Category: KOREA/NORTH KOREA - The Greanville Post

Donald Trump’s DoD chief’s trip to Seoul and the ensuing, customary saber-rattling against North Korea prompted our reposting of an excellent piece by John LaForge on the same topic. The essay is preceded by an editorial annotation focusing on the unchanging evil nature of US foreign policy.

Reviewing the essays written over the years by critics of US foreign policy, one thing stands out immediately: the obstinate sameness and continuity of America’s warmongering against enemies big and small, most of them manufactured by America itself (or imagined). Indeed, except for very brief interludes, America has been continually at war since its inception.

Why is there no change or let up in this invariably horrendous script, equal parts high-handed hypocrisy and arrogant sanctimoniousness, and always lavishly buttressed by jingoist exceptionalism and the most outrageous fabrications? The only rational answer is that US foreign policy is not so much a true adaptive and honorable response to changing world events in an effort to safeguard the authentic national interest, but the playing out of American capitalism’s sordid quest for global supremacy, a project that inevitably implies enormous imperial crimes that benefit no one but a puny plutocratic minority in control of the US government.

Since few people would be willing to spill their blood or allow the national treasure to be plundered for such ignoble purposes, none of this colossal scam is possible without the aid of American imperialism’s numerous self-serving myths so reliably served by its ideological outgrowth, the corporate controlled media, easily the most devious propaganda machine ever seen in history. Unfortunately, although it’s clear the mainstream media is losing traction in its ability to sell lies with impunity, relief from this imposture does not appear possible in the near future. Thus, as is the case with US foreign policy, which recognizes only force, never morality, and which, as a curse on humanity will not be stopped until the vampire system that engenders it is eliminated, the prostitution of the American media—from its ostensible “entertainment” sector to its so-called “news” programmes—will not disappear until corporate power itself, and its venomous influence on mass communications, is broken.

Many well-intentioned people wonder how this ludicrously malevolent state of affairs came to be. The explanation is mundane. In most cases, the widespread collaboration of American media figures with the imperial lies issues not so much from harsh coercion, as in an openly despotic regime, but from simple selfish careerism and self-preservation, selfishness being a well-entrenched and even admired “virtue” in the upside down world of US capitalist values. Says Paul Street, sagely, in a recent piece:

American “mainstream” journalists who want to keep their paychecks flowing and their status afloat know they must report current events in a way that respects the taboo status of the nation’s underlying inequality and oppression structures and its savage and relentless imperial criminality. Those topics are understood as off limits, as beyond the narrow parameters of acceptable and polite discussion. They are subjects that serious reporters and commentators have the deeply indoctrinated common sense to avoid.

That such careerism causes the death of untold millions and the destruction of the planet’s essential ecosystems and quite possibly its incineration in an imbecilic nuclear war is apparently a bargain most Western journalists are quite prepared to tolerate.

The above is aggravated by the epidemic of complacent ignorance and unquestioned belief in the national mythology we observe among mainstream journalists, regardless of social background. Thus, while many who hail from small-town “patriotic” America, folks like Dan Rather and Charlie Rose, two prominent CBS “journalists”, are apparently proud to put what they perceive as their patriotic duty (as dictated by the State Dept.) above truth or fairness, their Ivy League, Big City colleagues are scarcely exempt from the same vice.

Confronted and clearly exasperated with this universe of pseudo-facts and decontextualized news fueling the incorrigibly vile nature of US foreign policy, John Gerassi, himself a former journalist, fired the following evaluation:

A great deal is being written in America these days about Pax Americana and American hegemony in the underdeveloped world. No longer able to blot out the obvious, even calm, rational, conscientious academicians are publicly lamenting America’s increasingly bellicose policies from Vietnam to the Dominican Republic. Suddenly, as if awakened from a technicolor dream, intellectuals are discovering such words as “imperialism” and “expansionism.” And they are asking: Why? Who’s to blame? What can be done to stop all this?

The questions are childish, the assumptions false, the implications naïve. They reflect a liberal point of view, one that claims that there is a qualitative difference between U.S. policies today and yesterday. In fact, American foreign policy has varied only in degree, not in kind. It has been cohesive, coherent, and consistent. What has varied has been its strength—and its critics.

The basic difference between American imperialism today and American imperialism a century ago is that it is more violent, more far-reaching, and more carefully planned today. But American foreign policy, at least since 1823, has always been assertive, always expansionist, always imperialist. Of course, it has rarely been pushed beyond America’s capabilities. Thus, when the United States was weak, its interventions abroad were mild. When its strength grew, so did its daring. Today, as the most powerful nation on earth, with a technological advance over other countries of mammoth proportions, the United States can be imperialistic on all continents with relative security. (John Gerassi, Violence, Revolution, and Structural Change in Latin America).

Gerassi wrote this assessment in the early 1960s. Plus ça change, uh?

Salvador de Madariaga, a liberal and cynic of the old school, quoted in the same piece by Gerassi, was also struck by the robotic course of US foreign policy. His explanation found the roots of the phenomenon in native capitalism’s sacralization of American foreign policy. Consistent with this view, Madariaga argued that American foreign policy cannot be questioned because it is no so much a policy as a religious tenet: the dogma of the infallibility of the American President and the dogma of the immaculate conception of American foreign policy. The illustrious de Madariaga gave us his opinion in the 1930s.

CONCLUSION

In the excellent essay reproduced below by John LaForge, first published in January of 2016, we see, once again, the malignant reality of US exceptionalist foreign, cynically piling up threats and quite possible a huge deal of pain on a small nation the United States has tortured for well over half a century, all the while pushing the world ever closer to a tragic conflagration. For obvious reasons, now that Donald Trump’s own military emissary, Secretary for War Gen. James Mattis, has flown to South Korea to issue the usual carefully choreographed “assurances of support” by the US against some manufactured threat, we find LaForge’s essay all the more compelling. Hence this repost.

It bears repeating: None of this revolting cowardice and ugliness will stop until the American people see through this carefully maintained claptrap and dismantle the vicious empire behind it, to the last toxic brick. One can only hope that if that great day ever comes, those who have plotted and committed so many crimes against humanity, and nature itself, will be arraigned before a Nuremberg-type tribunal and dealt swift justice. I should think that, for the sake of fairness and comprehensiveness, that judgment will also should include their virtual army of media flacks and accomplices.

Meanwhile, as long as we have a supremacist capitalism at the helm of America’s ship of state we’ll have a sociopathic foreign policy.

—P. Greanville

The US Tiger and the North Korean Mouse

by John LaForge | Common Dreams, Jan. 16, 2016

Dateline for this photo: Feb. 1, 2017. Gen. Mattis in South Korea issuing threats against the North, and justifying the THAAD nuclear de-stabilizing system aimed at China and Russia, and not Pyongyang, as claimed.

[dropcap]N[/dropcap]orth Korea’s claim to have conducted a hydrogen bomb test January 5 has been both ridiculed as completely implausible and condemned from all sides as provocative and a violation of UN Security Council Resolutions. Without any hard evidence that North Korea has a single H-bomb, official “concern” needs to be manufactured if our weapons contractors are to stay in business.

We could expect to hear Senator Bob Corker, R-Tenn., chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, chant that he wants the US “to take a more assertive role in addressing North Korea’s provocation.” But Anna Fifield, the Washington Post Bureau Chief in Tokyo who should be an impartial observer, wrote Jan. 6 that the underground test was a “brazen provocation and a clear defiance of international treaties.” She later told National Public Radio that she wouldn’t want to speculate about what motivated the North’s President Kim Jong Un, because the inside of his head “is a scary place.” The interviewer let this assertion go unchallenged.

North Korea is such a military, economic and political nothing, that it’s astounding to see the national media parrot official Pentagon and State Department fear-mongering about its patently obvious and unquestionably terrible intentions. When was the last time North Korea bombed, invaded, militarily occupied, or installed puppet regimes in other lands? Those provocatively brazen violations of international treaties were committed by … the United States of America.

When has North Korea placed 5,000-man, 60-aircraft “super carriers” (the largest ships in the world) in the Persian Gulf and attacked Yemen, Pakistan, Somalia, Iraq, Libya, Syria and Afghanistan using Reaper drones and jet fighter-bombers? Oh right; that was the North Americans.

In 1999, US-led NATO air forces bombed Serbia and Kosovo for 78 days. That wasn’t long after US cruise missile attacks on Sudan and Afghanistan — which in turn barely followed Clinton’s 1998 Christmas-time bombing of Iraq. That of course was only an intensification of the ongoing carrier-based campaign of bombing Iraq two or three times every week for 12 years from 1991 to 2003 — when under false pretenses the Bush/Cheney horror went viral with extreme prejudice. At least 370,000 civilian deaths can be blamed on the 1991 (Bush I) and 2003 (Bush II) US wars on Iraq.

In October 2001, the Air Force and Navy returned to bombing and rocketing Afghanistan, eventually toppling the government and occupying the country. Now with the private contractors and hand-picked presidents having turned Iraq into a failed police state, it is easy to see how the global public, when polled, declares the United States the most dangerous country on earth. I haven’t forgotten that in 2003 protesters in nearly every capital city carried posters depicting the US president as a “Most Wanted” fugitive from justice, a war criminal and a danger to world order. What a relief that Barak Obama has a Peace Prize with which to conduct indiscriminate warfare, torturous force-feeding of hunger strikers, and indefinite detention of suspects without charges just like his predecessors.

A danger to the world?

[dropcap]B[/dropcap]ut forget the opinion of the world’s 95 percent, the Mpls. Star Tribune reported without attribution that, “US military planners view [North Korea] as the world’s most dangerous state.” With two-thirds the population of California, no oil, and having endured in the mid-1990s a famine that killed one-tenth of its population, North Korea is certainly more threatening than the US which has military bases in more than 100 countries, 10 aircraft carriers (Russia and China each have 1), and 14 ballistic missile submarines.

According to US intelligence services, North Korea is suspected of having perhaps two nuclear weapons and an annual military budget of $7.5 billion in 2014. The US’s roughly $600 billion Pentagon allotment [admitted budget, real one a secret] includes 4,000 nuclear warheads on alert. Any one of the (eight) Trident subs that the US Navy keeps in the Pacific is capable of burning down the entire Korean landmass.

Even if North Korea had a rocket that could aim straight, what could it expect to gain by attacking South Korea or Japan? This central question is never asked, much less answered, by the screamers on FOX, the Senators from Lockheed-Martin, or the Representatives from Northrop-Grumman.

If the illogic sounds familiar, it is. There was never an answer to the question: Why would the USSR attack Western Europe or the United States during the Cold War? What the Soviets would have gained by attacking, and what North Korea could achieve with aggression, is obvious: Absolutely nothing — beyond self-destruction.

With luck, the US tiger will just hold its breath and tremble at the mousey shadow of North Korea, which never stops provoking. A few years ago it had the nerve to ask the White House for a promise that it won’t be preemptively attacked.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

John LaForge is on the Nukewatch staff and edits its Quarterly.

ANDRE VLTCHEK

Japan mourns your departure, Barack Obama! You were a predictable ruler, and a genuinely traditional imperialist. You spoke so well, and tormented all those unruly colonies with admirable zeal and effectiveness!

What is coming is untested and therefore frightening. Obedient and disciplined Japan historically detests unpredictability.

It doesn’t mind prostituting itself, but only if it brings significant tangible benefits and as long as strict protocol and decorum are fully respected. The future scenario could be frightening: Who knows, that new chap across the ocean could soon ruin all the etiquette; calling whores and profiteers by their real names.

The Japanese government and big business are now shaking in dread, day and night. What changes are coming? How to please the new foul-speaking lord?

Ten billion dollars will be spent – or should we say ‘invested’ – in the United States by car giant Toyota to appease the new Emperor. Why not, every penny of it is worth it! The Emperor has to be kept happy. Japan is ready to arm itself to the teeth, provoking both North Korea but especially China? Yes and yes again, as long as the global ‘balance of power’ so greatly in favor of Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan for decades, remains intact.

‘America & Japan are imperialist countries guided by special interests’

The conservative Prime Minister of the country, Shinzo Abe, doesn’t want any ‘dangerous’ developments, any deviations. As far as he is concerned, things are just fine as they were. Not perfect, but fine. Japan has been exactly where it should be: on its back, aging, but still desirable, eating mountains of caviar and oysters.

Things are, however, ‘developing,’ rapidly and some would say, irreversibly. New US President Donald Trump, is clearly allergic to China as well as to several other Asian countries. He is preaching protectionism and an extreme form of nationalism, something that used to be synonymous with Japan’s trade and business practices of the past.

Somehow, this does not appear to be in Japan’s favor. Japan was allowed to be protectionist, in exchange for its unconditional political obedience. It thought that it was awarded almost exclusive privileges.

Now paradoxically, Japan is trying to save the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a 12-nation free trade agreement, which Donald Trump is nuking. Japan’s parliament even ratified the pact at the end of 2016. Foreign Policy Magazine (FPM) said in its report published in January 2017: “Abe Wants to Be the Last Free Trade Samurai.”

Japan’s business class, slaves to order and predictability, are panicked by Trump’s legendary capricious ways.

In fact, Shinzo Abe is desperately trying to preserve Japan’s prominent position, at least in Asia, and mainly against China, which is intensively negotiating its own economic partnership agreement with several Asian countries called the ‘Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership’ (RCEP). Mr. Abe is also trying to push through his brutal neo-liberal reforms that are encountering resistance from the Japanese public.

FPM wrote: “TPP gives the government the handy excuse it now needs to take unpopular reform measures meant to give a new push to the Abenomics program. Blaming outsiders for such ‘un-Japanese’ actions is a popular political maneuver that even gets a special name ‘gaiatsu’.”

Japan’s desperate desire to remain the regional superpower is pushing it even closer toward the West, and particularly the United States. Since WWII, the country has been wholly dependent on Washington (and its market fundamentalist dogmas), to such an extent that it almost entirely abandoned its own global vision and foreign policy.

In the meantime, Japan is trying even further to penetrate and subjugate various Southeast Asian countries, literally wrestling them away from the increasing influence of China and Russia. It is a very complex, often bizarre game, as Abe’s government is habitually acting by inertia, doing what was expected of it by the earlier US administrations, not necessarily by the upcoming one.

Once totally under Western control, the Southeast Asian monolith is beginning to crack: the Philippines under President Duterte and Vietnam after some fundamental leadership changes in early 2016 are moving closer toward China and away from Washington’s orbit. Even Thailand, one of the most dependable Cold War allies of the West is quickly discovering the many advantages that come from a stronger relationship with Beijing.

In Asia, resistance against Western imperialism is on the rise, and Japan is in a panic. It collaborated for so long that it lost all memories of acting independently. In exchange for betraying Asia, it used to reap significant benefits; the gap between its astronomical standards of living and those in the rest of Asia used to be exorbitant, but now, the Human Development Index (HDI) rates such countries as South Korea, even higher. Socialist and fiercely independent China is catching up, not only economically but also regarding science, technology, and standards of living.

The essential question is never openly asked, but is creeping into the subconscious thoughts of many Japanese people: ‘Was it really worth it to collaborate so shamelessly with the West, and for so long?’

The Japanese, with their de facto prized “special relationship” with the US are the Brits of Southeast Asia.

The more confusing and unsettling the answers, the more aggressive the behavior of many ordinary Japanese citizens: racism toward the Chinese and Koreans is on the increase. Often it is propelled by a frustration that accompanies defeat; sometimes it comes from shame.

The present is intertwined with history and its interpretation.

China’s Nanking was particularly brutalized, with untold numbers killed, raped and displaced, usually in the most barbaric manner imaginable.

In Nagasaki, I discussed once again the complex intricacies related to Japan’s past, with the legendary Australian historian Geoff Gunn.

Japan never really took full responsibility for the tremendous pain it caused several Asian countries, but particularly China, where around 35 million people vanished during the brutal, genocidal occupation.

It is also silent about its role during the Korean War, and the crimes committed by its corporations in Southeast Asia and elsewhere.

However, it portrays itself as a victim, because of the atomic bombs that destroyed two of its cities – Hiroshima and Nagasaki – at the end of WWII, and because of the annexation of several of its islands by the Soviet Union.

Japan never really took full responsibility for the tremendous pain it caused several Asian countries, but particularly China, where around 35 million people vanished during the brutal, genocidal occupation. It is also silent about its role during the Korean War, and the crimes committed by its corporations in Southeast Asia and elsewhere. Incidentally, the American nuclear bombing of the Japanese cities by the US Air Force (or the fire bombing of Tokyo) was not meant to be a ‘punishment’ for the monstrous crimes Japan committed in China or Korea. It was simply a thinly disguised experiment on human beings, as well as an aggressive message and warning to the Soviet Union.

Of course, the nuclear bombing of the Japanese cities by the US Air Force (or the fire bombing of Tokyo) was not meant to be a ‘punishment’ for the monstrous crimes Japan committed in China or Korea. It was simply a thinly disguised experiment on human beings, as well as an aggressive message and warning to the Soviet Union.

In Japan, everything is taken out of historical context. Collective memory is hazy. The occupation of several Asian and South Pacific countries, the alliance with the European fascist powers, WWII itself, the US occupation and consequent collaboration, Japan’s profiteering during the Korean War, as well as the constant siding with the imperialist policies of the West: it all has been covered by a comforting and softening duvet; by cozy make-believe pseudo-reality.

Obama adding to the fog of history by hypocritically visiting Hiroshima. There is rarely any honorable diplomacy, less so in the age of raging Western imperialism.

While the horrendous US military and air force bases located in Okinawa and Honshu have been intimidating both China and North Korea, Japan has been distributing, hypocritically, all over the world its multi-lingual columns with “May Peace Prevail On Earth” signs, trying to feel good, and congratulating itself for its “peaceful constitution” (composed by the US after the War).

In 2016, Shinzo Abe’s close ally, Barack Obama visited the Peace Park in Hiroshima City. He did not apologize to the victims of the nuclear blast. Instead, he posed with two traditional Japanese paper cranes, the local symbols of peace, and he spoke about the suffering of people during the wars. He wrote a message to promote the abolition of nuclear weapons, and then signed the book, putting the paper crane next to his signature.

How touching!

Servile Japanese media dutifully covered the event. Nobody died from laughter; nobody got sick publicly while recalling countless wars, deadly covert operations, and coups as well as targeted killings that took place while Mr. Obama was the boss of his aggressive Empire.

Shinzo Abe doing his hypocritical jig at Pearl Harbor. The world is drowning in empty symbolism.

A few months later, Mr. Abe visited Pearl Harbor. Like his US counterpart did in Hiroshima, he spoke about the suffering of the US servicemen based in Hawaii during the Japanese attack. He did not apologize, but he turned sentimental, even poetic.

In the end, almost everyone felt well, at least those living in Japan and the West. Others do not matter too much, anyway!

Now the old script is quickly becoming obsolete. The new director is facing the stage, shouting at the actors, hitting seats with his cane, insulting proteges of his predecessors.

Japan is terrified. It likes continuity and certainty. It plays by the rules, the older the better.

This is not looking good. It may not end well, not well at all.

China and Russia are rising, indignant and finally united. Several Asian countries are switching sides. The president of the Philippines is calling Western leaders ‘sons-of-whores’. India, now the most populous country on Earth, has gritted its teeth and ‘just in case’ got itself one more chair, now sitting on two.

At least some in Japan are now (secretly and quietly) suspecting that all along they were betting on the totally wrong horse.

How can a samurai break all his allegiances without losing face? How can he save his ass, when his armor begins to burn? It is not easy; the etiquette of honor is extremely strict, even if honor consists, if stripped of its decorative layer, of brainlessness and sleaze.

One possible and very traditional escape is a ritual suicide. It seems that Japan’s leadership is committing exactly that: it is raising the banner abandoned on the battlefield by the previous warlord, it is trying to gather some scattered allies, and then lead them to the futile battle against the mightiest creature on Earth – the Dragon, and by association, against the dragon’s friend and comrade – the Bear.

It is all beginning to look like a kitschy martial art movie, or like a desperate set of irrational moves performed by a gambler before he reaches utter bankruptcy.

All this could be, however, extremely deceiving, as Mr. Abe is actually not a fool. He is playing a very high game, and he may still have some chances of winning: if the new lord, Mr. Trump, decides to exceed all previous rulers by brutality and aggressiveness, and re-hire the old and well-tested samurai, Japan, for a deadly onslaught against humanity.

It is worth remembering that throughout Japan’s history, not all samurais were fighting for honor. Most of them were for hire.

NOTE: ALL IMAGE CAPTIONS, PULL QUOTES AND COMMENTARY BY THE EDITORS, NOT THE AUTHORS • PLEASE COMMENT AND DEBATE DIRECTLY ON OUR FACEBOOK GROUP CLICK HERE

ANDRE VLTCHEK, Special Roaming Correspondent; Senior Associate, Russia Desk

Andre Vltchek in the Beijing Art District with the dragons.

Born in St. Petersburg, Andre Vltchek is a philosopher, novelist, filmmaker and investigative journalist. He covered wars and conflicts in dozens of countries. His latest books are: “Exposing Lies Of The Empire” and “Fighting Against Western Imperialism”. Discussion with Noam Chomsky: On Western Terrorism. Point of No Return is his critically acclaimed political novel. Oceania – a book on Western imperialism in the South Pacific. His provocative book about Indonesia: “Indonesia – The Archipelago of Fear”. Andre is making films for teleSUR and Press TV. After living for many years in Latin America and Oceania, Vltchek presently resides and works in East Asia and the Middle East. He can be reached through his website or his Twitter. Reach him at andre.vltchek@greanvillepost.com. His work on TGP can be found here.

ABOVE Image by Donkey Hotey

By NILE BOWIE

South Korea’s Park Geun-hye is at the center of a political firestorm and under attack on multiple fronts over a devastating corruption scandal. The country’s first female president faces impeachment and mass street protests calling for her arrest.

The bizarre scandal engulfing Park’s government is rooted in allegations that her longtime personal friend and confidant, Choi Soon-sil, exerted an inordinate amount of influence over government policies, edited the president’s speeches and even influenced government appointments.

Choi, a civilian with no security clearance, was found to illegally possess confidential government documents. Park is also accused of personally lobbying corporations like Samsung and Hyundai to make massive financial contributions to charitable organisations controlled by Choi.

To add to the salaciousness, Korean media reports claim Choi’s father was a spiritual mentor to Park after the death of her parents because of his alleged ability to channel the spirit of her assassinated mother and induce trance-like experiences in the future president.

Park’s approval ratings have plunged to 5 percent and she has agreed to resign in an effort to head off a pending impeachment vote. However, she admitted no legal wrongdoing and called for the country’s ruling assembly to decide the terms of her resignation.

There is speculation that she is attempting to bide her time considering that any proceeding in the assembly would take many months. Even if lawmakers voted overwhelmingly to end Park’s rule, the country’s Constitutional Court judges could block the measure, allowing her to see out her term, due to end at the end of next year.

Since coming to power four years ago, Park has governed high-handedly with a secretive style of leadership that has stoked public curiosity in her closely guarded personal life. She campaigned on reducing income inequality and expanding welfare but emerged adrift as a bland center-right defender of the status quo.

Since coming to power four years ago, Park has governed high-handedly with a secretive style of leadership that has stoked public curiosity in her closely guarded personal life. She campaigned on reducing income inequality and expanding welfare but emerged adrift as a bland center-right defender of the status quo.

Park is heir to a fallen political dynasty, the daughter of Park Chung-Hee, a contentious military dictator strongly associated with the rapid growth and authoritarian politics of his eighteen-year rule. Both her parents were killed in political assassinations during her youth and she has remained an unmarried and solitary figure throughout her life.

ABOVE Photo by Sébastien Bertrand | CC BY 2.0

[dropcap]R[/dropcap]elations with North Korea have reached their nadir under her hawkish foreign policy, symbolized by the closure of the Kaesong Industrial Complex and the suspension of all inter-Korean cooperation and channels for emergency communication between north and south.

She has brought lawsuits for defamation against journalists and engineered the dissolution of the far-left United Progressive Party, ousting elected parliamentarians on the pretext that the party was intent on realizing North Korean-style socialism, when in actuality they held critical views of US military presence in their country and advocated détente with Pyongyang.

Park’s primary foreign policy overture was an extended charm offensive to the Chinese leadership in an attempt to persuade President Xi Jinping to cooperate more fully with Seoul on pressuring North Korea over its nuclear program.

China responded by initially strengthening ties with South Korea, but relations have soured considerably after Seoul agreed to deploy the sophisticated American missile defense system known as Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) on its territory.

Despite mass public opposition inside South Korea against the THAAD deployment, Seoul’s conservative establishment says the system will counter Pyongyang’s nuclear ambitions. China, wary of American military presence near its borders, believes it is the true target of the missile defense system and says the move would impede its security interests.

From mishandling the government’s response to a capsized ferry that killed dozens to a row about whitewashing her father’s legacy in school textbooks, Park’s advocacy of THAAD and her pro-American security orientation has made her deeply unpopular at home while hindering trust and cooperation with China, her country’s biggest trading partner.

The governing party lost its parliamentary majority during Park’s tenure and now faces two emboldened opposition parties with populist programs. However the political crisis plays out, it’s clear that the conservative wing of the political establishment faces a daunting challenge: Park could very well become the first elected president to be removed from office to face trial.

The opposition needs just 28 of the 128 lawmakers from the ruling party to secure her impeachment and this figure may be within reach before the closing of the current the parliamentary session on 9 December. There is already discussion of Park’s successor. Ban Ki-moon, the outgoing UN Secretary General, is considered a front-runner for the job.

There is much speculation that Ban, whose term expires in January 2017, will run though he has yet to confirm or deny his intentions. This would be a formidable challenge for the opposition due to Ban’s stature and prestige as a global diplomatic figure, widely viewed among Koreans as having experience and integrity. It’s unclear whether Ban would side with Park’s party or the opposition should he run.

Park was one of the first world leaders to phone President-elect Donald Trump, whose remarks have shaken Korean confidence in the American leadership. Where US-Korea relations go from here is an open question. It should be remembered that a small but growing segment of Park’s party favors the development of nuclear weapons to deter North Korea.

Given the uncertain political climate brought on by populist victories in the West, Korean voters could opt for a ‘safe’ steady-handed candidate, though it is difficult to imagine a potential Ban Ki-moon presidency as anything other than the caretaking of a stale political order. Whatever the outcome, the impeachment of Park Geun-hye is a real possibility in the days ahead.

NOTE: ALL IMAGE CAPTIONS, PULL QUOTES AND COMMENTARY BY THE EDITORS, NOT THE AUTHORS • PLEASE COMMENT AND DEBATE DIRECTLY ON OUR FACEBOOK GROUP CLICK HERE

Nile Bowie is a columnist with Russia Today (RT) and a research assistant with the International Movement for a Just World (JUST), an NGO based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

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ALEXANDER MERCOURIS, THE DURAN

Though it is rarely reported in that way, the story of North Korea’s bomb provides another case study of how the US and the US media report claims about US adversaries that are simply wrong.

The US has in the past simultaneously exaggerated the threat from North Korea whilst underestimating North Korean capabilities. If that sounds contradictory, the answer is that it is, but it is what the historical record shows the US has done.

Rumours in the US of a North Korean nuclear weapons programme extend far back into the 1960s. By the 1980s they were being reported in the US as a fact. In fact already at that time reports would sometimes appear in the US and Western media claiming that North Korea was actually already in possession of nuclear bombs.

These reports were simply untrue. North Korea did not have nuclear bombs before its first nuclear test in 2006. It did ask the USSR and China for help to develop nuclear weapons in the 1960s after the US deployed nuclear weapons to South Korea.

Both the USSR and China however refused, with the USSR however agreeing to help North Korea develop a civilian nuclear programme and offering North Korea a Soviet security guarantee, which North Korea accepted.

North Korea had no option but to accept the Soviet offers, which led to Soviet help in setting up the now infamous (not to us) Yongbyon nuclear research facility, which was originally created with Soviet help in 1962. Yongbyon’s first reactor – a Soviet IRT2000 research reactor – was supplied at around this time.

Not only did North Korea lack the capability in the 1960s to develop a nuclear weapons programme of its own, but until 1991 in was in all essentials a Soviet satellite state.

The extent to which behind the facade of Kim Il-sung’s juche ideology North Korea was dependent on Soviet support only became fully clear in the 1990s when that Soviet support was withdrawn. Quite simply, despite its odd displays of independence, before 1989 North Korea was tightly integrated into the Soviet economy and was heavily dependent upon the USSR for supplies of military goods, advanced technology and machinery, fertilisers for its farmlands, and above all for political support. Soviet economic planners during this period apparently even set targets for specific North Korean factories.

Before 1989 North Korea could not have pursued its own nuclear weapons programme because Moscow would not have allowed it to.

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]he North Korean nuclear programme in fact began in 1989 in response to the collapse of the Warsaw Pact, which understandably enough caused the North Korean leadership to lose faith in the USSR’s security guarantee.

An important secondary factor in getting the North Korean nuclear weapons programme going after 1989 was however almost certainly and paradoxically the rumours in the West that it already possessed such weapons.

As the North Koreans were increasingly pressed by the US and Western diplomats after 1989 to give up a nuclear weapons capability which at that point they didn’t have, it would not have escaped their notice that US and NATO behaviour showed that by acquiring such weapons North Korea would not only increase its security but would acquire an importance and a status – and a degree of diplomatic leverage – which up to then it didn’t have.

In other words one effect of the false stories before 1989 of North Korea having the bomb was that it put into the North Koreans’ heads the idea of acquiring it.

In the 1990s the North Korean nuclear programme was however a fitful affair. In the first few years following the collapse of the USSR the North Korean leadership had no option but to focus nearly all its energies on crisis management, as it struggled to cope with the massive disruption to its economy caused by the loss of Soviet economic support. This left little time or resources for an ambitious nuclear weapons programme, and there is little evidence of anything very much being achieved at this time.

In 1994, at a time when the economic crisis was at its peak, with tens of thousands of North Koreans dying every year of malnutrition, the North Koreans agreed to put their nuclear weapons programme – such it was – on ice as part of the so-called Agreed Framework agreement it agreed with the US. This was in return for a US promise to provide North Korea with two modern pressurised water reactors.

This was a rational trade-off from the North Korean point of view: freezing a nuclear weapons programme which at the time North Korea lacked the resources to see through for a promise of economic support and normalisation of its relations with the West.

The US reactors were never delivered and the Agreed Framework agreement collapsed amidst mutual recriminations in 2003, with North Korea openly targeted for regime change by the Bush II administration at the time of the invasion of Iraq as part of the “axis of evil”. The North Korean nuclear weapons programme appears to have been restarted in earnest from around this time, which not coincidentally is around the time when North Korea appears to have finally got on top of its post-Soviet economic crisis.

If North Korea did not have a nuclear weapons programme before 1989, and did not – contrary to numerous claims – have nuclear weapons before or indeed for some time after its first nuclear test in 2006, it is quite clear that the US was taken completely by surprise by the speed with which North Korea developed nuclear weapons after the nuclear weapons programme resumed in 2003.

Within three years of the nuclear programme resuming in 2003 the North Koreans carried out their first test. A succession of tests have followed, with the largest now suggesting that they not only have a serviceable bomb, but that they are close to developing warheads that can be placed on ballistic missiles.

Whilst the nuclear weapons programme has proceeded apace, North Korea’s ballistic missile programme has also moved forward rapidly. Rocket technology is complicated and many ballistic missile tests have ended in failure, but North Korea has now demonstrated that it has the capability to place objects in space and to launch missiles from submarines.

Obviously we are not talking here of a capability that remotely approaches that of the great nuclear powers – the US and Russia – but it is an impressive capability nonetheless and one which is developing rapidly.

The North Koreans apparently obtained some of their nuclear weapons technology from Pakistan, which in turn seems to have originally sourced technology and equipment from the Netherlands, and they allegedly have used certain medium range Soviet ballistic missiles in their possession as a starting point in their own ballistic missile programme.

The fact nonetheless remains that the North Koreans could not have developed a nuclear weapons and ballistics missile capability of the sort they now have without a technological and industrial base of their own, and one which given the speed of both programmes is clearly bigger and more sophisticated than the US suspected.

This illustrates a further problem in the US’s whole approach to North Korea. Since the US refuses to engage with North Korea it is profoundly ignorant about it. It has little knowledge of the extent of North Korea’s industrial and technological capabilities, and no understanding of the thinking of its leadership. North Korean leaders like Kim Jong-il and Kim Jong-un are treated in the US as comic strip villains. Not only is remarkably little known about them, but there is almost no understanding of what sort of institutions or administrative structures they work within or who the important people they have around them and consult are.

In place of proper information obtained through regular contacts with North Korea and its leadership, far too much credence is given to stories which regularly circulate in the South Korean media, which look at times to be little more than ill-informed gossip.

General Ri Yong Gil—very much alive

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]hus Kim Jong-il during his lifetime was regularly and it seems inaccurately portrayed as an alcoholic sybarite, whilst lurid accounts which regularly appear in the South Korean media of murders and executions supposedly taking place in North Korea are not only unverified but on occasion demonstrably untrue. A good recent example is the case of General Ri Yong Gil who the South Korean media claimed had been executed only for him to turn up alive and well and occupying an important post at the recent North Korean party congress.

The result of all this ignorance is that the US has consistently underestimated North Korean determination and capabilities, repeatedly getting North Korea wrong, and now finds itself in a nuclear arms race in the eastern Pacific against a country it knows almost nothing about.

This is a disastrous record by any measure, and it is time it was brought to an end. The time is long overdue for the US to engage properly with the North Koreans and to open an embassy in Pyongyang.

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Andre Vltchek
Itinerant Philosopher and Journalist

“The coarse lies of the ROK’s central intelligence against North Korea, which used to serve as the most effective means of consolidating the conservative ruling party’s power, are now being uncovered one after another…Thus now I have come to recognize the recently implemented sanctions against North Korea as an ‘injustice’.”

The most fortified border on earth – between North and South Koreas (Andre Vltchek)

This article is an email conversation between a man from South Korea – Mr. Kim Dol – and Andre Vltchek on the nature of capitalism and socialism. The conversation is born out of Mr. Dol’s questions regarding what he has been told all of his life about democracy, capitalism, and socialist countries – most particularly North Korea. –Rowan Wolf

In Conversation with Mr. Kim Dol

“Thus now I have come to recognize the recently implemented sanctions against North Korea as an ‘injustice’.”

Above is a short excerpt from the letter that I received in May 2016, a letter from one of my readers, Mr. Kim Dol, a young South Korean professional based in Seoul.

Mr. Kim Dol, it seems, has been lately suffering from a gradual but irreversible loss of faith in the official dogmas that have been shaping his worldviews for most of his life – dogmas manufactured by his own country, South Korea (ROK), as well as those that have been imported from the West. He discovered countless contradictions between simple logic and what he was told, and expected to believe. He began questioning things, and searching for alternative sources.

That is how he found me. Online, he began reading my essays, as well as the essays of other comrades.

His letter arrived when I had been living for a month in Buenos Aires, Argentina, working on my new political novel while literally confronting the neo-liberal and neo-fascist government of the [recently installed] Argentinean President, Mauricio Macri.

Argentinian people had been fooled and they were now quickly waking up to a social, economic and political nightmare. The US was going to build military bases in at least two territories of this proud and essentially socialist nation. Prices were going up, privatization was in full-swing, and social benefits melting away. Protests erupted all over the capital. The fight for Argentina was on!

Simultaneously, in neighboring Brazil, a clique of cynical, corrupt, white and mostly evangelical members of the pro-Western ‘elites’ managed to overthrow the socialist government of Dilma Rousseff.

Mr. Kim Dol’s letter was timely. The Empire was on the offensive, destroying Latin America, while provoking Russia, China and the DPRK (North Korea).

An enormous military conflict, even a Third World War, did not appear as some improbable and phantasmagoric scenario, anymore.

Mr. Kim Dol solicited several questions. His letter and queries were simple, honest and essential. Obviously, they were addressing some of the philosophical and political concerns of South Korean people. I decided to reply, but on one condition: that this exchange would be in the form of an interview, and made public. He agreed. I asked whether he’d mind using his real name? He responded, bravely, that he’d have no problem with that whatsoever.

Therefore, we were on!

***

I am dedicating this interview to those citizens of South Korea (ROK) who are, like Mr. Kim, brave enough to question and challenge the official propaganda, and who are searching together with us – their comrades in Latin America, Russia, China, the DPRK, South Africa and elsewhere – for a much better and kinder world, based on internationalism, solidarity, decency, humanism and equality.

***

An introduction by Mr. Kim Dol:

“I am a native South Korean in my early thirties. Having been raised in a middle class family, I now work as an office worker, as many ordinary Koreans of my generation do. I’ve never been abroad — I have hardly ever been outside the city of Seoul — and it has only been several years since I started getting interested in affairs that happen outside my tiny sphere. Though both of my parents are of a progressive type, they rarely shared their political views with me in my youth, therefore I have been educated by the most typical ideology in South Korea from schools, society, and media: the superiority of capitalism (though we readily recognize its shortcomings), the terrible conditions of North Korea and other socialist countries, model cases of western countries, democracy, highly valued nationalism and patriotism, and so forth. At least in terms of ideology, I used to be the most typical person one would encounter in South Korea.

But recently lots of happenings and trends have made me think about other possibilities: the S. Korean government’s increasing rightward shift and pro-market policies has been enlarging the gap between the rich and the poor. The coarse lies of the ROK’s central intelligence against North Korea, which used to serve as the most effective means of consolidating the conservative ruling party’s power, are now being uncovered one after another. Although the current president of South Korea has been elected presumably in the most ”democratic” way to be found among the chiefs of Northeast Asian countries — no one was forced to vote for her — ironically now it seems that she is the most unpopular leader. The ongoing low economic growth the world is facing has revealed capitalism’s limits and its dangerous future. By contrast, Russia and China, which have been mentioned as representative failures of communism, are now emerging as new economic powers and challenging the USA and EU. I was confused by all these changing factors.

And two different forces — ISIS and North Korea — have been seemingly incurring the world’s hatred over the past few years, which has brought a decisive change in my ideas. Both are hostile to the USA and western powers, but in quite different ways. While ISIS attacks civilians as a means of resistance against its state-scale enemies, North Korea does not need to harm innocent people in its struggle against its enemies. Arming itself with nuclear weapons seems to be the most effective means to defending its people from the USA’s threats. (Just see what happened to the Iraqi people who suffered from the USA invasion). Thanks to the nuclear weapons owned by N. Korea, not only its people but also the soldiers of the USA and its allies can avoid a bloodbath. It seems justifiable and appropriate to me. However, to my surprise, the global public, as well as all the mass media are siding with the USA. They overtly criticize North Korea arming itself with nuclear weapons. I don’t know why. They seem to just assume that DPRK is wrong.

“I hope the rest of my life will not be spent in opposition to humanity because of my ignorance of reality…”

Throughout all this, I have found myself no longer able to conform to mainstream media. What was extreme now seems normal, and what was normal now seems extreme. Out of this confusion, I tried to listen to the voices of North Korean people, on both elite and mass levels via a few available media channels, and read some materials and books written by socialists, communists, anti-capitalists, or anti-imperialists, which include some of your works. Among them I have found some common qualities all the authors share: “universalism”, “internationalism”, and “egalitarianism.” They are in striking contrast to the notion of “nationalism”, which is so highly valued in South Korea. Now I see why socialists prefer the words “people” and “comrade”, which are the most powerful words that break down the barriers between nations and classes. For three decades of my life, I have learned about the many cases of slaughters and brutality committed by communists and socialists. But it transpires that this ideology is founded on a powerfully peace-oriented spirit, at least theoretically — I have not yet sufficiently studied how it has been actually been put into practice. Rather, your books hold the western capitalist powers responsible for countless deaths and exploitation.

At the moment I am neither a capitalist nor a socialist. Though the western outlook I used to trust now disappoints me to a degree and the other ideology I used to despise now touches and impresses me to a degree, still my knowledge is too short to identify myself as something. For now, I am just a seeker of reality. I might end up being a capitalist, a socialist, or something in-between. Since I have long learned the values of the western capitalist scheme, now I need the teachings of your side. Once I get fully informed of both value systems, perhaps I will be able to come to the right conclusion. I hope the rest of my life will not be spent in opposition to humanity because of my ignorance of reality. Please help me get closer to reality, or the truth, by answering my questions.”

***

Q1: Given the many phases you have written about, you seem to be a socialist or communist. Do you think violence and immorality are inherent in capitalism even if the most virtuous capitalists make up part of a society? Or are your works only accusing a misuse of capitalism? In other words, I am wondering whether capitalism should be “discarded and replaced with something else or “renovated” and reformed into a better form. If you maintain the former, is it possible for it to happen in the current situation where only few countries such as North Korea remain fully socialist?

A.V.: I believe that the Western imperialist/capitalist global dictatorship/regime has to be immediately dismantled, or else our humanity will eventually and most likely very soon, cease to exist.

The present form of capitalism (or call it neo-liberalism) is simply a grotesque, genocidal and gangrenous system. It is in direct contradiction to almost all the basic principles on which all the great civilizations of our planet had been based on. It is also a thoroughly nihilistic and depressing system.

The present form of capitalism is directly connected, even derived from, Western colonialism, Christian fundamentalism and the unmatchable brutality of [Western] European culture.

It is thoroughly unrealistic to expect that capitalism could be reformed, considering that until this very moment, only one small ethnic group that is responsible for murdering hundreds of millions of human beings all over the world is still holding the global reins of power.

I am an internationalist, in the Cuban, Latin American tradition. You can call me a Communist, but I am not subscribing to any particular ‘branch’ of the left. My Communism or Socialism is about the perpetual struggle against colonialism, racism and imperialism – a struggle for equality, justice and social rights.

I believe that right now we have many socialist countries on this Planet (no matter how they are defined) including, of course, the most populous one – China.

I’m not dogmatic in how the socialism should be structured, economically. There are many ways, depending on the culture of each particular country. Chinese socialism is different from Bolivian or Iranian socialism, and that is actually wonderful.

Capitalism is an extremely outdated, barbaric and unsavory concept, and I believe that it should be scrambled eventually, but only after some prolonged and deep philosophical discussions take place – discussions during which the people should be offered many alternatives and enlightened about the past (how capitalism has been destroying countless countries and human lives, for decades).

Q2: Many administrations that have been criticized as “dictatorships” by the Empire are really dictatorships at least from the perspective of the western concept of democracy, for example, Kim Jong Un’s administration in North Korea. Furthermore, under those administrations, typically the media/press are not free to criticize them. To my knowledge, the public in a socialist country is usually less able to participate in politics and to express their views against their governments. Is this thought simply a misunderstanding caused by my “brainwashing” by the western imperialist ideas? Do you have another perspective on this?

A.V.: The question is essential and complex, and the answer cannot be simple either.

Essentially, almost all of us, including those in what you call ‘the socialist countries’, are, to at least some extent, under tremendous psychological pressure to accept Western slogans and definitions of “democracy”, “freedom” and “openness”. They have been literally bombarded, day and night, by open and concealed messages propagating this sort of system: through mass media, mass-produced films and pop music, and ‘education’ (which could be better described as ‘indoctrination’).

For decades and centuries, the West has been actually shamelessly utilizing a racist and ‘exceptionalist’ reasoning: “the only acceptable ‘democratic’ forms of government are those invented and implemented in/by Europe, North America, etc.”

Why? To this, no answer is given, but it is understood that the reason is: “because the West; its race and its ‘culture’ (and therefore its political concepts) are simply superior, ‘God-given’ and unquestionable. It is all based on fundamentalist faith, not on any serious analyses or comparisons.

On closer examination, which is almost never conducted, such presumptions would, of course, immediately melt.

Not only that, Western global rule has never been ‘democratic’, it has been clearly genocidal.

But back to practical aspects of democracy…

For instance, present-day China is in many ways much more ‘democratic’ than the West. But there, the number of political parties competing or not participating at the election booths does not determine the level of ‘democracy’. Let us remember that ‘democracy’ means only ‘rule of the people’, translated from Greek (nowhere does it say ‘multi-party system’). In China, there is a thousand years old concept, ‘The Heavenly Mandate”. The government or the ruler has to answer to the people, and if it fails to represent them, can be removed. The Communist Party of China is well aware of it. It reacts to the needs and desires of the Chinese people much more readily than the Western governments do to their own voters. The current direction taken by President Xi and the leadership of the country is extremely good proof of it: Chinese people are demanding much more ‘Chinese-style socialism’, and they are getting it. There is a direct democracy at work there: it is unique, but it could be understood by outsiders/foreigners, if they decided to study it. The problem is that most of them don’t. They repeat, like parrots, clichés invented by Western propagandists, without even doing their basic homework. But then they pass their indoctrination as a legitimate ‘point of view’, as their own opinion. That is very typical for Westerners and citizens of the Western colonies and ‘client’ states: the absolute acceptance of the doctrines and unmatchable arrogant self-righteousness. It is really the same as fundamentalism.

In the West as well as in South Korea (or Japan), there is no serious and deep discussion about what precisely ‘democracy’ is. Perception implanted and accepted by almost all citizens of the Empire is: democracy is ‘us’, dictatorship is ‘them’. There is no public philosophical discussion. As there are no reports ridiculing the Western ‘democratic concept’ (basically a useless, even grotesque act of sticking a piece of paper into those big carton or metal boxes, ‘voting’ for similar-thinking, “cookie-cutter” candidates, already pre-selected—or “vetted”— by the plutocratic regime) in the mainstream media.

No serious comparison of ‘us’ and ‘them’ is performed.

Let me give you a few simple examples to illustrate what I am saying:

In Venezuela, during Hugo Chavez Frias, but even now, all major developments and changes (including constitutional ones) have to be approved by the people, through a plebiscite. During those referendums you can vote for the government, for the Process, and that means that your country will stay on the socialist course; or you could vote in favor of the US-backed opposition, and in that case Venezuela would make a sharp U-turn and go back to being a Western ‘client’ state and capitalist economy. That is 1800 degrees turn! Where in the West would the citizens be allowed to make such decisions? In the West, you can choose only between capitalism and capitalism! After WWII, the Communist parties in France, Italy and elsewhere in Europe were heading for easy election victories, but the US and UK employed Nazi and fascist cadres to derail the votes. So much for their freedom and ‘democracy’! [ In Greece they spawned a brutal civil war.—Editors]. Look now at all those recent polls: most of the Westerners are against capitalism. But can they choose? Can they change the entire system? No! But in China or in Cuba people live with the system desired by the majority. And they are much better informed than people in the West. Just visit any major bookstore in Beijing: you will see tons of books on Marxism and Communism, but you will also see tons of books on business, Obama’s biographies, Bill Gates biographies, Western bestsellers and even some iconic Western propaganda rubbish. Then go to the bookstores in New York City or Paris, and tell me how many books defending and glorifying Communism would you find in there. And then just draw some logical conclusions!

Or visit ‘798’ which is an enormous city of art galleries and theatres in Beijing. What do you see there? Some great art, yes. But also, plenty of it carries provocative political messages. Messages are critical of everything: from Western imperialism to the way China is governed. It is impressive, truly mind-blowing, how free Chinese art is, compared to that of the West or in Japan. In China, people are passionate about their country, they are discussing, arguing how to make it better, even greater than it already is. Last year I visited 300 art galleries in Paris and I did not find one, a single one that would carry political art. And that is in France, a country that is rapidly falling apart, where people are basically pissed off at their regime, frustrated day and night. Do you call it normal or free? I definitely feel much more free and alive in Beijing than in Paris. And I am not alone! But you would hardly read such thoughts in the British or French or South Korean newspapers.

Now, let me return to your mentioning the ‘undemocratic nature’ of the DPRK or some of the other socialist countries.

You should think why they are ‘undemocratic’. As a Korean, you perhaps know that after the Korean War, the DPRK was in much better shape, and was more open that the ROK. ROK was a brutal right-wing dictatorship, run by a pro-Western treasonous clique, and by the military and business interests. People were being hunted down, tortured, and “disappeared”. It was not unlike the situation in Pinochet’s Chile or Suharto’s Indonesia. But the West unleashed the terror of an arms race, intimidation, sanctions and psychological warfare against the DPRK. At some point it pushed the country into a corner. And the DPRK had to react, to close its ranks, to harden itself, simply in order to survive. And when it reacted, the West pointed its fingers, shouting: “You see! It is acting undemocratically!” In fact the hatred of the West for North Korea has nothing to do with ‘democracy’. It goes back to the neo-colonial era. Both Cuba and North Korea heroically fought for the liberation of Africa; that’s why the West hates and tries to destroy them. I wrote extensively on this (DPRK: Isolated, Demonized, and Dehumanized by the West). But that angle is never mentioned!

The same happened to Cuba. There the West unleashed direct terror against the island, shooting down passenger airliners, bombing civilian airports, restaurants, hotels, staging assassinations, even trying to divert clouds to cause severe droughts. Cuba never reacted by full-force, but it reacted. The propaganda of the West went immediately into over-drive! You see, for the old and new Western colonialist powers, it is unacceptable, even ‘undemocratic’, to defend your own country! It is actually perversely ‘logical’: to the Westerners only the white, ‘Caucasian’, Christian, Western people really matter – only their ‘rights to rule’ are (sometimes) respected. All others have to accept their fate of subservience, of slavery!

But no, this would never happen in Cuba or in the DPRK. People don’t want to be slaves there. They would never accept Western terror as something ‘normal’. And they know that the only reason why they are in this ‘special situation’ is because they are intimidated, attacked, even terrorized by the West for helping to liberate the world from slavery! They never attacked any foreign country. But if attacked, they will fight. That is how the majority of people feel in both countries. And therefore, their determination is ‘democratic’.

Q3: Your term the Empire is mentioned in a singular form although it consists of many countries. Is it because North America and Western Europe have a common interest and usually stand on the same side? Doesn’t “imperialism” usually feature competitions among a number of empires?

A.V.: Correct. The empires of Europe and later the United States of America used to compete for the loot and control of entire continents or particular countries. But after WWII, there was ‘consolidation’, and now it is basically the Western world, a white race, or some sort of Christian fundamentalist realm (plus its lieutenants like Japan, South Korea and Israel) that forms one huge neo-colonialist Empire. I described it in detail in two of my recent books: “Exposing Lies Of The Empire” and “Fighting Against Western Imperialism”.

Q4: You and lots of other communists and socialists condemn the imperialist governments for having led many nations into ruins. However, I’ve found that communists and socialists including you also frequently criticize “feudalism”, which is highly likely to have been predominant among those nations before they were colonized. Should I think that the “evil feudalism” has been replaced with the “more evil colonialism” and those nations have never been in bright conditions?

A.V.: Very interesting, and again, an essential question.

Many countries that were later colonized by the West went through some type of feudal period. And the West itself also lived, for centuries, under a feudalist system.

If there were to be no brutal intervention from abroad (from the West), most nations of the world would be developing in their own, specific way, but most likely moving towards some modern and, I’d dare to say, socialist state; definitely away from feudalism.

After colonizing Asia, Africa, what is now Latin America and Oceania, the West began using and re-introducing some old, oppressive power structures in each and every occupied country or part of the world. Almost immediately, the local feudal lords, warlords and ‘aristocrats’ were bribed, restored to control and armed with new privileges and powers, so they could terrorize and intimidate their own people on behalf of the occupying powers.

So, in a way, the West restored or re-introduced feudalism in the countries from which it had already disappeared, or upheld it where it was still reigning. It was clearly a regressive process, but what else are colonialism and slavery if not extremely dark, primitive and backward concepts?

A very good example is Indonesia, which, before the West-backed, extremely brutal and genocidal fascist coup of 1965, was moving towards electing its first Communist government (PKI). The country was ready to move to the Left, democratically. After the pro-Western murderous forces grabbed power, killing between 1 and 3 million people and turning Indonesia into an intellectual zombieland, feudalism was forcefully reintroduced, almost immediately.

Actually, to be precise, at least in modern history, most countries that were experiencing what you described as “bright conditions” were destroyed and occupied by the West, exactly because they were so democratic, and cared for their own people. What we see as ‘bright conditions’ – something that is positive and beneficial for the local people – the Empire considers as mortal danger to its dictatorial interests. The Empire does not care about people, especially for what Orwell used to call ‘un-people’ – the non-Westerners. Examples of horrors administered by the West are limitless: from Congo to Indonesia, Chile, Iraq, Iran and Libya.

Do you really believe that such a system can be reformed? Or perhaps we should finally stop fooling ourselves, after almost a billion of lives had been lost, throughout the centuries and in all corners of the world? And instead start defending human beings, human lives!

Andre Vltchek

Philosopher, novelist, filmmaker and investigative journalist. He covered wars and conflicts in dozens of countries. His latest books are: “Exposing Lies Of The Empire” and “Fighting Against Western Imperialism”. Discussion with Noam Chomsky: On Western Terrorism. Point of No Return is his critically acclaimed political novel. Oceania – a book on Western imperialism in the South Pacific. His provocative book about Indonesia: “Indonesia – The Archipelago of Fear”. Andre is making films for teleSUR and Press TV. After living for many years in Latin America and Oceania, Vltchek presently resides and works in East Asia and the Middle East. He can be reached through his website or his Twitter.

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Revised version, second iteration 6.8.16

North Korea again a danger to US. Start trembling!

A danger to the world?

With President Trump at the helm, Japan feeling adrift at sea