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US Media, Democrats, Bolton Form Unholy Alliance to Fight Trump-Kim Nuclear Deal

Sputnik -June 18, 2018

WASHINGTON – Donald Trump’s own National Security Adviser John Bolton, the Democratic Party and the US mainstream media were all trying to derail the US president’s new agreement with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, analysts told Sputnik.

On June 12, Trump and Kim met on the Singaporean island of Sentosa and signed a document showing their commitment to establish new bilateral relations and build a lasting peace on the Korean Peninsula. Trump also agreed to halt US-South Korea military exercises near the Korean peninsula, while Kim reiterated his country’s commitment to denuclearization.

The Democratic Party in the United States and the media establishment that supported them were cooperating closely to try and discredit Trump’s peace initiative in Korea, University of Illinois Professor of International Law Francis Boyle said.

“As the ancient Chinese proverb says, a journey of 1,000 miles begins with a single step, a very positive and encouraging step,” Boyle said. “Regretfully, it [the Singapore agreement] has pretty much been trashed by the Democrats and the mainstream US media who are in cahoots with them.”

The Democrats’ hostility to the new dialogue with Pyongyang flowed directly from their strategy in trying to discredit Trump over the past two years, Boyle pointed out.

“The Democratic strategy has been to bash Trump from the right. That goes back two years now to the conventions that nominated Trump and Hillary Clinton as their parties’ candidates,” he said.

The spectacle of the US media ganging up against the president when he was trying to resolve a potentially dangerous conflict was a depressing one, Boyle commented.

“All these newspapers condemning President Trump, it’s just unimaginably sad,” he said.

The media and the Democrats were misrepresenting Trump’s talks with Kim by falsely alleging that the US president had caved in by agreeing to talk to him when in fact Trump was just fulfilling the obligations placed upon him by the United Nations Charter which the US has signed, Boyle explained.

“Trump did not give Kim Jong-un an unnecessary concession. All he did was fulfill the commitment required of him or any US leader to hold such negotiations that is in the United Nations Charter,” he said.

Under Article 23 of the UN Charter there is a requirement for President Trump to have negotiations with North Korea which he did, Boyle recalled.

“Article 33 clearly requires ‘negotiations’ to maintain international peace and security,” he added.

Far from failing to make any progress, Trump had succeeded in getting Kim’s assent to giving the new negotiating process a promising beginning, Boyle observed.

“Trump did get a commitment on complete denuclearization of the Korean peninsula so that’s a good start. It incorporates the Panmunjom Declaration between Chairman Kim and President Moon. It’s a good start. I’m moderately encouraged,” he said.

Trump Rejected Bolton’s Parallel Between Libya, North Korea Talks

Boyle warned that the talks faced another major threat because National Security Adviser John Bolton was likely to try and undermine them.

“Bolton is a hard-line neoconservative (neocon) who publicly bragged about having sabotaged the process [of negotiations] with North Korea. He tried to sabotage these negotiations by going public and saying we are going to go the Libya route,” he said.

Last month, Bolton commented that the US denuclearization talks with North Korea would follow the pattern of previous talks to eliminate weapons of mass destruction in Libya. However, several years after Libya agreed to scrap such programs, its ruler Muammar Gaddafi was overthrown in a West-backed rebellion and murdered.

Trump contradicted Bolton and said that model of negotiations with Libya would not apply to North Korea.

Boyle said Bolton was highly intelligent and knew what he was doing when he made such remarks or and when he had encouraged Vice President Mike Pence to make similar ones.

“Bolton is a smart guy. He is a very cunning operator in the bureaucracy. I’m afraid Bolton will try to sabotage the negotiations. He has brought his own hardline people on to the National Security Council. I’m afraid that he will do what he can behind the scenes to sabotage this thing,” he said.

Boyle said he believed Trump needed to fire Bolton and select a new national security adviser who was committed to trying to make the negotiations with North Korea succeed.

“If Trump were smart I think he would fire Bolton and bring in a realpolitik-er,” he said.

Even if the talks with North Korea went well, they would take many months and several years, Boyle cautioned.

“This is going to be a long process. The administration people have conceded to the New York Times that it will take at least two years… However, following the summit, there is momentum,” Boyle concluded.

Military Establishment Tries to Hold on to US Bases in Asia-Pacific

Retired US Army Colonel and historian Doug Macgregor agreed that the Washington establishment opposed Trump’s efforts to achieve a lasting peace agreement with North Korea.

“The swamp [the establishment] will now fight the inevitable withdrawal of US ground troops from Korea because it will lead to the removal of the Marines from Okinawa as well,” Macgregor said.

Trump had made the mistake of surrounding himself with super-hawk figures like Bolton when he needed other kinds of officials who would support his peace plans, Macgregor cautioned.

“President Trump’s current defense [national security] team won’t help him! To achieve his aims the President will need to make new appointments,” he said.

However, the US public felt no commitment to running risks of full-scale war on the Korean peninsula and would support an agreement that could end the US military presence there, Macgregor advised.

“The mood and attitude of the political class in Washington is reminiscent of London’s attitude toward leaving India after World War II,” Macgregor said.

Like the British people then, the American people support the departure, Macgregor added.

June 18, 2018 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Militarism, Progressive Hypocrite, Timeless or most popular | , , | Leave a comment

Seoul Proposes Pyongyang to Move DPRK Artillery Away From Border – Reports

Sputnik – 17.06.2018

Seoul has proposed Pyongyang to move North Korean long-range artillery away from the border between the two states in order to reduce tensions between them, South Korean media reported Sunday.

The Yonhap news agency reported citing government sources that on Thursday the two states held talks between high-ranking military officials within the framework of the agreements reached on April 27 between the leaders of the two Koreas.

According to the media outlet, during the meeting the South Korean side made a number of proposals including the relocation of the North Korean artillery to the positions located up to 40 kilometers (some 25 miles) from the line dividing the two Korean states.

The situation on the Korean Peninsula has been significantly improving within the last several months with North Korean Leader Kim Jong Un and South Korean President Moon Jae-in having held their first meeting on April 27.

During the meeting, the sides signed the Declaration for Peace, Prosperity and Unification on the Korean Peninsula. The document committed the two countries to a nuclear-free peninsula and talks to bring a formal end to the Korean War.

June 17, 2018 Posted by | Militarism | | Leave a comment

It’s Time for America to Cut Loose Our Useless So-Called ‘Allies’

By James George JATRAS | Strategic Culture Foundation | 16.06.2018

US President Donald J. Trump spent the last week or so churning out initiatives that seemed deliberately calculated to set his critics’ hair on fire:

  • He met as an equal with North Korea’s Kim Jong-un – who is a very bad man!
  • He stated again his willingness to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin – an even worse man!
  • He mocked and threatened our trading partners – and slapped tariffs on them!
  • He suggested that an impenitent Russia (a very bad country!) should be let back into the genteel company of the Group of Seven!
  • He topped everything off by suggesting that Russian-speaking Crimea should be part of – Russia!

As summed up by vulgar Republican, Never-Trump apparatchik Rick Wilson:

‘After the last week, Trump is clearly a man who puts the dick in dictator. He’s a fanboy of Putin, Kim, Duterte, and a dog’s breakfast of the worst examples of oppression, thuggery, and anti-Western values the globe has to offer. [ . . . ]

‘[T]his week, Trump’s love of authoritarians, dictatorships and his actions and words came together. Donald Trump first went to the G-7 to wreck the proceedings with a combination of insult-comic schtick, diplomatic demolition derby, Putin cheerleading, and giant-toddler petulance.

‘He followed that with the Singapore Shitshow. It was a monstrous reality TV event, as was intended. But it left our putative allies wondering at the new Axis of Assholes Trump has joined—the CRANK: China, Russia, America and North Korea. By the end, it didn’t feel like he was after denuclearization but management tips from the portly little thug Kim.

‘For the American president to normalize, excuse, and ally himself with the worst of the world’s bad actors while insulting, degrading, and destroying our allies and alliances would be appalling in any circumstance. The fact that Trump acts like a bumbling, eager fraternity pledge, desperate to join Phi Sigma Dictator makes it all the worse.’

For the moment, let’s put aside Trump’s alleged sympathy for authoritarianism and focus on the accusation that Trump is “insulting, degrading, and destroying our allies and alliances,” a view held across the Establishment spectrum, from neoconservatives like Max Boot to far-Left Democratic California Congresswoman Maxine Waters (famed for her concern about Russian aggression in nonexistent Limpopo). How dare Trump threaten such valuable relationships!

Except these so-called ‘allies and alliances’ aren’t valuable to the United States. They’re a positive danger and a detriment.

Let’s get one thing straight: the United States has no real allies. There are countries we dominate and control, more properly termed client states or even satellites. (True, given Israel’s and Saudi Arabia’s lock-stock-and-barrel ownership of the American political class, it seems rather that we are their clients, not the other way around…) Conversely, on an almost one-to-one correspondence, countries that are not satellites are our enemies, either currently (Russia, North Korea, Iran, Syria) or prospectively (China).

But do we have any actual allies – that is, countries that provide mutual security for the United States, and whose contributions actually make us Americans safer and more secure in our own country?

Try to name one.

Let’s start with the granddaddy of our alliances, NATO. How does having a mutual defense pact with, say, virulently anti-Russian Poland and the Baltic States make America more secure? How does, say, tiny corrupt Montenegro, contribute to US security? Are these countries going to defend America in any conceivable way? Even if they wanted to, how could they possibly?

For that matter, against what ‘threat’ would they defend us? Is Latvia going to help build Trump’s Wall on the Mexican border?

‘Our NATO allies help out in Afghanistan,’ we are told.  NATO-Schmato – it’s Americans who do almost all the fighting and dying. It’s our treasure being wasted there. Maybe without the fig leaf of an alliance mission, we might long since have reevaluated what we still are doing there after 17 years.

But comes the answer, ‘Russia!’ Except that Russia isn’t a threat to the United States. Despite their hype even the most antagonistic Russophobic countries in NATO themselves don’t really believe they’re about to be invaded. And even if they were, that still doesn’t make Russia a threat to us – or wouldn’t except for the very existence of NATO and a forward American presence on Russia’s borders and in the Black and Baltic seas littorals. How does gratuitously risking conflict with the one country on the planet whose strategic arsenal can annihilate us make Americans safer?

As Professor Richard Sakwa has observed, ‘NATO exists to manage the risks created by its existence.’

Let’s look at other supposedly valuable alliances.

Why do we need South Korea and Japan? ‘China!’ But except for a nuclear stockpile much smaller than our intercontinental deterrent China doesn’t present a military threat to us. ‘Yes, but Beijing poses a danger to South Korea and Japan.’ Maybe, maybe not. But even if that is so why is it our problem?

Why do we need Israel, Saudi Arabia, UAE, and bunch of other Middle Eastern countries? We aren’t dependent on energy from the region as we arguably were when Jimmy Carter proclaimed a vital national interest there four decades ago. ‘Well then, Iran!’ But the Iranians can’t do anything to us. ‘Yes, but they hate Israel, Saudi Arabia, etc., etc.’ Again, what’s that got to do with us?

In each case the argument of a US interest is a tautology. The US ‘needs’ allies for the sole purpose of defense against purported threats not to us but to those very same allies. It’s a self-licking ice cream cone.

It would be bad enough if these faux alliance relationships were only detrimental in terms of getting embroiled in quarrels in which we have no interest, wasting money and manpower in areas of the world where our security is not at stake. But there’s also a direct economic cost right here at home.

Based on the claimed need for “allies” US trade policy since World War II could almost have been designed to undermine the economic interests of American workers and American producers. Starting with Germany and Japan, our defeated enemies, we offered them virtually tariff-free, nonreciprocal access to our huge domestic market to assist with their economies’ recovery from wartime destruction; in return, we would take their sovereignty: control of their foreign and security policies, as well as their military and intelligence establishments, plus permanent bases on their territory.

This arrangement became the standard with other countries in non-communist Europe, as well as some in the Far East, notably South Korea. As much or more than puffed-up claims of military threats (and companies that benefit from inflated military spending) lopsided trade is the glue that keeps the satellites in place. In effect, our “allies” cede geostrategic control of their own countries and are rewarded at the expense of domestic American economic interests. Already of questionable value in its heyday, this pattern not only survived the end of Cold War 1 but continued to grow, contributing to the rise of Cold War 2.

Put into that context, this is where Trump’s tariffs dovetail with his other blasphemies, like expecting the deadbeats to pony up for their own defense. He challenges them to reduce tariffs and barriers to zero on a reciprocal bilateral basis – knowing full well they won’t do so because it would spoil their cozy arrangement at the expense of American workers. He threatens the sanctity of the North Atlantic Treaty’s vaunted Article 5 obligation of mutual defense on whether countries meet a two percent of GDP level of military spending – knowing that few of them will since they don’t in fact face any external military threat and would rather keep the money.

In his own unvarnished, zigzaggy way, Trump is doing what he said he would: putting America and Americans first. As he has said, that does not mean hostility towards other countries, whose leaders have aduty to put their countries and peoples first as well. It means both stopping our allies’ sandbagging us, while restoring to them their unsought-for – and for many of them, undesirable – sovereignty and independence.

In the final analysis, what the likes of Rick Wilson are really afraid of is disruption of a decades-old, crooked racket that has been so lucrative for countless hangers-on and profiteers. As James P. Pinkerton, former aide to Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, describes it: ‘[T]he basic geopolitical foundations of the last seven decades are being challenged and shifted – or, as critics would prefer to say, being subverted and betrayed. Yet in the meantime, even as his myriad foes prepare their next political, legal, and punditical attacks, Trump is the man astride the world stage, smiling, shaking hands, signing deals – and unmistakably remaking the old order.’

Let’s get on with it.

June 16, 2018 Posted by | Economics, Militarism, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | , , | Leave a comment

‘Occupation’: How Norway Was Scaremongered Into Doubling US Military Presence

Sputnik | June 16, 2018

Norwegian historian and Russia specialist Bjorn Nystad explains how his country’s political class, media, academics and filmmakers have artificially pumped up a fear of its eastern neighbor.

Oslo has opted to violate its own established practice of refusing to station foreign troops on the country’s soil during peacetime, and is more than doubling the number of US marines stationed in Norway from 330 to 700, and providing bases for US surveillance aircraft and fighter jets. The Marines will be moved from Trondheim, about 1,500 km from the Russian border, to the northern county of Troms, about 300 km from Norway’s border with Russia.

Opposition lawmakers slammed the government for failing to put the issue up for debate in parliament. Social Left Party leader Audun Lysbakken complained this week that more US troops would only “increase the tension,” in the region. “It’s sad that the government believes it is in Norway’s interest to say yes to whatever the US is asking for,” he said.

Speaking to Sputnik, Dr. Bjorn Nystad, a former University of Oslo professor who lost his job in 2010 over alleged “Russophilic views,” said that the growing US military presence is taking place against the background of a steady campaign of spreading anti-Russian sentiments in the Norwegian media.

The latest manifestation of this anti-Russian paranoia occurred this week, when the NRK and TV 2 broadcasters decided to head to the World Cup with brand new laptops and phones out of fear of being “monitored” or “cyberattacked” while in Russia.

Nystad believes these anti-Russian attitudes are being injected into the Norwegian consciousness from above. “It’s enough, for example, to write an article about Putin being a ‘dictator’, or something like that, and you will get a job at a university without any problems,” he said. The professor’s own 2016 biography on Putin was met with hostility, with Aftenposten’s editor describing it as a “dangerous rewriting of history.”

There are many in Norway who have a neutral attitude toward Russia, Nystad said, but they fear running into trouble with the established narrative. “Academics, experts, and journalists understand very well that if they say something ‘wrong’ about Russia, they could lose their jobs. Therefore everyone avoids running into conflict with authorities,” he noted.

Okkupert

Probably the “pinnacle” of the anti-Russian campaign is the widely publicized TV series Okkupert (Occupied), whose storyline features Russia occupying Norway in response to a Europe-wide energy crisis. The most expensive television series in Norway’s history, Okkupert has been picked up for a third season.

“For some part of the population, these kinds of series probably have an effect,” Nystad noted. But others understand that this is “stupidity and anti-Russian propaganda,” he added. “People are losing trust in the media and politicians. They are starting to think critically. Alternative media have appeared, along with popular bloggers. And our elite is now terrified of losing power,” the academic concluded.

June 16, 2018 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Militarism, Russophobia | | Leave a comment

At least 10 dead as blast hits meeting of Taliban & Afghan forces during landmark ceasefire

RT | June 16, 2018

At least 10 people were killed as an explosion rocked a meeting of Taliban and Afghan security forces, which gathered during an unprecedented ceasefire for the Eid holiday, in the eastern province of Nangarhar, officials said.

Casualties include Taliban and civilians, Attaullah Khogyani, spokesman for the provincial governor of Nangarhar, said.

The timing of the bombing appears to be significant. On Saturday, Taliban members entered the Afghan capital, Kabul urging people to come forward and take selfies with them. The unusual move reportedly occurred elsewhere in the country, as photos and videos on social media showed Taliban fighters giving hugs to locals and Afghan forces across several provinces.

Afghan President Ashraf Ghani addressed the nation, saying the truce between the government and the Taliban will be extended.

The government freed at least 46 Taliban prisoners amid the ceasefire, the president’s office confirmed, as cited by Reuters. Ghani’s office urged the militant group to extend their ceasefire, saying that the government is waiting for their response.

Earlier in June, the Taliban made a surprising statement announcing the suspension of hostilities with the government forces for three days to mark the Muslim holiday of Eid. This is the first time that the Taliban has ever extended an offer of this kind to Kabul.

The ceasefire came two months after the group announced its annual spring offensive, as they vowed to target the “American invaders.” Heavy clashes repeatedly broke out across a number of Afghan provinces, with casualties inflicted among Afghan soldiers and police officers.

The militants attacked a number of cities across the country, seizing large quantities of weapons and equipment.

June 16, 2018 Posted by | Militarism | | Leave a comment

Trump and Kim Defied the Odds for Successful Summit

Strategic Culture Foundation | June 15, 2018

Who would have guessed it? US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un achieved a stunning success this week when they met face-to-face in Singapore.

It was the first time a sitting American president ever met a leader of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. Seven decades of hostility melted away when Trump and Kim greeted each other with warm handshakes and smiles.

Over the past year, the two leaders had dueled with extremely bellicose rhetoric. Many people around the world feared that a nuclear war was imminent. After the unlikely summit in Singapore, the world suddenly feels relieved that a peaceful way forward may be found after all.

It has to said that this week’s diplomatic exchange is exactly what Russia and China had been advocating for many months, if not years. Only through mutual engagement can mistrust and animosities be dispelled to create constructive dialogue.

At the beginning of this year, it was the young North Korean leader who took the initiative by extending a hand of friendship to South Korean President Moon Jae-in. To his credit, President Moon accepted and quickly built up a dialogue which led to the breakthrough of North Korea attending the Winter Olympics hosted South of the border.

It was most likely Moon’s prudent mediation that then enabled back-channel contact between Washington and Pyongyang, despite the background of fiery, aggressive rhetoric. President Trump deserves praise for responding to overtures from North Korea for a peaceful dialogue. Trump’s unorthodox openness led to the historic summit this week in Singapore.

Another key element evidenced this week was how Trump put aside high-handed ultimatums to North Korea for unilateral nuclear disarmament. There was a leery expectation among many observers that the American side would approach the Singapore summit as a forum for North Korea’s capitulation. A certain deal-breaker.

Last month, the meeting nearly failed to materialize when hawkish members of the Trump administration recklessly compared North Korea’s fate to Libya. In the end, President Trump managed to salvage the summit by assuring Pyongyang that he was genuine about seeking a mutual dialogue.

This week, Trump delivered on a broadminded engagement. He did not issue high-handed demands. Instead, he made a major concession to North Korea by vowing to cancel future US war maneuvers on the Korean Peninsula. Trump actually referred to the annual military exercises as “provocative war games”.

Moreover, the US president talked about ending the Korean War (1950-53) with the imminent signing of a full peace treaty, and the eventual removal of nearly 30,000 US troops from South Korea.

This is the big-picture, pragmatic security guarantees that North Korea has long called for if it is expected to participate in a comprehensive peace settlement, including the removal of nuclear weapons from the peninsula. This broader approach in which the US recognizes its historic obligations to resolving the conflict is also what Russia and China had been advocating.

This so-called “freeze-freeze” reciprocal reduction of antagonism was until recently rejected by the Trump administration as it had been by previous US presidencies. The American side was encumbered with an arrogant view that its military forces in the region were not part of the problem.

Trump has upended that logjam in American attitude towards Korea. When Trump greeted Kim this week he did so with a refreshing attitude of civility and equality, not treating the North Korean leader as a demonized pariah. More importantly, Trump stepped up to the plate to offer major concessions in order to engage Kim with trust that the White House is indeed serious about a comprehensive peace settlement.

Another positive sign was that Trump did not demand a prompt denuclearization by North Korea. Again, there seemed to be a shift towards wisdom that any progress has to be part of a gradual reciprocal process in which the Americans have also obligations to deliver in terms of scaling back their military forces.

This is all very promising. But still yet only in the realm of potential. The main thing is that for now the American and North Korea leaders appear to have forged a solid understanding and mutual commitment. Trump, surprisingly, has risen to the occasion to show real leadership.

It bodes well too that Trump’s vow to cancel war games seems a firm offer. In subsequent meetings later this week in South Korea and China, his Secretary of State Mike Pompeo reiterated the suspension of military exercises.

Crucially, the Singapore summit has been welcomed by all regional players. South Korea, China and Russia as well as Japan have all greeted the outcome. This will provide an essential supportive forum for dialogue to build in the coming months and years. Japan has expressed some reservation about the cancellation of military drills with the US, but South Korea has said that it is ready to accept the suspension for the sake of building trust and furthering dialogue.

Ironically perhaps, the greatest threat to Trump’s bold peace initiative with North Korea stems from his domestic political foes. Rather than grasping an opportunity to win the peace and avert possible nuclear catastrophe, there was much negative reaction among the US political establishment following Singapore.

In particular, Democrats and some Republican hawkish neocons have been carping that Trump “gave too much away” to North Korea. Prominent sections of the anti-Trump news media, like the New York Times, Washington Post and CNN, have been undermining the initiative by complaining about Trump not raising the issue of human rights or not giving allies sufficient defense assurances. There is a strong sense that these concerns are disingenuous and are really driven by an obsession to attack Trump no matter what.

There is also the looming danger of US deep state reaction. Trump’s understanding of the need to build trust by de-escalating US military forces on the Korea Peninsula is appropriate for the search for a peaceful settlement. But for Washington’s imperial planners in the Pentagon and its menagerie of think-tanks such a long-term withdrawal of military force is anathema to power projection in Asia-Pacific, specifically towards Russia and China.

President Trump and Chairman Kim deserve huge respect for their willingness to engage. So too does South Korea’s President Moon Jae-in. A word of praise is due too to China and Russia for their positive advocacy.

But the way ahead is fraught with dangers and pitfalls. And those dangers to peace emanate from within the corridors of Washington DC.

A final cautionary word too is that Washington’s power is an endemic noxious entity, and that embroils the current president, despite his seemingly benign intentions towards North Korea. Washington is infested with criminal foreign conduct, from regime change to illegal wars. Trump’s aggression towards Iran and his sabotage of the nuclear accord is grounds for holding deep skepticism about anything coming from Washington. The current US-backed criminal siege of the Yemeni port city of Hodeida is another cause for distrust and contempt towards Washington’s global power designs.

All we can say perhaps for now with regard to US-North Korea relations is that a good start has been made. But peace is still a long way off.

June 15, 2018 Posted by | Militarism, Timeless or most popular | , | Leave a comment

Radioactive Dust Found in Homes of Workers at Major US Nuclear Weapons Facility

Sputnik – June 14, 2018

Radioactive microparticles were detected in the homes of six workers in central Washington state’s Tri-City area who are associated with the Hanford nuclear site, a major Cold War-era plutonium manufacturing facility, scientists have reported.

A study published this month in the Journal of Environmental Engineering Science reported that small but still dangerous amounts of radioactive elements were found in dust collected by cloth wipes and vacuum cleaners in order to track the potential spread of radiation from one of the United States’ most notorious nuclear cleanup sites.

The same study also found radioactive particles in the homes of nuclear workers associated with the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico and the Rocky Flats Plant in Colorado. All three sites are heavily associated with nuclear weapons production.

It’s believed the particles could have found their way into the homes in a variety of ways, including being attached to workers’ clothing and being stirred up by wind storms and wildfires, which are common in the region, and blown inside.

The tests found radioactive uranium, thorium, plutonium and americium particles that, while innocuous in the external environment, represent a “potential source of internal radiation exposure” if ingested, warns Marco Kaltofen, a civil engineer affiliated with the Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts and author of the study, the Seattle Times reported.

Exposure to these materials increases the risk of cancer, the study noted. Plutonium is “fiendishly toxic, even in small amounts,” said Glenn Seaborg, the physicist who discovered the element in 1941, as quoted in a 2011 fact sheet on the Rocky Flats site. The Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry notes in its public health statement on thorium exposure that the radioactive isotopes can sit in the soil for decades and cause lung cancer if inhaled. Uranium ingestion mainly targets the kidneys, the ATSDR notes, while americium destroys and irradiates bone tissue and can cause bone cancers such as leukemia or lymphoma and damage the thyroid.

“These radioactive particles are tiny and difficult to detect once you get a few inches away, but once inside the body, the distance from our tissue is essentially zero,” Kaltofen explained. While the skin can handle certain amounts of radiation safely, the body’s internal organs have no protection and a tiny amount can prove fatally toxic. Polonium-210, for example, is 250 million times more toxic than hydrogen cyanide, the New York Times reported.

The report’s conclusions come from years of testing coordinated with Hanford Challenge, a Seattle-based organization that has fought for decades for accountability in the federal cleanup of the Hanford site. Kaltofen used an unusual technique that involves both electron microscopy and a specialized X-ray analysis that can detect extremely low levels of radioactive particles. The samples were compared to those taken from the Hanford site, which served as a kind of fingerprint for identifying the particles.

The levels found in the Hanford workers’ homes represented a health risk exceeding that considered acceptable by the International Commission on Radiological Protection’s safety standards. However, the manager of the Radioactive Air Emissions Section of the Washington Department of Health John Martell told the Seattle Times that the level found in the study “is not jumping out to us as a public health risk.”

The US Department of Energy (DoE) performs regular environmental monitoring to measure radionuclide concentrations in the air, water and soil, as well as in fish and wildlife “to assure the public that the dose and risk from Hanford contaminants are well understood,” the department says.

Hanford Site, or Hanford Nuclear Reservation, is a 586 square-mile site between the Columbia and Yakima Rivers, just upstream from the Tri-Cities and adjacent to Richland. It is roughly half the size of Rhode Island. The site was established in 1943 as part of the Manhattan Project, the United States’ top secret program to develop an atomic bomb.

Hanford housed the world’s first full-scale plutonium reactor in the world, B Reactor, and was expanded to nine nuclear reactors and five plutonium processing plants. Plutonium manufactured at the site was used in the Trinity blast, the world’s first nuclear explosion, as was the fuel for the two atom bombs dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the United States in August 1945, that killed more than 200,000 people. Most of the nuclear fuel for the 60,000 nuclear weapons the United States produced through the 1980s came from the Hanford site, according to the US Department of Energy.

Hanford was decommissioned after the Cold War but remains the storage site for 53 million gallons of liquid nuclear waste and 25 million cubic feet of solid nuclear waste, the DoE website notes. Neither the stored waste nor the waste from production has been properly stored, and large radiation leaks have contaminated much of the area, which remains the nation’s largest environmental cleanup site. According to Earth Island Journal, between 1944 and 1972, “as much as 1.7 trillion gallons of liquid waste, radionuclides and hazardous chemicals” were dumped into the Columbia River or into the ground.

The site regularly leaks nuclear contaminants, notably in February 2016 and May 2017, with the planned December 2017 demolition of a Hanford plutonium finishing plant being halted after several workers inhaled contaminated particles, arousing fears of a larger contamination if demolition continued, the Seattle Times reported at the time. Plutonium and americium traces were found up to 10 miles away from the condemned plant in subsequent tests. However, all of Kaltofen’s samples came from before the demolition began.

The Yakama Nation, whose reservation sits only 20 miles from the site, for decades fought turning Hanford into a nuclear waste site, as did other affected tribes such as the Nez Perce and Umatilla nations. Three counties around the Yakama reservation have seen high rates of a rare and fatal birth defect called anencephaly, in which a fetus’ brain and skull fail to fully form, which is believed to be caused by irradiation, Earth Island reported. Higher rates of anencephaly are also associated with sites in Iraq where the US military used depleted uranium rounds during the Iraq War, Iraqi doctors in Basra and Baghdad have noted.

Indigenous nations in Washington aren’t the only ones negatively affected by the US nuclear weapons program: decades of uranium mining in the Navajo Nation have caused extensive irradiation of the countryside, creating a disease known as Navajo Neuropathy, NPR reported. One spring in northeastern Arizona was reported in 2015 to have uranium levels “at least five times greater than safe drinking water standards” by a study published in the journal Environmental Science & Technology. The contamination caused the early deaths of many children who drank from the spring or whose mothers drank the water while pregnant.

June 15, 2018 Posted by | Environmentalism, Militarism, Timeless or most popular | | Leave a comment

Tension escalates as U.S Navy battle group arrives off Syria’s coast

By Paul Antonopoulos | Fort Russ News | June 14, 2018

A US naval group, led by the aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman, entered the Mediterranean Sea on Sunday. Military analyst Konstantin Sivkov points to the possible goal of the aircraft carrier.

Earlier, the US Navy reported that the naval group led by the aircraft carrier Harry S. Truman entered the eastern Mediterranean Sea to participate in operations against ISIS in Syria and Iraq.

For the Russian analyst, the naval force may have moved to the Mediterranean Sea to prepare an attack with cruise missiles and even aviation bombs against the Syrian army.

“I suppose it’s really about preparations for a cruise missile attack. They might also use manned aviation. As the previous attacks have shown, a cruise missile attack is not efficient, so they will use aviation to protect the missiles when they attack,” Konstantin Sivkov said.

According to Sivkov, the United States will use drones as well as airplanes that will attack air defense systems with anti-radar missiles, “that is, the whole set of measures to assure the missile attack.”

“There will probably be an attack on Syria’s own air defense systems, and then Syrian troops may be attacked, but by manned aviation using standard bombs,” he added.

The United States, Britain and France launched on April 14 more than 100 missiles against Syrian targets in response to the alleged use of chemical weapons by Damascus against civilians in the city of Douma in Eastern Ghouta that supposedly occurred on April 7. Most of the projectiles launched were intercepted by Syrian air defense systems. The allegations were later proven to be false by international experts visiting the scene.

The United States has also attacked Syria on other occasions, usually when the Syrian Army are making rapid progress against terrorist forces. Washington justifies the attacks supposedly because of chemical weapons used by the Syrian Army which conveniently always occurs when the Syrian Army are about to win a major battle, not at the beginning of the battle.

June 14, 2018 Posted by | Militarism | , | Leave a comment

Congress to bind President’s hands on troop removal from Korean peninsula

US congressmen are concerned that a peace arrangement might be brokered with North Korea

By Frank Sellers | The Duran | June 14, 2018

When the President wants to wage a war somewhere, he just does it, and no one bats an eye. But for the first time in a very long time, as opposed to escalating tensions, invading, and bombing somewhere, a US president is proposing to deescalate a situation and establish peace somewhere.

That’s a major thing in and of itself. But that’s not alright in the minds of US congressmen, who are concerned that a peace arrangement might be brokered with North Korea if Trump withdraws American troops from the Korean peninsula.

Due to this worry, predicated on the reality that they simply don’t trust Trump at his word [to maintain the occupation], quite openly, they are drafting up some legislation, in both houses, that would bind the president’s hands in order to prevent any meaningful reduction or removal of US military presence in Korea.

ABC News reports:

A pair of Senate Democrats introduced a bill Wednesday that would prevent President Donald Trump from unilaterally drawing down the American troop presence on the Korean peninsula – not necessarily because he’s said he will, but because they don’t want to rely on his word that he won’t.

Other measures that also tie the president’s hands, but don’t go as far, are already closer to being passed as part of an essential military policy bill.

The new legislation, from Sens. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., and Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., would prevent Trump from withdrawing troops from South Korea unless the secretary of defense says it’s in the interest of national security and that it would not undermine the security of allies in the region.

“U.S. troops are not bargaining chips to be offered up in an off-handed manner,” Duckworth said in a statement.

During his summit with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, Trump announced the U.S. would be ending large-scale annual military exercises conducted with South Korea but insisted that the status of the 28,500 American soldiers on the peninsula is not up for negotiation.

“They are going to stay. We didn’t even discuss that, that wasn’t discussed,” Trump said in an interview with Voice of America.

But he also said, during a press conference, that he still wants to draw down troops in Korea at some point – just not as part of negotiations over the North’s nuclear capability.

“At some point, I have to be honest. I used to say this during my campaign… I want to bring our soldiers back home. We have 32,000 soldiers in South Korea. I would like to be able to bring them back home. That’s not part of the equation. At some point, I hope it would be,” he said.

That type of uncertainty was enough for Murphy to try to establish some new restrictions.

“I don’t think it’s smart policy for Congress to rely on the word of the president,” the Connecticut Democrat told ABC. “This time he gave away exercises for nothing, what’s to stop him from giving away troops for nothing?”

The two Democrats want their amendment added to the Senate’s version of the National Defense Authorization Act, which sets military policy for the next fiscal year. The House’s version already has a similar provision, which would limit funds that can be used to reduce troop levels in South Korea, and the Senate includes a “sense of the Senate” provision stipulating that “the significant removal of the United States military forces from the Korean Peninsula is a non-negotiable item” as it relates to North Korea’s denuclearization.

Once each chamber passes its respective NDAA, the two must be merged in what is known as a conference committee.

So while Murphy would obviously like to see his bill passed, he acknowledged that this year’s NDAA will be making some sort of a statement warning the president not to try to reduce troop levels in South Korea unless there is a national security imperative.

Sen. Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska, who wrote the sense of the Senate resolution, said he is concerned Trump might try to limit troop numbers on the Korean peninsula, which he warned would play right into China’s desires to have an unchallenged presence in the region.

“The Chinese have probably been coaching Kim Jong Un to seek that as part of the nuclear negotiation goals,” he told ABC.

Last month, Trump ordered the Pentagon to issue options for reducing the American presence in South Korea, despite his administration’s assurances that they were not a bargaining chip in the Kim talks.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican, said those kinds of comments indicate that it might be time to consider tying the president’s hands when it comes to defense on the peninsula.

“I generally wouldn’t be open to that, but I might be now,” he told ABC, although he added that the Senate should hold a hearing on the Murphy/Duckworth proposition before any votes are contemplated.

As we see, the American government really isn’t all that interested in a peace scenario being established on the Korean peninsula, and, one might well argue, anywhere else, for that matter. Consider Syria, when Trump announced he wanted to pull US troops out of Syria and to bring our boys home. What happened? Well, the military’s top brass and advisers raised a stink about it and insisted that the troops stay.

And, conveniently, Assad just happened to decide at that time to launch a gas attack on his own citizens, the perfect excuse to maintain a military presence in Syria, and maybe even to escalate US participation in the region by getting some allies together to blow some stuff up. The same sort of scenario, after a fashion, appears to be going on here.

Trump says he wants to bring America’s finest home and then the government raises a stink about it and tries to find a way to force Trump to not interfere with the war situation in Korea. That might ruin other US interests in the region, together with reducing the apparent budget requirements for the Pentagon, as well as damage any good pretexts for attempting some sort of regime change operation in North Korea, after the Libya model, of course. Apparently, the war mongering mentality isn’t something limited to John Bolton or Mad Dog Mattis, but looks to be shared by the rest of the Federal government as well.

However, that such measures would actually be of any use isn’t really all that certain, given that all Trump would have to do is to assign some national security priority to the denuclearization process in North Korea, indicating that such a withdrawal is therefore necessary for America’s security against a nuclear North Korea. Afterall, Trump’s tariffs regimes against China, the EU, the other members of NAFTA, and most of the rest of the planet, are all in the name of national security. So, all Trump really needs to do is utter those words, and his will is carried out, even if the US congress isn’t too excited that Trump happens to be the Commander-in-chief of the US armed forces, maybe with some emphasis on that chief part.

June 14, 2018 Posted by | Militarism | , | Leave a comment

Nukes: Intentions Matter More Than Weapons

By Graham E. Fuller | June 13, 2018

The fascinating, elaborately choreographed diplomatic pas de deux in Singapore between Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un mesmerized the world over two days. Most pundits look at the (perhaps more than) half empty glass of water on the table. Indeed, most Democrats and all Trump-haters refuse to grant the summit any worth lest it lend strength to Trump’s political power. The high priests of denuclearization (an admittedly arcane discipline) are parsing the agreement; so far they have found very little of nuclear substance.

Yet instant gratification in the quest for immediate and complete denuclearization of North Korea is highly unrealistic given the dark layers of past conflict. Worse, evaluating the summit by the degree of denuclearization achieved  is truly naive in geopolitical terms. This step taken at the summit, like it or not, is just that, a first but very significant step along a long and important road. This first step indeed may never be succeeded by a second—but the chances are good that it will. How it will all come out in the end is anybody’s guess.

Yet the calming of the rabid language and ferocity of threats between the US and North Korea over decades must be considered a major accomplishment in itself. It was not necessarily destined to happen at all. You don’t reach settlements against a backdrop of escalating rage. The emergence of a new civility and the de-demonization of the other party is an vital prerequisite for any further progress. Without it you have nothing.

And there is a yet more important strategic point about nuclear weapons that many critics miss. In the end, it is the nature and intentions of those who possess nuclear weapons that matter, often much more than the mere possession of them. The British and the French could both blow the US out of the water tomorrow with their nuclear arsenals. Yet we don’t lose sleep over it. Why not? Because we have some reasonable confidence that the intentions of the British and the French governments are extremely unlikely to bring about a nuclear attack on the US.

China today can devastate the US with its nuclear weapons. Indeed, there were real grounds for concern when founding leader of communist China Mao Zedong was at the helm because  he was perceived as dangerously ideological and erratic in his political impulses, at home and abroad. So even though the Communist Party still runs China today, its newer generations of leadership and the nature of its functional ideology and its nuclear intentions today are perceived as much more rational. In addition, China was gradually admitted into the international community—which has a way of gradually dampening excessive radicalism. In this respect, the step towards greater international legitimization of North Korea, for all the country’s ugly domestic facets, will likely serve to slowly impel it towards some greater acknowledgment of “international norms.”

Even the collapse of the Soviet Union brought considerable change to the thinking of both Washington and Moscow. The intentions of communist Russia—its ideology, its closed world view—changed overnight as the bastions of the communist empire fell. A mood of far greater international relaxation emerged as a result.

(Sadly, the US then decided to pursue a concerted effort to keep Russia weak and diminished. Remember Obama publicly describing Russia as nothing more than “a regional power?” This demeaning language accompanied US moves to push NATO forces right up to Russia’s very doorstep— in violation of George Bush senior’s understanding with Gorbachev that the US would explicitly not seek to exploit Russia’s new weakness. Indeed, Moscow’s response (in Crimea, Ukraine) to western military moves along Russia’s borders served to further unnerve the region and exacerbate the situation.)

But the general point remains valid. There are far less grounds to fear Russian nukes today than there were during the Cold War. Neither side speaks of ideological conflict today, although Washington has declared Russia to be the number one threat to the US—a charge not reciprocated by Russia.

In dealing with Pyongyang, the ability of North Korean nukes to reach the US or its allies in East Asia is naturally a cause for concern and is closely monitored. When each side excoriates the other with extreme rhetoric, fears of inadvertent nuclear incidents or strategic miscalculations rise dramatically. When that rhetoric is calmed and exchanges become more civil, immediate fears recede a bit. The longer civility and dialog can prevail, the greater the relaxation of tensions. The nukes may not go away for quite a while. But the grounds for their use greatly recede.

All weapons are dangerous and nuclear weapons especially so. It would be eminently desirable to see a general global denuclearization, making war a little bit less devastating. Meanwhile there is a nuclear club whose members have fought their way into membership without invitation, and jealously guard the gates lest their own power be correspondingly diluted by still newer members seeking to join the club. One can argue that the more nukes there are, the greater the likelihood of their use. Yet that perspective has yet to be borne out by the facts of international life: so far the US is the only country in the world to have used nuclear weapons in conflict—against Japan at the end of World War II. Maybe nukes’ devastating power brings greater sobriety to regional conflicts, as it so far seems to have done, say, between Pakistan and India, both nuclear powers.

So there is something to be celebrated in the Singapore summit between Trump and Kim. It has de-demonized both sides in the eyes of the other, and the exchanges have taken on greater mutual respect at the personal level. The strategic aspirations of both sides point to a diminution of confrontation rather than perpetuation of an unstable status quo. At least for now the apparent intentions of Pyongyang have receded to something already less threatening.

This event contains striking implications for Iran. The US and Iran desperately need to engage in a wide exchange of views designed to de-escalate those intentions and lower the threat threshold. The first step is to sit down in civility with Tehran with a wide-open agenda. John Kerry brought those qualities—reciprocated by Iran— to the Iran nuclear agreement. The agenda, however, was very narrow. Regrettably neo-conservative, liberal interventionists and pro-Zionist forces in the US really don’t want any agreement with Iran to take place short of total regime change in Tehran.

There is no question that Iran needs to de-escalate its rhetoric and move more guardedly in its regional actions—but so too must its neighbors who are  hyping the “Shi’ite threat.” Iran is massively outgunned and beggared by the US and all its regional allies. And the US is still driven by an anti-Iran obsession that is bolstered daily by Israel.

When the barrel of the pistol is removed from Tehran’s head, it too may start finding a source of emulation in Kim Jong Un’s new diplomatic gambit.

Graham E. Fuller is a former senior CIA official, author of numerous books on the Muslim World; his first novel is “Breaking Faith: A novel of espionage and an American’s crisis of conscience in Pakistan.” 

June 14, 2018 Posted by | Militarism | , | Leave a comment

The Art of the Deal worked on Sentosa Island

By M.K. Bhadrakumar | Asia Times | June 13, 2018

Some statesmen by their sheer force of personality and unorthodox ways of politicking arouse disdain among onlookers. US President Donald is perhaps the most famous figure of that kind in world politics today.

No matter what he does, Trump attracts criticism. He evokes strong feelings of antipathy among a large and voluble swathe of opinion within half of America. The making of history in a virtual solo act on his part, which is the rarest of efforts, on Sentosa Island in Singapore on Tuesday and which the world watched with awe and disbelief, will be instinctively stonewalled.

Half of America simply refuses to accept the positive tidings about him coming from Singapore. The skeptics are all over social media pouring scorn, voicing skepticism, unable to accept that if the man has done something sensible and good for his country and for world peace, it deserves at the very least patient, courteous attention.

The problem is about Trump – not so much the imperative need of North Korea’s denuclearization. But western detractors – ostensibly rooting for the “liberal international order” – will eventually lapse into silence because what emerges is that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has enough to “bite” here in the deal that Trump is offering – broadly, a security guarantee from the US and the offer of a full-bodied relationship with an incremental end to sanctions plus a peace treaty.

Succinctly put, Trump has offered a deal that Kim simply cannot afford to reject. The ending of the US-ROK military exercises forthwith; Trump’s agenda of eventual withdrawal of troops from ROK; the lure of possible withdrawal of sanctions once 20% of the denuclearization process gets underway, or once the process becomes irreversible; Trump’s hint that he has sought assurances from Japan and the ROK that they will be “generous” in offering economic assistance to the reconstruction of North Korea; China’s involvement in the crucial process – these are tangibles.

Re-election at stake

Trump seems to have succeeded in impressing Kim how green his valley too could be if he accepted the deal. On the other hand, Kim senses that he has an interlocutor who is keenly seeking a success story for his beleaguered presidency and is not playing political games or merely waffling. Trump candidly, disarmingly admitted at the press conference after the talks with Kim concluded that this success story would certainly go into his campaign plank when he makes a bid for re-election in 2020. What bigger signal can Trump give regarding his good faith.

In sum, Kim gets a one-time deal that must see the light of day before November 2020. It is custom-made by someone who correctly figured out Kim’s needs and compulsions. Thus, a personal chemistry is developing, which will be further cemented when Kim travels to Washington. Evidently, Kim also senses that he must concede on issues that matter to Trump politically – the issue of the remains of Americans who lost their lives in the Korean War, which is a hugely emotive issue in the US and whose resolution casts Trump in a positive glow. Trump was pleasantly surprised that Kim agreed on the spot when he made the request – just like that.

Geopolitically, Kim weighs in that in the ROK President Moon Jae-In, he already has someone who is a famous supporter of Seoul’s “Sunshine Policy”. There is already talk in Seoul about doing trade with North Korea. And it is a masterstroke on Trump’s part to include China in the negotiations for a peace treaty between the US and North Korea – although legally speaking, that is not mandatory. Trump flagged twice that US intelligence has spotted that China-North Korean border controls have eased lately since the US-China tensions began rising over trade.

Trump is ensuring that China remains a big stakeholder right until the finishing line. Now, a Korean peace treaty will inevitably reflect on the presence of US troops in South Korea – and Japan – which is, of course, an issue of momentous consequence for China’s security and the power dynamic of Northeast Asia.
The unthinkable is happening

The bottom line is that Trump has pulled off something that could make him a man of history and strengthen his America First project and in the process might win him a second term as president. The unthinkable is happening and his detractors are desperately searching for loopholes in the joint declaration signed in Singapore. It is a pathetic sight because no political document ever drafted by man has been 100% foolproof. A document is always open to interpretation. To err is human, to forgive divine.

However, that is beside the point here. The heart of the matter is that a big portion of the Trump-Kim deal cannot even be written on parchment paper. It is one-on-one. It is built around personal rapport, while the terms were agreed upon beforehand. The assisting role of US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Kim’s 30-year old sister Kim Yo-jong in the signing ceremony presented an extraordinary sight, testifying to the profundity of the occasion. In the East, you don’t break a deal that your sister bore witness to.

Therefore, setting aside prejudices regarding Trump the man, this is a moment when America should be capable of savoring. Of course, history shows that man proposes and God disposes. But the good part here is that no one is seeking to undermine what Trump and Kim have embarked upon.

So long as their mutual commitment is not in doubt, the prospects of a settlement on the Korean Peninsula are reasonably good. That’s what Trump’s Art of the Deal would have said.

June 13, 2018 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Militarism | , | Leave a comment

Democrats Put Partisanship Before Prospects for Peace

By Joe Lauria | Consortium News | June 13, 2018

When Richard Nixon returned to Washington after his historic 1972 trip to China, he was welcomed with strong support from Democrats.

“From the initial Congressional reaction, it was apparent that the President, home from his China trip, would find broad bipartisan support for his move toward closer relations with Peking,” The New York Times reported on Feb. 29, 1972.

Even Democratic Senate leaders Edward Kennedy and Mike Mansfield praised Nixon’s diplomatic gamble.

Forty-six years later President Donald Trump took a similar political risk in agreeing to the first ever summit with a North Korean leader. Cautious optimism emerged from the summit that peace on the Korean peninsula may finally be within reach 65 years after a truce silenced the guns of the Korean War.

But instead of the support Nixon received from the opposition party, Trump has been blasted by Democrats, who’ve put any prospect for peace behind their partisan quest to regain power.

“It sure looks as if President Trump was hoodwinked in Singapore,” wrote liberal New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristoff on Tuesday. “Trump seemed to believe he had achieved some remarkable agreement, but the concessions were all his own.”

“Kim seems to have completely out-negotiated Trump, and it’s scary that Trump doesn’t seem to realize this,” Kristoff wrote.

Nixon toasting Zhou

The Times editorial board was even harsher. “President Trump was on his best behavior, as is so often the case when he is dealing with dictators,” it wrote. “Mr. Trump was even more effusive about Mr. Kim after their session, sounding more like he was deconstructing a blind date than analyzing a diplomatic meeting.”

In case the reader didn’t get the message the editorial went on: “Whatever he does or does not understand about history or policy or statecraft, Mr. Trump has a keen sense of how to engage authoritarian thugs who crave respect and legitimacy. It’s how he’s wired.”

And then it piled on: “Mr. Trump has a deep and abiding fondness for strongmen … The more ruthlessly they have had to act to hold on to power, the more he respects them.”

“Dealing with men like Mr. Kim is, on some level, comfortable ground for Mr. Trump,” the Times editorial said. “Such negotiations are a higher-stakes, global version of the world he came up in, one of cutthroat real estate developers and shady businessmen and mobsters. … The world sneers at strongmen like Mr. Kim, Mr. Putin and Rodrigo Duterte, the president of the Philippines, regarding them as uncivilized thugs, and Mr. Trump feels similarly disrespected. Dispositionally speaking, these are Mr. Trump’s people.”

A Beginning, Not an End

There wasn’t a word about what the two leaders agreed to in Singapore, namely the start—not the end—of what Trump called “an arduous process” that could lead to peace on the Korean peninsula. Trump could not have been clearer. He even said he could be wrong if the agreement is not realized.

The Times editorial never mentioned the agreement. In essence both sides agreed to work towards a peace treaty to end the Korean War, and the U.S. agreed to provide security guarantees to North Korea in exchange for the denuclearization of the peninsula. This was always meant to be a broad agreement on principles at the summit to kick start the indeed arduous negotiations to follow.

That the Times editorial board purposely ignored this fact to score cheap partisan points could not be clearer. The risks inherent in war on the peninsula, which should be of bi-partisan concern, were apparently of no concern to the editors on Eighth Avenue who decidedly took the low road.

Senate Democrats were no less uncharitable, seizing what they thought was an opportunity to score partisan points, while ignoring the promise the summit holds. “What the United States has gained is vague and unverifiable at best,” said Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY). “What North Korea has gained, however, is tangible and lasting. By granting a meeting with Chairman Kim, President Trump has granted a brutal and repressive dictatorship, the international legitimacy it has long craved.”

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) said: “In his haste to reach an agreement, President Trump elevated North Korea to the level of the United States while preserving the regime’s status quo.”

The questions asked at Trump’s post-summit press conference is illustrative of the partisan nature of today’s press. He was repeatedly asked about giving away the store without getting anything in return. But Trump made clear he had already gotten the return of three American prisoners, had gotten a commitment for the remains of Americans killed in the Korean War to be returned, and most crucially, a promise to begin the task of denuclearization.

US devastation of N. Korea (Keystone/Getty Images)

Yes it’s a promise. But the process has to begin somewhere. The very hard work to make that happen will begin now, and no peace-loving person would not want to give it a chance instead of seeking to gain  short-sighted partisan advantage.

Trump said sanctions would remain and that war games with South Korea could resume if the deal does not materialize. After the devastation wrought by the United Sates on North Korea 65 years ago Trump incredibly agreed that those war games were seen as provocations by the North. He is being roasted for putting himself in the position of his adversary and seeing things as they do—a fundamental principle of diplomacy, and presumably journalism too.

The press also badgered Trump about North Korean human rights. They wanted to know how he could make a deal with such a repressive country. Would the alternative be war to enforce human rights? Trump said human rights were raised with Kim but were separate from the imperative of denuclearization. He felt that if peace were achieved and the North Korean economy improved (with the likely participation of U.S. corporations) that human rights would improve.

Turning the Tables

“I’m disappointed Kim Jong-un did not take the opportunity to raise with Trump the utterly dismal US human rights record, from mass incarceration of millions to rampant police murder of Black citizens,” tweeted Ali Abunimah, co-founder of the website The Electronic Intifada. “Any credible deal must be predicated on US respecting its own people.”

Journalist Max Blumenthal tweeted: “The US committed genocide during the Korean War, killing 20% of North Korea’s population, burning literally all of its cities to the ground w/ napalm, & nearly nuking it. Today it threatens w extermination. Reporters must ask Kim how he can make peace with such a brutal country.”

“Democrats attacking Trump from the Right on Korean Summit,” added writer and filmmaker Tariq Ali in a tweet. “Pity Obama didn’t have the guts to visit Teheran.”

What we are witnessing is an inability, or unwillingness, to break down Trump’s positions and examine each one individually, something that Democrats like Ted Kennedy were able to do with Nixon. But we are in a totally different era. A non-partisan approach to Trump would be able to decry his positions on climate, torture, health insurance, taxes, Iran and Palestine, and yet welcome his stated desire to lessen tensions with Russia and North Korea.

Instead we get tweets like this from former Republican Congressman Joe Walsh: “America is the brightest, most benevolent nation on earth. North Korea is the darkest, most horrific regime on Earth. We just gave them equal billing. We just sat at a table with them. There had better be something really, really good coming in return.”

Clearly some criticism of Trump for meeting Kim is bipartisan, but none of the praise is. Such an attitude of Walsh’s, and The New York Times, rests on a misunderstanding of America that is intended to reflect well on those who conveniently leave out the darkest chapters of America’s history, of which there have been far too many. The napalming and destruction of North Korea is among them, but hardly alone.

Deleting the context of decades of election meddling, coup plotting, assassinations and invasions of sovereign lands in the reporting and editorials of august organs like the Times, indeed in the entire corporate media, leaves Americans with a comic book understanding of their history, cast adrift in a bubble from the reality of the rest of the world.

Attacking other nations’ human rights record while ignoring one’s own, or one’s allies, such as Saudi Arabia and Israel, is classic projection designed to wash one’s conscience clean. It helps to hold a position in the post-War Western-dominated international system making it easy to convince oneself of one’s righteousness, though self-reflection would reveal that that system has become a grotesque image of its former self.

Joe Lauria is editor-in-chief of Consortium News and a former correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe, Sunday Times of London and numerous other newspapers. He can be reached at joelauria@consortiumnews.com and followed on Twitter @unjoe.

June 13, 2018 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Militarism | , | Leave a comment

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