Tag: north korea

New Zealand & its role in the current Korean crisis

I note with sadness but no surprise, that New Zealand has once more joined the Western cabal aiming to destabilise North Korea.

Given that New Zealand  and her  allies inflicted horrific genocidal acts on North Korean civilians in the Korean War (with many millions dead) and the subsequent 50 years of threats of nuking North Korea, annual massive war games on the Korean armistice line, a refusal by the Americans to negotiate a peace treaty, and ongoing threats to decapitate the North Korean leadership, it is small wonder that the North Korean regime feels its only safety is in a nuclear deterrent.

The hypocrisy of the US and its ‘allies” to advocate for a ‘non-nuclear’ Korean peninsula, while patrolling its waters with nuclear armed weaponry, no longer astounds me.

The symbolism of a shared North/South Korean flag at the Winter Olympics must be deeply troubling to those whose only negotiating option is war.

Perhaps our esteemed  new Foreign Affairs Minister,  Mr Winston Peters, might wish to read some history?

Christmas 2017 & The Dishonest Broker

In the last few months we have seen the Trump administration reeling from one extraordinarily stupid move in foreign policy, to another.

Firstly  we have the tragedy and farce of the declaration that the US will ‘accept’ Jerusalem as Israel’s capital; somewhere that all Western nations have been loathe to go (officially) whilst fully accepting and unconditionally supporting the reality of the triumphalism of the apartheid racist Israeli entity.  A two state solution has, since 1948, been known to  all  parties  as a totally non-viable option, and will never happen.

It is of course possible that the Israelis finally realise that the nation of Israel has no future in the long term , unless it grants full right of return to all Palestinian and full compensation for lands stolen since 1948 and lives destroyed… The alternative for Israel does not bear thinking about.

It is not that Trump’s declaration changes anything;  what is upsetting for the West and for China and Russia, is that it makes plain that there never was a two state option- and that the United States has always been the Dishonest Broker in the ‘peace process’ .

Now we can start to face reality in Palestine- and it is not a pretty picture for the Israelis.

The ludicrous aspect of this, is that for those modern day Israelis whose ancestors came from the Levant; they are of exactly the same ethnic Semitic lineage as the ‘dirty Arabs’ they despise . We have seen more than 60 years of completely farcical “peace’ negotiations; the Israelis have never had any intention of returning any of the lands stolen by war or genocide, and both the ‘disinterested” broker and the Palestinian negotiators have always known that.

Then  we have the  ongoing playground bully tactics to North Korea by  the United States president and his policy  advisors and chiefs of staff.  A country that knows full well the epic scale of barbarity the American nation is capable of;  having endured American genocide in the Korean War and the continuous threats from various U.S. presidents and US generals since that time to blast them back into the stone-age. With its back against the wall, North Korea has only one option- to continue to develop enough nuclear ICBMs to substantially debilitate the American economy ( Given that of course from the American side, there will be no negotiations with North Korea until they ‘behave’ )

And then we have dear Nikki Haley the United States ambassador to the United Nations displaying bits of what are supposedly Iranian made missiles launched by the Yemenese Houthis against their Saudi aggressors ,who are currently killing thousands of Yemen citizens with cholera and millions through starvation…

But hey Nikki!- what ‘s more important? -the lives of a few million Yemenese? Or the need to destroy Iran to serve the interests of the Israeli supporters and Saudis who pay Congress and the Washington ‘think-tanks’ ? One hopes that karma is not for real:- Nikki’s future lives are not going to be exactly pretty…nor will it be in this life should true international justice be finally served.

It is not that Trump has really changed anything;- the brutality, cynicism, duplicitiousness and lack of humanity of United States foreign policy has remained largely unchanged since the Second World War. Trump has simply made it very clear what it  has always been about for the United States:- money!

The facade has been removed…We have  seen  a dramatic transition from  a President able to so  plausibly lie through his teeth  (and win  a Nobel peace prize for it), to  one who  seems  to  say  (or tweet) whatever  fleeting thought is on  his mind at  the time ,  but whose sole  immediate directive for decision-making is money  and power, rather than  a longer term strategy of deceit  to reach  the desired same end.

It is disturbing to think that these great leaders of the ‘Free World’ are supposedly the best of humankind- a sad indictment on us all

Links

https://www.truthdig.com/articles/world-will-not-mourn-decline-u-s-hegemony/ 

The North Korean Nuclear Fiasco

I note the opinion piece by Ralph Peters (supposedly a Fox News “Strategic Analyst”) in the New York Times of 4th September 2017 who states; “ better a million dead North Koreans than a thousand dead Americans.” and ‘We cannot allow moral relativism to butcher Americans. We must deal with the world as it is, not as we wish it to be. And in the real world, the greatest immorality in war is not killing the enemy. The greatest immorality would be for our country to lose. “

This I believe, truly reflects the brain-dead amoral stance of many Americans in Washington.

After the United States; having committed a horrific genocide in the Korean War of more than 20% of the North Korean population (without apology and without compensation) , refusing to sign a peace treaty,  conducting annual large scale war maneuvers on the North Korean border, threats of nuclear annihilation and “ decapitation’ of its leaders, it is somewhat less than surprising that North Korea feels itself threatened by this  ongoing military aggression from the United States, and chooses to defend itself with nuclear weapons.  A December 2017  Counterpunch  article describes the savagery  of the American  onslaught against  the North Korean  people in  the Korean War in  vivid detail. The North  Korean  regime know full  well  that  the Americans can never be trusted, and that  their inhumanity to ‘others’ is on a scale that compares to  the very worst  of genocides.

We see an ongoing 60 year propaganda war against the North Koreans; with the South Korean military and their intelligence units fully colluding with their US masters to ramp up the anti North Korean rhetoric along with the former Japanese brutal colonists of Korea .

We see the ongoing media mockery of their leaders (just as was done to ‘educate’ the American public in the value of ‘taking out” (in true Hollywood B movie style), Saddam Hussein, Ghaddafi and any other leaders the Americans want to ‘decapitate’.

The United States has a more than a century long tradition of unbelievable barbarity and acts of aggression against countries and states that do not comply with its economic interests.

Combined with this infantile bully-boy approach goes a mindset devoid of morality and ethics, let alone any sign of intelligent behaviour. Group-think in Washington allows itself to believe anything that one of its so-called ‘think’ tanks wants it to believe; as long as the price is right of course. The United States is perhaps unique among 21st century nations in having its international policies sold to the highest bidder; be it Israeli sympathisers, Saudis, Qataris,U.K business interests or Japanese and South Korean business ones.

One might think that as the “exceptional empire’ rapidly draws to a sudden close,  policy makers in Washington might start to realise that it might pay to start being somewhat less belligerent and genocidal in their approach to other countries in the hope they might be able to, in the future escape the clutches of the International War Crimes tribunal- but no…

As the President of Russia, Vladimir Putin  recently noted: “It is difficult to talk to people who confuse Austria and Australia. But there is nothing we can do about this; this is the level of political culture among the American establishment. As for the American people, America is truly a great nation if the Americans can put up with so many politically uncivilized people in their government.”

We are told that North Korea is the ‘hermit kingdom’ yet strangely it is not the North Koreans who want to be isolated- rather it is the United States who needs them isolated. We are told that North Korea starves its population and its economic systems are inefficient and laughable- yet strangely we are again not told about the impact of international sanctions starving its children or how the North Koreans have achieved technological breakthroughs in nuclear and rocket technology faster than any other country before them.

I do not applaud any country acquiring nuclear weapons or long range rockets, yet there is total logic in North Korea pursuing those goals against a relentless and evil aggressor; the United State of America. A country that refuses to negotiate, that constantly threatens ( and not just DonaldTrump) “fire and fury, and frankly power that the world has never seen.”. – a direct allusion to first strike nuclear aggression.

We see a completely corrupt and evil empire threatening a poor and small country again and again for more than fifty years with obliteration (again). And strangely the United Nations (including even Russia and China in their stupidity) once again approve another round of sanctions on North Korean for trying to maintain its existence against this unpredictable entity that is the war state of America.

We are told by Nikki Haley the United States ambassador for war at the United Nations saying somewhat ludicrously, even for her, that Kim Jong Un is ‘begging for war” http://edition.cnn.com/2017/09/04/politics/haley-north-korea-united-nations/index.html

China must certainly be aware that all these posturings and threats by the United States are designed to ensure South Korea agrees (with little prompting from its military who are hand in glove with the US military) to install more anti–missile technology like THAAD, which is primarily designed to remove any threat from a Chinese missile strike at the US or its off-shore bases– allowing the US a first strike capability on China.

Let us not gloss over the significant shortcomings of the North Korean regime; UN reports of political prisoner ‘gulags’ are likely to be true ,at least to some extent. However the South Korean military and business interests and U.S propaganda machines have been very effective over many years at ‘disinformation’ on North Korea and a significant number of paid ‘defectors’ , so many allegations must be taken with a large grain of salt. However this likely savagery by the North Koreans pales into comparison with that wreaked by the United States, not only on Korea , but across the globe over the past 100 years and more in the pursuit of profit.

As the U.S. well knows, the more pressure both externally and internally they can apply to undermine a nation, the more defensive, paranoid and extreme becomes those states’ reactions to those internal and external threats; which in turn, fuels the American propaganda war.

The ONLY solution therefore to these current events is negotiation. The very rational interim agreement proposed by the Russian and Chinese governments for North Korea to abandon its nuclear programme in exchange for the US and South Korea stopping its military threats to North Korea has been supported in principle by the North Koreans but dismissed without a consideration by the United States. . However as every country knows that has negotiated in good faith with the United States; the U.S. government,  as the Plains Indians found out to their cost, ‘speak with ‘forked tongue’ as Paul Craig Roberts notes in his disturbing article on the ‘cleansing’ of American history.

Links

https://www.vox.com/world/2017/8/29/16079076/north-korea-maps

http://www.newantarctica.com/mad-sad-and-bad-north-korea/

http://nypost.com/2017/09/04/we-need-to-destroy-north-korea-before-its-too-late/

https://academic.evergreen.edu/g/grossmaz/interventions.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Korea_and_weapons_of_mass_destruction

http://thediplomat.com/2017/03/whats-the-big-deal-about-these-us-south-korea-military-exercises/

https://www.asiasentinel.com/econ-business/south-korea-chaotic-corrupt-defense-policy/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisons_in_North_Korea

http://www.independent.org/pdf/tir/tir_15_02_04_dilorenzo.pdf

http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2017/08/21/trump-american-history-assassinated/

https://www.cnbc.com/2017/07/26/how-park-geun-hye-influences-thaad-deployment-in-south-korea.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korea_under_Japanese_rule

State of Fear: How History’s Deadliest Bombing Campaign Created Today’s Crisis in Korea

The Rogue State that is the United States of America

As  one more US aircraft  carrier  steams  off to  confront the North Koreans and threaten nuclear war once again , it is timely to  recall  that  60  years ago  the United States and its allies (including a very  compliant New Zealand) began  a genocidal  bombing of every  town  and city in  the north of Korea.  Millions of Koreans died. Since that  war ended,  the largest and nuclear superpower in  the world has refused to  sign  a peace treaty  with  North Korea,  has stationed thousands of troops  and weapons along its South Korean border and has regularly  threatened to nuke North  Korea,  applied  annual  large scale attack  manoeuvres along the border with North Korea, as well  as  implementing  sanctions that in  several years since the war,  caused mass starvation in  the north.   Small  wonder that the North  Korean  regime might be considered  paranoid and unstable!
Ironically, the United States has absolutely no  interest  in  the Korean peninsula and its peoples;  its sole rationale for  maintaining the ongoing conflict  with North Korea is to justify  maintaining the extensive military  bases encircling China, with the support of the Japanese. China has recently  proposed “As a first step, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) may suspend its nuclear and missile activities in exchange for the suspension of large-scale U.S.-Republic of Korea (ROK) military exercises,” but  this eminently reasonable offer has been  once again  refused by  the United States because it would reduce the threat to  China.
While the latest  American  President is  also  considered unstable and unreliable, it is  important to  recognise that every American president’s  foreign  policy  since the 1900s   has almost entirely consisted of  a psychopathic policy of violence and war and repeated acts of genocide:-  in  the Philippines,   at  Hiroshima and Nagasaki,  in  Korea, Vietnam and Laos,   in Iraq,   and Libya,  as well  as support for unspeakable acts of murder and  terror in South  America .  Its  full logistical and weaponry  support for the starvation of millions of Yemen ‘s children by  Saudi Arabia  because they do  not share the Saudi regime’s  extremist  and sectarian Wahhabist views,  (ably supported in  this war of terror by  its sycophantic ally, the United Kingdon),  tells you exactly where the United States’ current moral  and ethical  foreign policy stands.
The old fiction of the “Shining City Upon  a Hill”  –  an American beacon of hope, democracy,  liberty and freedom ,  has been ceaselessly trotted out by American  Presidents  over the years and regurgitated by  the American mainstream  media. Now the facade of that  shining city is falling away;-exposing the house of horrors within.
United States  foreign policy  does not recognise the international  rules of war or human rights obligations;   it stands above any necessity for humanity or compassion or  peaceful  solution to  conflicts.  It is in fact,  a rogue state.

Links

Mad Sad & Bad North Korea

In the usual  run-up of propaganda stories for countries that are deemed “rogue”, “crazy” or just “not like us”, and therefore worthy of bombing and invading or simply dismantling, we have the latest BBC interview with  an  “undercover”  reporter who  recently  “infiltrated” North Korea http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-22003715 and describes it as “mad, sad and bad”. Perhaps if the “journalist” had taken the time to read a little history, he might have had a somewhat  different view of North Korea and its motivations and fears. (It should be noted that the “undercover” journalist  went on a London School of Economics education tour of North Korea, as prescribed by  North Korean authorities; but obviously sufficient for the journalist to make informed sweeping judgements of all  things North Korean!)

Korea’s recent history might be seen  to begin with the invasion by the  Japanese in  1910,  as part of their bid to become a colonial power.  The  annexation of Korea was to last for 35  years until  the defeat of the Japanese in the second world war. It is noteworthy that  neither the invasion of Korea nor China by  the Japanese  raised any protests in  the Western world until Western interests  were threatened. The annexation was brutal,the Korean language was outlawed,  many thousands of  Koreans were tortured and murdered.  During the  war with China and the western countries, Koreans were drafted into the Japanese army and  worked in slave-like conditions.  The Japanese military kidnapped thousands of Korean girls and women and forced them to serve as ‘comfort women’ to be continuously raped by Japanese soldiers. Japan continues to deny responsibility for this brutality. Korean communists,   supported by  the communist  Chinese, fought a guerrilla war  against  the Japanese occupation.

Bruce Cumming’s 2010  book “The Korean War”  states that ” Among the most important things to understand about North Korean behavior then and now, is the longtime enmity between Korea and Japan. Japan took Korea as a colony in 1910, with America’s blessing, and replaced the Korean language with Japanese. Japan humiliated and brutalized Korea in other ways. (During World War II the Japanese Army forcibly turned tens of thousands of Korean women into sex slaves known as “comfort women.”) About this history Mr. Cumings writes, “Neither Korea nor Japan has ever gotten over it.”

North Korea, thus remains virulently anti-Japanese; both bitter and fearful of that country and of the United States. It will do whatever it can to stay out of the clutches of South Korea, whose leaders have long-standing historical ties to Japan.

With  the end of the second world war hostilities, Korea was divided up by the victors, without any consultation with  Koreans, with  Russia taking control  to the 38th  parallel  from the North,  and the Americans administering the southern part of Korea.  Divisions between the two “administrations”  increased, with the Americans firstly re-appointing the hated Japanese administrators in  South Korea and the Russians assisting communist   Kim Il Sung to  come to power. Later  in  the south, the Americans facilitated  the “election” of the right-wing dictator Syngman Rhee to power. See Jay Janson’s analysis of how Syngman Rhee came to power, and other US actions in Korea  over the intervening years till the present day, here

Supported logistically by  both  the Chinese communists and the Russians, and after various provocations and skirmishes from both sides, Kim il Sung launched a war to unite the two  Korean entities on 25th  June 1950. After an initial  successful  attack  on South Korean and American troops which  resulted in  the capture of Seoul and positions further south, the North Koreans were pushed back by American troops .  As a result of  a Russian boycott  of the UN, the Americans were able to obtain  a UN mandate to militarily secure the whole of Korea. However as they approached the Chinese border in October 1950 with the likely intent of invading China , Chinese army battalions staged a series of  surprise attacks, which  sent the ‘UN” troops south in retreat-ultimately ending in  a bloody stalemate.

The American Public Broadcasting  Service (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/bomb/peopleevents/pandeAMEX58.html) notes that  “The human cost of the war was catastrophic. In the first month of their operation alone, the Strategic Air Command groups dropped 4,000 tons of bombs. Besides high explosives, the bombers used napalm. In retirement, Curtis LeMay (a general in the US Air Force in Korea) described the devastation saying, “we eventually burned down every town in North Korea… and some in South Korea too. We even burned down [the South Korean city of] Pusan — an accident, but we burned it down anyway.” Estimates of the casualties vary widely, but there is reason to believe that besides the three and a half million military dead, wounded and missing on both sides, more than two million civilians died in North Korea.

While there were numerous atrocities committed by  the North Koreans during the war, the scale of their brutality pales in  comparison  to that inflicted by  the American, South Korean  and other UN troops. Cummings (2010) notes that  “There is no evidence in the North Korean experience of the mass violence against whole classes of people or the wholesale ‘purge’ that so clearly characterized Stalinism”.

Pyongyang

Pyongyang after the “U.N.” fire-bombing

In contrast  to the North Koreans and Chinese and Russians,  the Americans, British  and Australians  carpet-bombed the north for three years with next to no concern for civilian casualties.” The United States dropped more bombs in Korea (635,000 tons, as well as 32,557 tons of napalm) than in the entire Pacific theater during World War II. Our logic seemed to be,  that they are savages, so that gives us the right to shower napalm on innocents.” Cummings (2010)

Japan in Focus: (http://www.japanfocus.org/-Tessa-Morris_Suzuki/3444) notes that -”11 July 1952: the day when US, British, Australian and South Korean planes flew 1,254 bombing sorties and dropped 23,000 gallons of napalm on Pyongyang and its inhabitants. 29 August 1952: the day when the number of sorties reached 1,403, and around 6,000 citizens of the capital were killed.15 The bombardment of Pyongyang ended a few days later, when the US command decided that there was too little left in the city to justify the effort of attack.16 By then, 80% of the city’s buildings were in ruins.”

The  complete inhumanity of American forces in  Korea defies belief.

Now,  more and more evidence is coming out about the  American’s use of biological  weapons against  the North  Korean  population

The armistice agreement was signed  on July 27th  1953 at the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ)  on the 36th  parallel.   Article IV of the armistice promised, “within three months higher level meetings would be held to settle through negotiation the question of withdrawal of all foreign forces and peaceful settlement.” Those high level meetings never materialised because the Americans did not accept the outcome of the war.

The Ubuntu  Works Peace Education Project: (http://www.uwpep.org/Index/KOREAN_WAR.html) notes that  this did not happen ‘because the U.S. refused to meet, despite requests over the years by the North Koreans to meet anywhere and anytime. Over fifty years later the troops remain and no peace treaty has been signed. South Korea never even signed the armistice agreement. The 1953 cease-fire agreement provided that both sides “shall not engage in any blockade of any kind of Korea.” This binding agreement appears to be violated by the U.S. conduct to intercept and discourage the transport of goods, food and other materials to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea).” Note that sanctions have been in place by  the US and its proxies since December 1950 and are the likely predominant cause of a series of mass starvations in the North Korean countryside over the intervening years.

This lack of good faith bargaining by  the United States has continued to this day. As just one example,  Wendy Sherman, Clinton’s advisor on North Korea, had indicated that when they entered into the famous Agreed Framework of 1994, wherein the North Koreans would be trading their nuclear capability for two light water reactors and fuel oil, and in exchange for working toward normalizing political and economic relations, the Administration had no intention of complying with the agreement. The Clinton Administration believed the Kim Jong Il administration would collapse long before the U.S. had to provide the reactors. This lack of good faith in international relations surrounding a matter of such importance to the world would be against the common law if the breach of promises were between private parties.- Ubuntu Works-Peace Education Project

America continues to maintain more than  24   military bases across South Korea, while neither the Chinese nor Russians have any in  the North. The US presence  is both in defiance of the armistice agreement of 1953, and a constant provocation  and threat to  the North Koreans.

Since the ascension of Kim Il Jung to  the leadership  of North Korea, the Americans and South Koreans have staged numerous war-games,  with the March 2013 “Foal Eagle”  war games simulating nuclear bombing runs over North Korea in an apparent attempt to  de-stabilise the new leadership.

As Peter Hart at Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting points out at  http://www.fair.org/blog/2013/04/03/north-korea-rattles-sabres-meanwhile-u-s-pretends-to-drop-nuclear-bombs-on-them/, North Korea’s ‘sabre rattling” is directly attributable to the recent rash  of menacing war games and threats of pre-emptive strikes from the South Korean and US military war games.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/mar/19/us-b-52-bombers-simulated-raids-over-north-korea-d/

I leave you  to determine who  then is the “mad, sad and bad ” one.

Its time for  the United States to  stop the constant war games,  lift  the sanctions, and start  to negotiate with North Korea in  good faith

As Martin Luther King Jr. said “Violence begets violence…and its aftermath is tragic bitterness.”

It is way  past time to  call  the United States and its ‘allies”  in  the war  against North Korea,  to  account for the genocide and years of atrocities they have committed.

Nothing short of the necessary  trillions of dollars in  reparations ,  and a full and abject apology to  North Korea,  should suffice.

__________________________________________________________

Postscript:

https://www.lrb.co.uk/v39/n10/bruce-cumings/a-murderous-history-of-korea

CIA Document Suggests U.S. Lied About Biological, Chemical Weapon Use in the Korean War

“A real flood of bacteria and germs” — Communications Intelligence and Charges of U.S. Germ Warfare during the Korean War

Saber Rattling in Korea-Cui Bono

Escalating Korea Crisis Dims Hopes for Denuclearisation by Jim Lobe

View at Medium.com

via IPS News

Of particular interest is Jim Lobe’s commentary from  Alan Romberg, a former senior State Department Asia expert who currently heads East Asia programmes at the Stimson Center,…who  pointed … to the adoption by the North’s Supreme People’s Assembly Monday of a new law on “consolidating the position of nuclear weapons state for self-defence” which laid out the legal framework for the country’s nuclear strategy.

Among other provisions, the new law states that the main purpose of the North’s nuclear weapons is for deterrence and that they can be used only to “repel invasion or attack from a hostile nuclear weapons state and make retaliatory strikes.” It also provides for cooperation with international non-proliferation and disarmament efforts.

With all sides seeming to climb further up the escalatory ladder over the last several days, defusing the ongoing crisis on the Korean Peninsula — let alone persuading Pyongyang to give up its nuclear arsenal as it once promised to do — looks daunting…read the rest here

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And the demonisation of North Korea goes on… 25/4/16

http://news.antiwar.com/2016/04/24/obama-spurns-north-korea-offer-to-suspend-missile-program/

It is becoming increasingly evident that US policy  towards the Korean  peninsula peoples has  always been to use whatever means necessary  to  create a hostile environment on China’s borders. As it was in  1955, the intent is to  create  a Korean  US vassal  state  that   will  permit the positioning of  U.S.  nuclear and conventional  weapons on China’s borders.. see this recent Brics report

Moon of Alabama notes  that recent evidence has also  been unearthed of large-scale experimentation with  biological    warfare against  the Korean population during the war. Read also  Jeffrey  Kaye’s detailed analysis of the Allies’  biological  warfare against  the North Korean population during the Korean War.

The destruction of all  infrastructure in  North Korea, and particularly hydroelectric dams  by the Americans also  caused a horrific human toll.