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Trump’s Options for North Korea Include Placing Nukes in South Korea
http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/tru ... ea-n743571
Mark Ames Verified Account @MarkAmesExiled 4. Apr. 2013
In just 4 months in 1950, USA dropped 866,914 gallons of napalm on North Korea.
Mark Ames Verified Account @MarkAmesExiled 7. Apr.
Using napalm and incendiaries, US Air Force "obliterated" 18 of 22 major North Korea cities.
3 million North Koreans killed in war
THE KOREA PROBLEM
This is What Democracy Looks Like
First published: 21 March 2017
by Keith Harman Snow
The United States and its allies have embarked on a dangerous path of aggression against the government of North Korea and its allies China and Russia.
As usual, the western propaganda system presents a near unified front showing how horrible and atrocious the North Korean government is purported to be, and how murderous and ruthless and amoral their intentions are purported to be, and how their military objectives and missile programs--now allegedly targeting the 'free' world--are out to dominate the rest of the world, starting with their deadly missiles being launched against the United States and our ally Japan. So goes the propaganda.
Let's look again.
The people of South Korea--a country permanently occupied by the U.S. military since 1950 with between 326,000 U.S. soldiers (during the Korean War) and closer to 30,000 annually since (with 28,500 U.S. soldiers in occupation today)--have seen massive human rights violations, repression and state terrorism. Since the first military dictator was installed in South Korea by the United States military in 1953, the Republic of Korea (ROK) has perpetrated massive atrocities against its own citizens and against citizens in other countries. This is a so-called "member of the international community."
The Central Intelligence Agency under Allen Dulles launched covert operations in South Korea by 1950--utilizing South Korean police and other secret agents to serve the imperial "pro-democracy" agenda. The ever touted claim that North Korea launched a very clear war of aggression by crossing the 38th parallel--an arbitrary line of demarcation set up after WW-II by the United States between (then) Soviet Russia and U.S./U.N./allied forces--to invade South Korea is not born out by the facts that existed on the ground in the Korean peninsula in June of 1950. Not only are there credible reports of death squads crossing into the northern territory and committing atrocities, but the diplomatic record shows a pattern of belligerence and war-mongering on the part of the United States against the then northern 'enemy' that has become de rigeur for the United States all over the world since then.
THE UN-PRETTY HISTORY OF KOREA
Massive post-WW-II repression and murder (extrajudicial summary executions) by South Korean troops, with U.S. military oversight, occurred against their own people in the south, including such horrible massacres as occurred on Je Ju island 1948-1949 and were white-washed by the western propaganda and intelligence apparatus (see, e.g., the documentary film " The Ghosts of Je Ju"). The somewhat more well-known Koch'ang incident in February 1951 involved some 600 men and women, young and old, that were reportedly herded into a narrow valley in south Korea and mowed down with machine guns by a South Korean army unit on the loosely applied claim that they were "suspected of aiding guerrillas" -- these being Korean people who resisted the overt terrorism that the Korean people (north and south) were subjected to by the southern forces and U.S. troops. ...
[...]
http://www.consciousbeingalliance.com/2 ... -in-korea/
MoA
(embedded links)
April 14, 2017
Why North Korea Needs Nukes - And How To End That
Media say,
the United States may
or may not
kill a number of North Koreans
for this or that
or no good reason
but call North Korea
'the volatile and unpredictable regime'
Now consider what the U.S. media don't tell you about Korea:
BEIJING, March 8 (Xinhua) -- China proposed "double suspension" to defuse the looming crisis on the Korean Peninsula, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said Wednesday.
"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," Wang told a press conference on the sidelines of the annual session of the National People's Congress.
...
Wang said the nuclear issue on the Korean Peninsula is mainly between the DPRK and the United States, but China, as a next-door neighbor with a lips-and-teeth relationship with the Peninsula, is indispensable to the resolution of the issue.
FM Wang, 'the lips', undoubtedly transmitted an authorized message from North Korea: "The offer is (still) on the table and China supports it."
North Korea has made the very same offer in January 2015. The Obama administration rejected it. North Korea repeated the offer in April 2016 and the Obama administration rejected it again. This March the Chinese government conveyed and supported the long-standing North Korean offer. The U.S. government, now under the Trump administration, immediately rejected it again. The offer, made and rejected three years in a row, is sensible. Its rejection only led to a bigger nuclear arsenal and to more missiles with longer reach that will eventually be able to reach the United States.
North Korea is understandably nervous each and every time the U.S. and South Korea launch their very large yearly maneuvers and openly train for invading North Korea and for killing its government and people. The maneuvers have large negative impacts on North Korea's economy.
North Korea justifies its nuclear program as the economically optimal way to respond to these maneuvers.
Each time the U.S. and South Korea launch their very large maneuvers, the North Korean conscription army (1.2 million strong) has to go into a high state of defense readiness. Large maneuvers are a classic starting point of military attacks. The U.S.-South Korean maneuvers are (intentionally) held during the planting (April/May) or harvesting (August) season for rice when North Korea needs each and every hand in its few arable areas. Only 17% of the northern landmass is usable for agriculture and the climate in not favorable. The cropping season is short.
The southern maneuvers directly threaten the nutritional self-sufficiency of North Korea. In the later 1990s they were one of the reasons that led to a severe famine.
Its nuclear deterrent allows North Korea to reduce its conventional military readiness especially during the all important agricultural seasons. Labor withheld from the fields and elsewhere out of military necessity can go back to work. This is the official North Korean policy known as 'byungjin'.
A guaranteed end of the yearly U.S. maneuvers would allow North Korea to lower its conventional defenses without relying on nukes. The link between the U.S. maneuvers and the nuclear deterrent North Korea is making in its repeated offer is a direct and logical connection.
The North Korean head of state Kim Jong-un has officially announced a no-first-use policy for its nuclear capabilities:
"As a responsible nuclear weapons state, our republic will not use a nuclear weapon unless its sovereignty is encroached upon by any aggressive hostile forces with nukes," Kim told the Workers' Party of Korea congress in Pyongyang. Kim added that the North "will faithfully fulfill its obligation for non-proliferation and strive for the global denuclearization."
During the congress, as elsewhere, Kim Jong Un also emphasized (transcript, pdf, v. slow) the above described connection between nuclear armament and economic development. Summarized:After decades of emphasizing military strength under his father, Korea is moving toward Kim's “byongjin” — a two-pronged approach aimed at enhancing nuclear might while improving living conditions.
The byongjin strategy, despised by the Obama administration, has been successful:
What are the sources of [North Korea's economic] growth? One explanation might be that less is now spent on the conventional military sector, while nuclear development at this stage is cheaper—it may only cost 2 to 3 percent of GNP, according to some estimates. Theoretically, byungjin is more “economy friendly” than the previous “songun” or military-first policy which supposedly concentrated resources on the military.
To understand why North Korea fears U.S. aggressiveness consider the utter devastation caused mostly by the U.S. during the Korea War:
via Jeffrey Kaye - bigger
Imperial Japan occupied Korea from 1905 to 1945 and tried to assimilate it. A nominal communist resistance under Kim Il-sung fought against the occupation. After the Japanese surrender in 1945 the U.S. controlled and occupied the mostly agricultural parts of Korea below the arbitrarily chosen 38th parallel line. The allied Soviet Union controlled the industrialized part above the line. They had agreed on a short trusteeship of a united and independent country. In the upcoming cold war the U.S. retracted on the agreement and in 1948 installed a South Korean proxy dictatorship under Syngman Rhee. This manifested an artificial border the Koreans had not asked for and did not want. Kim Il-sung still commanded a strong resistance movement in the south and hoped to reunite the country. The Korea War ensued. It utterly destroyed the country. All of Korea was severely effected but especially the industrialized north which lost about a third of its population and all of its reasonably well developed infrastructure - roads, factories and nearly all of its cities.
Every Korean family was effected. Ancestor worship is deeply embedded in the Korean psyche and its collectivist culture. No one has forgotten the near genocide and no one in Korea, north or south, wants to repeat the experience.
The country would reunite if China and the U.S. (and Russia) could agree upon its neutrality. That will not happen anytime soon. But the continued danger of an "accidental" war in Korea would be much diminished if the U.S. would accept the North Korean offer: an end to aggressive behavior like threatening maneuvers against the north in exchange for a verified stop of the northern nuclear and missile programs. North Korea has to insist on this condition out of sheer economic necessity.
The U.S. government and the "western" media hide the rationality of the northern offer behind the propaganda phantasm of "the volatile and unpredictable regime".
But it is not Korea, neither north nor south, that is the "volatile and unpredictable" entity here.
Posted by b on April 14, 2017
Trump and The Problem of Militant Ignorance
Evan Vucci
ByJOSH MARSHALL
PublishedAPRIL 14, 2017, 2:36 PM EDT
30380Views
It is what we might call ‘the consensus judgment’ that President Trump is a deeply ignorant man and perhaps a profoundly ignorant President. But it is worth stepping back and considering just what this means, the different kinds of ignorance that exist and how they differ.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/tru ... -ignorance
Club des Cordeliers @cordeliers
Picasso's painting of SInchon massacre, 1950 mass murder of thousands of Korean civilians by US and its allies
https://twitter.com/cordeliers/status/6 ... 6855526400
North Korea 'ready for nuclear attack' amid show of force
39 minutes ago From the section Asia
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-39604361
Jeffrey Kaye @jeff_kaye
The US firebombing of North Korea was so intense it even sickened Gen. McArthur. 630,000 tons of bombs, mostly napalm dropped by the US
Retweets 1.573 Likes 1.481
23:57 - 4. Apr. 2017
https://twitter.com/jeff_kaye/status/849516376486182913
Kurt Nimmo @kurt_nimmo
Not a good sign. Normally there are flights between #China & #NKorea. Not today.
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