may differ on this point, but if a hostile nation deployed carrier strike-groups off the coast of California while conducting massive war games on the Mexican border (with the express intention of scaring the shit of people) then they might see things differently. They might see the value of having a few nuclear weapons to deter that hostile nation from doing something really stupid.
The American people –whose grasp of history does not extend beyond the events of 9-11 — have no idea of the way the US fights its wars or the horrific carnage and destruction it unleashed on the North. Here’s a short refresher that helps clarify why the North is still wary of the US more than 60 years after the armistice was signed. The excerpt is from an article titled “Americans have forgotten what we did to North Korea”, at Vox World:
“In the early 1950s, during the Korean War, the US dropped more bombs on North Korea than it had dropped in the entire Pacific theater during World War II. This carpet bombing, which included 32,000 tons of napalm, often deliberately targeted civilian as well as military targets, devastating the country far beyond what was necessary to fight the war. Whole cities were destroyed, with many thousands of innocent civilians killed and many more left homeless and hungry….
According to US journalist Blaine Harden: “Over a period of three years or so, we killed off — what — 20 percent of the population,” Air Force Gen. Curtis LeMay, head of the Strategic Air Command during the Korean War, told the Office of Air Force History in 1984. Dean Rusk, a supporter of the war and later secretary of state, said 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……
“On January 3 at 10:30 AM an armada of 82 flying fortresses loosed their death-dealing load on the city of Pyongyang …Hundreds of tons of bombs and incendiary compound were simultaneously dropped throughout the city, causing annihilating fires, the transatlantic barbarians bombed the city with delayed-action high-explosive bombs which exploded at intervals for a whole day making it impossible for the people to come out onto the streets. The entire city has now been burning, enveloped in flames, for two days. By the second day, 7,812 civilians houses had been burnt down. The Americans were well aware that there were no military targets left in Pyongyang…
The number of inhabitants of Pyongyang killed by bomb splinters, burnt alive and suffocated by smoke is incalculable…Some 50,000 inhabitants remain in the city which before the war had a population of 500,000.” (“Americans have forgotten what we did to North Korea“, Vox World)
The United States killed over 2 million people in a country that posed no threat to US national security. Like Vietnam, the Korean War was just another muscle-flexing exercise the US periodically engages in whenever it gets bored or needs some far-flung location to try out its new weapons systems. The US had nothing to gain in its aggression on the Korean peninsula, it was mix of imperial overreach and pure unalloyed viciousness the likes of which we’ve seen many times in the past. According to the Asia-Pacific Journal:
“By the fall of 1952, there were no effective targets left for US planes to hit. Every significant town, city and industrial area in North Korea had already been bombed. In the spring of 1953, the Air Force targeted irrigation dams on the Yalu River, both to destroy the North Korean rice crop and to pressure the Chinese, who would have to supply more food aid to the North. Five reservoirs were hit, flooding thousands of acres of farmland, inundating whole towns and laying waste to the essential food source for millions of North Koreans.10 Only emergency assistance from China, the USSR, and other socialist countries prevented widespread famine.” (“The Destruction and Reconstruction of North Korea, 1950 – 1960”, The Asia-Pacific Journal, Japan Focus)
Repeat: “Reservoirs, irrigation dams, rice crops, hydroelectric dams, population centers” all napalmed, all carpet bombed, all razed to the ground. Nothing was spared. If it moved it was shot, if it didn’t move, it was bombed. The US couldn’t win, so they turned the country into an uninhabitable wastelands. “Let them starve. Let them freeze.. Let them eat weeds and roots and rodents to survive. Let them sleep in the ditches and find shelter in the rubble. What do we care? We’re the greatest country on earth. God bless America.”
This is how Washington does business, and it hasn’t changed since the Seventh Cavalry wiped out 150 men, women and children at Wounded Knee more than century ago. The Lakota Sioux at Pine Ridge got the same basic treatment as the North Koreans, or the Vietnamese, or the Nicaraguans, or the Iraqis and on and on and on and on. Anyone else who gets in Uncle Sam’s way, winds up in a world of hurt. End of story.
The savagery of America’s war against the North left an indelible mark on the psyche of the people. Whatever the cost, the North cannot allow a similar scenario to take place in the future. Whatever the cost, they must be prepared to defend themselves. If that means nukes, then so be it. Self preservation is the top priority.
Is there a way to end this pointless standoff between Pyongyang and Washington, a way to mend fences and build trust?
Of course there is. The US just needs to start treating the DPRK with respect and follow through on their promises. What promises?
The promise to built the North two light-water reactors to provide heat and light to their people in exchange for an end to its nuclear weapons program. You won’t read about this deal in the media because the media is just the propaganda wing of the Pentagon. They have no interest in promoting peaceful solutions. Their stock-in-trade is war, war and more war.
The North wants the US to honor its obligations under the 1994 Agreed Framework. That’s it. Just keep up your end of the goddamn deal. How hard can that be? Here’s how Jimmy Carter summed it up in a Washington Post op-ed (November 24, 2010):
“…in September 2005, an agreement … reaffirmed the basic premises of the 1994 accord. (The Agreed Framework) Its text included denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, a pledge of non-aggression by the United States and steps to evolve a permanent peace agreement to replace the U.S.-North Korean-Chinese cease-fire that has been in effect since July 1953. Unfortunately, no substantive progress has been made since 2005…
“This past July I was invited to return to Pyongyang to secure the release of an American, Aijalon Gomes, with the proviso that my visit would last long enough for substantive talks with top North Korean officials. They spelled out in detail their desire to develop a denuclearized Korean Peninsula and a permanent cease-fire, based on the 1994 agreements and the terms adopted by the six powers in September 2005….
“North Korean officials have given the same message to other recent American visitors and have permitted access by nuclear experts to an advanced facility for purifying uranium. The same officials had made it clear to me that this array of centrifuges would be ‘on the table’ for discussions with the United States, although uranium purification – a very slow process – was not covered in the 1994 agreements.
“Pyongyang has sent a consistent message that during direct talks with the United States, it is ready to conclude an agreement to end its nuclear programs, put them all under IAEA inspection and conclude a permanent peace treaty to replace the ‘temporary’ cease-fire of 1953. We should consider responding to this offer. The unfortunate alternative is for North Koreans to take whatever actions they consider necessary to defend themselves from what they claim to fear most: a military attack supported by the United States, along with efforts to change the political regime.”
(“North Korea’s consistent message to the U.S.”, President Jimmy Carter, Washington Post)
Most people think the problem lies with North Korea, but it doesn’t. The problem lies with the United States; it’s unwillingness to negotiate an end to the war, its unwillingness to provide basic security guarantees to the North, its unwillingness to even sit down with the people who –through Washington’s own stubborn ignorance– are now developing long-range ballistic missiles that will be capable of hitting American cities.
How dumb is that?
The Trump team is sticking with a policy that has failed for 63 years and which clearly undermines US national security by putting American citizens directly at risk. AND FOR WHAT?
To preserve the image of “tough guy”, to convince people that the US doesn’t negotiate with weaker countries, to prove to the world that “whatever the US says, goes”? Is that it? Is image more important than a potential nuclear disaster?
Relations with the North can be normalized, economic ties can be strengthened, trust can be restored, and the nuclear threat can be defused. The situation with the North does not have to be a crisis, it can be fixed. It just takes a change in policy, a bit of give-and-take, and leaders that genuinely want peace more than war.
(If you haven’t yet, be sure to read this: Experts: “In a nuclear war between the US and Russia, everybody in the world would die.”)
Why contributing to the Greanville Post is urgent and makes sense.
DISCLAIMER
What will it take to bring America to live according to its own self image?
The Dogs of War on a Leash? In South Korea, War Hysteria Is Seen as an American Problem
A street sign in Gwangju demands the immediate imprisonment of former president Park Geun-hye and her corporate supporters. (Tim Shorrock) [Click on image for best resolution]
BY TIM SHORROCK
The big issue here is the May 9 presidential election, which is expected to bring a progressive to power.
So far, however, my stay here has overlapped with the greatest contrast of all—the sharp difference between American and South Korean coverage of North Korea’s nuclear and missile program and the huge perception gap about the situation by US and South Korean citizens.
Shortly before I flew from Washington, DC, to Seoul, a US Navy aircraft carrier group led by the USS Carl Vinson was ordered to move toward Korean waters. Immediately, the US media started broadcasting dire reports about the possibility of US pre-emptive strikes from these ships on the North’s military facilities. With CNN available on most cable systems here, the alarming news spread far and wide.
The reports were fueled by a steady flow of threatening tweets from President Trump and dire predictions and warnings from his cabinet (led by the oafish Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson). Their pronouncements were reinforced by the hawkish and frequently unhinged Korea “experts” who dominate cable television.
For the most part, the US media have been split between lurid speculation about what such a war might look like and gleeful guesswork about whether Trump will send SEAL Team Six assassination squads to take out Kim Jong-un, the North’s boyish, 33-year-old dictator.
The US literally flattened the North causing the death of millions of people. Most Americans blithely (as usual) unaware of these crimes, but doubtful they would mind, considering the usual thick fog of self-approving propaganda surrounding US military interventions anywhere. If 90 million Americans had been killed by the world’s superpower at some time in the recent past, would we be a bit paranoid, too? As sociopathically sterile as it comes, the Pentagons caption for this air raid on North Korea reads: Fifth Air Force, Korea–A dramatic stop-action photograph shows nine high explosive missiles leaving the bomb bay of a U.S. Air Force 3rd Bomb wing B-26 light bomber over a Communist target in North Korea. The light bombers fly day and night combat missions, attacking key Red military targets including rail and road bridges, communication centers, supply-laden vehicles and troop and supply areas along the battleline. AIR AND SPACE MUSEUM#: 84203 AC
Observers with deep understanding of Korean affairs, such as John Delury, a professor at Seoul’s Yonsei University who recently mapped out a sensible plan for diplomacy with the North in The New York Times, are rarely consulted. And, as is usual with North Korea, most American reporting lacks any historical context, includes virtually no Korean voices, and is almost universally in favor of the confrontational approach adopted by both Trump and his predecessor, Barack Obama.
As the historian Bruce Cumings pointed out in The Nation last month, the American press assiduously avoids any mention of the horror inflicted on the North by US warplanes during the Korean War, as well as the long history of US military provocations on the peninsula. (His article should be required reading for anybody seeking to understand Kim’s motives; perhaps MSNBC’s Chris Hayes, a former Nation editor, would consider inviting Cumings on his All In show to counter the inflammatory, one-sided discussions on his network.)
Sadly, though, NBC has been the source for the most abysmal stories. On April 13, the network, citing “multiple senior US intelligence officials,” proclaimed that Trump was “prepared to launch a preemptive strike with conventional weapons against North Korea should officials become convinced that North Korea is about to follow through with a nuclear weapons test.”
But the story was widely rebuked as reckless and without foundation. According to South Korea’s Hankyoreh, “reporters covering the South Korean Ministry of National Defense for other US news outlets unanimously dismissed the report as false. South Korean foreign affairs sources bluntly called the report ‘a canard.’” The story was so outlandish that the Trump administration itself was forced to repudiate it, with a National Security Council spokesperson tellingABC the story was “way wrong.”
Pyongyang, of course, added its own hyperbole. “North Korea will immediately make its own kind of appropriate super-hardline response according to the kind and the intensity of the American provocation,” the Korean People’s Army declared in a statement on April 14, Hankyroreh reported.
If attacked, the KPA said, it was prepared to strike, including with nuclear weapons, at “all of the bases of evil,” including the US military bases “in South Korea such as those at Osan, Gunsan and Pyeongtaek.” In a swat at Japan and the US bases there, the KPA reminded Trump “that all American bases throughout the Pacific region, including those on Guam, Okinawa and the Japanese main island, are within the sights of our strategic rocket forces.”
The sensational US coverage and the North’s statements convinced many Americans that war was imminent. My 93-year-old father in California, who worked as a missionary in Korea for many years, was deeply frightened by the reports. All last week I received e-mails and Facebook messages from family and friends urging me to come home as soon as I could. My response was always: No worries, ordinary South Koreans are not concerned at all.
“I’m much more worried about anything President Trump might do than the threats…from North Korea.” —South Korean professor
With the exception of a tiny minority of fanatical anti-communists, South Koreans have largely been unfazed by the headlines. “I’m much more worried about anything President Trump might do than the threats of war and retaliation from North Korea,” a friend of mine who teaches engineering at a local university in Gwangju told me over dinner one night. His sentiment is widely echoed throughout South Korea.
In Seoul, people are going about their regular business. “For many South Koreans, the concerns about the North can feel like a rite of spring, along with the rain showers or the cherry blossoms that crowds flock to see this time of year,” two Seoul-based reporters for TheWall Street Journal wrote last Friday. On Saturday, James Pearson, the Reuters correspondent in Seoul, took time out from his extensive coverage of North Korea’s missile tests to tweet that “South Koreans in general are not interested in the fireworks north of the DMZ.”
As if to make his point, that day thousands of South Koreans turned out nationwide for an emotional issue close to home: marking the third anniversary of the Sewol ferry disaster. In 2014, more than 300 people, most of them high school students, died when the ferry capsized just over a mile from shore. Many Koreans blame their recently deposed president, Park Geun-hye, for the government’s botched rescue of the ship (she was indicted for bribery, abuse of power, and other corruption charges on Monday). Park’s cold response to the victims—she was reportedly getting her hair done during the disaster and refused to meet with the bereaved families—was a key factor in the movement to impeach her.
In fact, preventing a return to conservative, right-wing rule seems to be the dominant theme for Korean citizens. In Gwangju, which was the scene of a violent South Korean military crackdown and massacre in May 1980, the focus is the country’s future after Park’s forced resignation and recent arrest. The sentiment was best expressed by a large sign in Gwangju’s downtown last week. It demanded the immediate imprisonment of Park and the chiefs of Samsung, Lotte, and other conglomerates being investigated for bribing her while she was in office.
To be sure, the escalating rhetoric between the United States and North Korea over the past few weeks, as well as Trump’s threats to “do it alone,” has greatly alarmed Korean politicians of all stripes.
South Korea will choose its next president on May 9. The two leading candidates, the liberal Moon Jae-in and the more centrist Ahn Cheol-soo, have wide leads over the likely conservative candidate, Hong Jun-pyo. The United States has been closely following the election with growing trepidation. As I reported last year before Park was deposed, US military officials and analysts have expressed alarm that the left opposition could win this year.
Moon was a top adviser to the later former president Roh Moo-hyun, who was a progressive labor lawyer before entering politics. Moon has staked out a position very different from Trump’s: He has called for direct dialogue and negotiations with North Korea and a reopening of the economic cooperation with the North championed by Roh and Kim Dae-jung, the beloved opposition leader who was president in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
These ideas are very attractive to Koreans tired of the years-long dispute between Pyongyang and Washington. “We in South Korea can do this on our own initiative,” one of my colleagues at the Gwangju City Archives told me over lunch on Monday, referring to Kim’s “Sunshine” policies toward the North. A professor of European industrial history at a nearby university told me many Koreans are convinced that the United States wants to maintain the North as an enemy to “help your military industry.”
He has a point. Moon has also said the United States should delay deployment of the controversial Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system known as THAAD (built by Lockheed Martin) until the next government is in place, although he has wavered on that in recent days. But the THAAD anti-missile batteries were hurriedly dispatchedto South Korea last month by the Pentagon despite the concerns of Moon and others that it could destabilize relations with China.
Ahn, who made his name as a software executive, has taken a more hard line, saying he agrees with the immediate deployment of THAAD. But like Moon, he has emphasized the importance of negotiations and China’s involvement in the process. Meanwhile, at their first group debate on April 13, both Moon and Ahn expressedstrong opposition to a unilateral US pre-emptive strike and emphasized that South Korea must play a lead role in any dealings with North Korea or China. The candidates are now running neck and neck, and either one could win the presidency.
And on Sunday, as Vice President Mike Pence was arriving in South Korea to consult with the acting government in Seoul, H.R. McMaster, Trump’s National Security Adviser, seemed to confirm the new policy. “It’s time for us to undertake all actions we can, short of a military option, to try to resolve this peacefully,” he said on ABC’s This Week program, according to Reuters.
For the progressive forces here, however, the war talk coming from both Trump and Kim Jong-un is deep cause for concern. In a stinging editorial on Easter Sunday, the Hankyoreh newspaper, which was founded by journalists purged during the authoritarian 1970s and ’80s, blamed both sides for aggravating tensions.
“A military clash on the Korean Peninsula would have disastrous consequences not only for North and South Korea but also for all neighboring countries,” the newspaper said. “That is why we will never agree with hardliners who are willing to go to war and who see war as inevitable. The brinkmanship of the U.S. and North Korea, which appear to be engaged in a battle of nerves, is tantamount to taking hostage the entire populations of North and South Korea.”
Still, the feeling here in Gwangju and elsewhere seems to be that this, too, shall pass—until someone comes along with the courage and stamina to buck the United States and try serious engagement for a change. After all, this is their country. That’s a lesson too many Americans, in their obsession with North Korea as a strategic enemy, seem to forget.
Tim Shorrock is spending April and May working at Gwangju’s 5.18 Archives to integrate his collection of declassified US-government documents on Korea into the archive’s collection of materials on the 1980 Gwangju Uprising. In 2015, he was named an honorary citizen of Gwangju for his reporting on the US role in Korea during the uprising.
Experts: “In a nuclear war between the US and Russia, everybody in the world would die.”)
Why contributing to the Greanville Post is urgent and makes sense.
DISCLAIMER
What will it take to bring America to live according to its own self image?
Is Trump threatening an attack on North Korea? (Part 2)
Dispatch from Beijing
With Jeff J. Brown
US Some of the backdrop pieces and maneuvers are detailed below.
As of today, Baba Beijing is continuing to pressure the US to dismantle THAAD, a weapon which the South Korean population is likely to oppose, too, since it guarantees their involvement in a US-China-Russia conflagration:
(1) China urges US, ROK to stop THAAD deployment immediately
As well as sending an ominous message to both Kim and Trump:
And this:
(2) New Korean War may break out ‘at any moment’ – Chinese FM
People watch a television news showing file footage of a North Korean missile launch, at a railway station in Seoul on April 5, 2017. © JUNG YEON-JE / AFP
The extraordinary warning comes amid massive US military buildup near the Korean Peninsula, with the carrier strike group ‘USS Carl Vinson’ heading towards the region. While US President Donald Trump is threatening to “take care” of the North Korean “problem,” Pyongyang says it is ready to repel any military action.
Washington’s arrogant policies over decades have left North Korea no alternative between all-out war and surrender and vassalage, which Pyongyang is not going to accept.
‘We will go to war if they choose’: N. Korea warns ‘aggressive’ Trump not to provoke Pyongyang
“Lately, tensions have risen with the US and the ROK [South Korea] on one side, and the DPRK [North Korea] on the other,”Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi told reporters on Friday, adding that “One has the feeling that a conflict could break out at any moment.”
He cautioned both sides that “if a war occurs, the result is a situation in which everybody loses and there can be no winner,”and that whichever side provoked a conflict “must assume the historic responsibility and pay the corresponding price.”
Earlier in the day, Wang said both Washington and Pyongyang must refrain from “provoking and threatening each other, whether in words or actions, and not let the situation get to an irreversible and unmanageable stage,” as cited by Reuters.
In an apparent attempt to cool down the US administration’s bellicose rhetoric, he added: “Force cannot solve the problem – dialogue can be the only channel to resolving the problem.”
China, North Korea’s close ally and main trading partner, does not welcome Pyongyang’s nuclear program, but advocates finding political solution to the crisis. For its part, Russia, which also shares a land border with the reclusive state, expressed deep concern over the mounting tensions on the Korean Peninsula.
The tension on the Korean Peninsula was one of the topics Wang Yi discussed with his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov in a Friday phone call.
Moscow stands for “politico-diplomatic reconciliation” and urges all parties to show patience and refrain from “any actions which might mean making provocative steps,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Friday.
From 1950 to 1953, the US fought against North Korea’s troops in the Korean War. After the US-led coalition forces crossed the 38th parallel dividing the two Koreas, China deployed troops and entered the war, while the USSR rendered military and logistical support to their socialist allies. The conflict, which quickly became a war of attrition, claimed the lives of over 33,000 American and 400,000 North Korean soldiers.
According to some media reports, the ongoing US military buildup close to North Korean waters may go far beyond an ordinary show of force. On Thursday, American intelligence officials told NBC that the US has sent two destroyers capable of launching Tomahawk cruise missiles in the region, with one just 300 miles (some 480 km) from the North Korean nuclear test site.
American long-range bombers have also been positioned in Guam to hit North Korean targets. In turn, North Korea warned on Tuesday it would retaliate to any sign of American aggression with all means available.
“If the US dares opt for a military action, crying out for ‘pre-emptive attack’, [Pyongyang] is ready to react. We will hold the US wholly accountable for the catastrophic consequences to be entailed by its outrageous actions,” North Korea’s deputy foreign minister said in an interview with AP.
“The US introduces into the Korean Peninsula, the world’s biggest hotspot, huge nuclear strategic assets, seriously threatening peace and security of the peninsula and pushing the situation there to the brink of a war,” the North’s General Staff said in a statement carried by KCNA.
(3) While making a harmless symbolic protest to the North: http://www.presstv.com/Detail/2017/04/14/518018/Air-China-suspend-flights-North-Korea. North Korea’s airplanes will fly to and from Beijing fuller now.
(4) More stage set PR for Western consumption, on the part of Beijing: http://gbtimes.com/world/china-coal-imports-north-korea-suspended-feb-19, since kilometres of (covered) rail cars move weekly between China, Russia and North Korea: https://www.greanvillepost.com/2017/03/19/china-north-korea-and-the-upcoming-international-sanctions-china-rising/
http://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1042547.shtml. Westerners love to tell me what a crazy crackpot Kim Jong-un is. Their gullibility proves the point: he is very smart, astute and knows exactly what he is doing. All great leaders are consummate actors and Kim loves cinema. Not to mention that he and his staff are in contact with Beijing 24/7.
(6) This is all timed for three of the North’s biggest holidays, happening in quick succession in April: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_holidays_in_North_Korea. Echoes of the Tet Offensive or the Yom Kippur War?
(7) Beijing comments on the US’s use of its near-nuclear bomb in Afghanistan, with rational conclusions. We reproduce the text in toto (bold ours):
This bombing is clearly aimed at testing the weapon in real combat and provides a new gimmick in US military deterrence. North Korea must have felt the shock wave traveling all the way from Afghanistan. It would be nice if the bomb could frighten Pyongyang but its actual impact may just be the opposite.
Kim Jong-un is weighing his options. The message sent by the US military is not conducive to helping Pyongyang make a reasonable decision.
The US seems to enjoy a privilege to do whatever it likes. To the world, this could bring more danger than security.
(8) This just in and surely timed for similar reasons:
US Air Force test-drops gravity nuclear bomb
http://www.presstv.com/Detail/2017/04/14/518059/USAF-F16-B61-Waugh.
(9) One of the possible secret Citrus Summit quid pro quos is now official:
US Treasury does not label China currency manipulator, keeps on monitor list
https://www.rt.com/usa/384799-us-treasury-china-currency-manipulator/
CONCLUSIONS
One interesting possibility is this could all be staged to allow Trump and Kim to meet, and it may be one of the Citrus Summit quid pro quos. Trump is a Washington outsider who could pull this off: http://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1042534.shtml. The Bush-Clinton-Obama War Party would never consider it. Here’s an excerpt:
If a nuclear war is to be avoided, the US should not set any preconditions for direct talks with North Korea.
The United States should not insist on any preconditions for direct talks with the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) and China's "suspension for suspension" proposal could serve as the basis for further negotiation, a US expert said in a recent interview with Xinhua.
Joel Wit, senior fellow at the US-Korea Institute at Johns Hopkins University, said the recent increased tensions at the Korean Peninsula seemed puzzling. Tensions on the Korean peninsula are rising as the DPRK on Friday warned of "toughest counteraction" in response to what it called "reckless miliary provocation" after the United States sent USS Carl Vinson aircraft carrier group to waters near the Korean Peninsula in what it called a "reaction to provocations" by the DPRK with recent missile tests. "I don't see why tensions are going up," said Wit. "There's nothing that has happened in the past month that necessitated sending a carrier battle group there, or increasing tensions."
Tensions could heat up if the DPRK conducts a new nuclear test, but right now nothing had happened that could really change the situation dramatically, he added. Long before joining the Johns Hopkins University, Wit served as senior advisor from 1993 to 1995 to Robert Galluci, then chief US negotiator with the DPRK during the Korean Peninsula nuclear crisis of 1994. Later, Wit became the US official in charge of implementing the 1994 US-DPRK Agreed Framework from 1995 to 1999. He told Xinhua that the main lesson from dealing with the DPRK in the past two decades is to realize that the DPRK is not irrational as the United States would think.
"They keenly understand their own national interests, and act on those interests. Right now their main national interest is to build nuclear weapons and the missiles to deliver them. That's very clear to them," said Wit. The main reason for the DPRK to move forward with its nuclear weapons program is "to defend itself against what it feels is a threat from the United States and US allies in the region, South Korea and Japan," said Wit.
"In the past, there have been times when they thought their national interests required better relations with the United States, and as a result of that, they were willing to limit their nuclear weapons program, or even get rid of it," said Wit. "We need to keep that in mind as we try to find a way out of this problem." In his first trip to Asia in March, US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said there would be no negotiation until the DPRK agreed to dismantle its nuclear programs. However, Wit said that there should not be any preconditions for establishing an "informal get-together" between the United States and the DPRK to explore whether formal talks are possible. "At that first get-together, or maybe more than one meeting, we shouldn't have any preconditions," Wit told Xinhua. "It should just be a discussion about issues each side is concerned about."
The United States should not insist on any preconditions for direct talks with the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) and China's "suspension for suspension" proposal could serve as the basis for further negotiation, a US expert said in a recent interview with Xinhua.
Joel Wit, senior fellow at the US-Korea Institute at Johns Hopkins University, said the recent increased tensions at the Korean Peninsula seemed puzzling. Tensions on the Korean peninsula are rising as the DPRK on Friday warned of "toughest counteraction" in response to what it called "reckless miliary provocation" after the United States sent USS Carl Vinson aircraft carrier group to waters near the Korean Peninsula in what it called a "reaction to provocations" by the DPRK with recent missile tests. "I don't see why tensions are going up," said Wit. "There's nothing that has happened in the past month that necessitated sending a carrier battle group there, or increasing tensions."
Tensions could heat up if the DPRK conducts a new nuclear test, but right now nothing had happened that could really change the situation dramatically, he added. Long before joining the Johns Hopkins University, Wit served as senior advisor from 1993 to 1995 to Robert Galluci, then chief US negotiator with the DPRK during the Korean Peninsula nuclear crisis of 1994. Later, Wit became the US official in charge of implementing the 1994 US-DPRK Agreed Framework from 1995 to 1999. He told Xinhua that the main lesson from dealing with the DPRK in the past two decades is to realize that the DPRK is not irrational as the United States would think.
"They keenly understand their own national interests, and act on those interests. Right now their main national interest is to build nuclear weapons and the missiles to deliver them. That's very clear to them," said Wit. The main reason for the DPRK to move forward with its nuclear weapons program is "to defend itself against what it feels is a threat from the United States and US allies in the region, South Korea and Japan," said Wit.
"In the past, there have been times when they thought their national interests required better relations with the United States, and as a result of that, they were willing to limit their nuclear weapons program, or even get rid of it," said Wit. "We need to keep that in mind as we try to find a way out of this problem." In his first trip to Asia in March, US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said there would be no negotiation until the DPRK agreed to dismantle its nuclear programs. However, Wit said that there should not be any preconditions for establishing an "informal get-together" between the United States and the DPRK to explore whether formal talks are possible. "At that first get-together, or maybe more than one meeting, we shouldn't have any preconditions," Wit told Xinhua. "It should just be a discussion about issues each side is concerned about."
Is all this surreal Kabuki theatre, carefully planned out by Xi, Trump and Kim? Is a pending fake “Syrian airport bombing” false flag in the works, above the 38th parallel? Is this all to bring tensions to a fever pitch for a miraculous, cliffhanging, white knuckled US-Korean détente?
We must remember FDR’s refrain that everything happens at this level of (geo-) politics, at a particular time, for a reason, meaning prior knowledge and planning. Or, as John R. Hall detailed recently, we should adopt Hunter S. Thompson’s “180 Degree Theory”: everything (in politics) is exactly the opposite of what it appears to be https://www.greanvillepost.com/2017/02/06/doing-a-180-with-hunter-s-thompson/.
Fasten your seatbelts, boys and girls. Oh, joy!
Jeff in China
Jeff J. Brown—TGP’s Beijing correspondent— is the author of 44 Days (2013), Reflections in Sinoland – Musings and Anecdotes from the Belly of the New Century Beast (summer 2015), and Doctor WriteRead’s Treasure Trove to Great English (2015). He is currently writing an historical fiction, Red Letters – The Diaries of Xi Jinping, due out in 2016. In addition, a new anthology on China, China Rising, Capitalist Roads, Socialist Destinations, is also scheduled for publication this summer. Jeff is commissioned to write monthly articles for The Saker and The Greanville Post, touching on all things China, and the international political & cultural scene
In China, he has been a speaker at TEDx, the Bookworm Literary Festival, the Capital M Literary Festival, the Hutong, as well as being featured in an 18-part series of interviews on Radio Beijing AM774, with former BBC journalist, Bruce Connolly. He has guest lectured at international schools in Beijing and Tianjin.
Jeff grew up in the heartland of the United States, Oklahoma, and graduated from Oklahoma State University. He went to Brazil while in graduate school at Purdue University, to seek his fortune, which whet his appetite for traveling the globe. This helped inspire him to be a Peace Corps Volunteer in Tunisia in 1980 and he lived and worked in Africa, the Middle East, China and Europe for the next 21 years. All the while, he mastered Portuguese, Arabic, French and Mandarin, while traveling to over 85 countries. He then returned to America for nine years, whereupon he moved back to China in 2010. He currently lives in Beijing with his wife, where he writes, while being a school teacher in an international school. Jeff is a dual national French-American.
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