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Author Topic: War Provocations and Peace Actions  (Read 19974 times)

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Surly1

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Donald Trump Owns This Iran Crisis
« Reply #315 on: June 21, 2019, 11:49:08 am »
Donald Trump Owns This Iran Crisis
https://www.truthdig.com/articles/donald-trump-owns-this-iran-crisis/

Donald Trump Owns This Iran Crisis

Donald Trump Owns This Iran Crisis
President Donald Trump. (Gage Skidmore / Flickr)

The warmongers on Trump’s national security team apparently convinced him to set in motion an aerial strike against Iran Thursday in retaliation for the downing of a US drone over waters claimed by Iran.

Then at the last minute—according to reporting by Michael D. Shear, Eric Schmitt, Michael Crowley and Maggie Haberman at the New York Times—Trump seems to have listened to generals who warned him that things could spiral out of control, even into war. He issued a stand down order. At least for now.

It isn’t even clear that there was a casus belli. On domestic issues, the U.S. press is locked into an one-the-one-hand, on-the-other-hand disastrous story-telling mode that has enormously benefited those pushing falsehoods such as that cigarettes don’t cause cancer or putting greenhouse gases into the atmosphere does not cause global heating.

Yet, when it comes to reporting on international security affairs, most U.S. reporting does not fall more than an inch from the Pentagon line of the day (often this dishonesty is the work of editors and publisher-owners rather than the fault of news-gathering reporters, as we saw at McClatchy during the Iraq War).

We heard all about the way Trump attempted to walk back his tough talk, saying that he was sure that Iran shot down the U.S. drone by accident. The statement, like his later stand down order, is a clear sign of the division between him and his warmongering appointees, such as Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and national security adviser John Bolton.

Trump created this crisis by breaching the 2015 Iran nuclear deal. Having pocketed Iran’s mothballing of 80 percent of its uranium enrichment program, Trump slapped the harshest sanctions ever seen against any country on Iran, unilaterally and in the teeth of opposition from NATO allies and the permanent members of the UN Security Council. In other words, he screwed Iran over. Europe cannot stop the U.S. sanctions, since they are third-party sanctions and European firms who do business both in the U.S. and in Iran will be fined billions of dollars for their dealings with Tehran.

So Trump’s attempts to back peddle from his hard liners are useless as long as the U.S. has a financial blockade on Iran preventing it from selling its petroleum. A naval blockade preventing a country from exporting a key commodity is considered an act of war in international law. It is hard to see the difference between that and an effective financial blockade. Same outcome.

The U.S. press almost never interviews non-U.S. world leaders, especially those to whom Washington is hostile. It is almost as though when it comes to national security reporting, American news outlets go into war propaganda mode. Warmongers in high office know all about this phenomenon and use it to get the wars they crave.

So with regard to the shooting down of the U.S. drone by Iran, I think it is important to hear the Iranian side of the story. It may be false, it may be Iranian war propaganda. We can decide that once we’ve heard it.

BBC Monitoring translated from a Persian website the statement from the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps:

    • “The Global Hawk surveillance drone took off from one the US bases in the south of the Persian Gulf at 0014 [1944 gmt] and disabled its identification system in a move contravening aviation regulations. It secretly flew from the Strait of Hormuz to Chabahar and on its way back travelling westward, the unmanned aerial vehicle violated the territory of the Islamic Republic of Iran in the region of Strait of Hormuz and started collecting information and spying,” IRGC’s statement read . . At 0405 [2335 gmt] and while the intrusive plane was inside our territories, the Guard’s aerospace defence unit shot it down.”

Source: Fars News Agency website, Tehran, in Persian 0919 gmt 20 Jun 19

In another report, Iran’s news service said that a 3 Khordad anti-aircraft missile was deployed against the drone.

If Iran is right that the drone flew into Iranian territory, the incident is still an unfortunate raising of tensions. But if it was over international waters, as the U.S. maintains, Iran was in the wrong.

One problem for these definitions is that the U.S., in accordance with the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, recognizes only 12 nautical miles off the coast as belonging to the country, whereas many nations claim a much larger portion of the sea along their coasts than that. The U.S. Air Force says that the drone was never closer to the Iranian coast than 21 nautical miles. One of the unfortunate consequences of the hostility of Trump and his capos like John Bolton to the UN and international law is that it makes it harder for the U.S. to insist with a straight face that other countries take these things seriously. Bolton once denied that the UN even exists.

In the absence of an agreement on the UN definition of territorial waters, some sort of U.S. Iran bilateral negotiations would be preferable to cowboying it.

Again, this crisis is of Trump’s making. His conviction that he could stiff Iran without consequences, all for the sake of looking tough with his MAGA base, was a serious miscalculation. It is the problem with having an ignorant and yet opinionated man at the helm of the U.S. government. He is guaranteed to make basic mistakes that put the U.S. on a war footing even though that appears to be the last thing Trump wants.

Unfortunately, Iran will provoke again, and next time the U.S. warmongers may win the argument.


AGelbert

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Quote
Unfortunately, Iran will provoke again, and next time the U.S. warmongers may win the argument.

Iran has never provoked. It is the USA that is doing all the provoking. The article correctly blames Trump for all this skullduggery to get the U.S. into a war with Iran (with 100% M.I.C. backing), but fails to look at the entire picture from 1953 to the present.

I will briefly do so, starting just from 1979. The U.S. M.I.C. waged Proxy war (by Iraq WITH U.S. MANUFACTURED CHEMICAL WEAPONS 👹 RUMSFELD GAVE TO IRAQ) that killed thousands of Iranian men, women and children followed by SANCTIONS, SANCTIONS and SANCTIONS all the way to the present.

In July of 1988, the U.S. ahot down an Iranian commercial airliner claiming said airliner was "mistaken" for an F14. If that is not a DELIBERATE act of war, I do not know what is. The FACT that the airliner had its transponder on, CLEARLY identifying who it was, aside for paranoid moment (i.e. the laughable, but expected, claim that it could have been an Iranian F14 "disguised" with the same code on its transponder as said airliner in order to "attack" the U.S. battledhip), radar operaters on the U.S. Ship knew, just like I KNOW, because I am an experienced air traffic controller, what the primary target of a fighter jet looks like in comparison to a large airliner (BIG, BLATANT, OBVIOUS DIFFERENCE!).

So, even if they suspected the transponder code was faked, they would clearly see that the primary target radar return was that of a much larger aircraft than that of  an F-14 fighter.

That was TOTALLY unjustified, regardless of the 1983 bombing destruction of the Lebanon barracks of U.S. Marines (attributed indirectly to Iran) that had no business being where they were in the first place. The "amnesia" in the United States of Amnesia is, as per the manufacturing of consent you correctly mentioned, rather selective.

Iran GDP was stunted while that of Saudi Arabia grew over 800% from 1990 to the present. >:( Despite continuous provoking by the U.S., Iran went out of its way to avoid confrontation.

Then there is the drone thing. It is total bullshit to say Iran knocked out said drone in international airspace. WHY? The wind patterns. If you go to nullschool, you can see the general wind patterns in the area. For a limited time, you can see the wind patterns over the exact place the drone was flying. I just made a screenshot so you can understand what is going on here (NOTE: 1 hPa = 1 mb).


The drone was obviously pointed towards Iranian terrain. It got hit with an Iranian missile and destroyed. The parts kept going ballistically for a couple of hundred yards or so before the trajectory was totally governed by gravity and the winds, which pushed said parts AWAY from the Iranian coast at the time, all the way to the ocean surface. Some wing sections, since they are lighter and can remain airborne longer, thus being more affected by the prevailing winds, may have fallen further out over the ocean.

So, because of the winds at the time of the drone's destruction, there is NO WAY that the drone could have fallen straight down into Iranian terrain.

Of particular interest when analysing this incident is the fact that this type of drone DOES is not simply look at stuff. It tests radar coverage and missile batteries that are activated by the drone flight path in order to plan how U.S. fighters and bombers can more effectively evade said defensive facilities when the war is initiated.

Therefore, Iran had no choice but to stop that gathering of military intelligence that would result in weakened defensive capabilities.

It is breathtakingly FALSE to claim that Iran is doing any "provoking" whatsoever. This "blame the victim" bullshit about how fine a line Iran should walk to avoid looking "warlike" is tiresome, considering the track record of our War PROVOKING M.I.C.!

YEAH, the M.I.C. wants Iran to be a nice little injun, roll over, invite some "objective" American inspectors in, along with a few thousand American "peace keeping" troops, of course, to give them "democracy" (good and hard) so the "great white father" in Washington (and Israel) won't get mad at them. If the Iranians "see reason", everything will be nice and dandy, won't it?
« Last Edit: June 21, 2019, 06:58:09 pm by AGelbert »
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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PUBLISHED June 21, 2019

By Marjorie Cohn, Truthout


Iran Had the Legal Right to Shoot Down U.S. Spy Drone

Trump ordered military strikes against Iran to retaliate for its shootdown of a U.S. drone, but then pulled back and didn't launch them. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is falsely conflating Iran with al-Qaeda to rationalize striking Iran. But Iran has the legal right to control its airspace. The United States has no lawful claim of self-defense to justify a military attack on Iran.

Read the Article →
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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PUBLISHED June 21, 2019

BY Jake Johnson, Common Dreams

War Survivor Ilhan Omar Makes Impassioned Case Against Iran Attack

Citing her firsthand experience of the horrors of military conflict as a refugee from war-torn Somalia, Rep. Ilhan Omar Thursday night made an impassioned case against war with Iran. "War is hell," she wrote. "Sending teenagers to die, or return with lifelong wounds seen and unseen, does not make you a bigger person. It makes you smaller."

Read the Article →
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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Trump Pulls Back From Iran Attack as Bolton and Pompeo Continue to Push for War
BY Amy Goodman, Democracy Now!

PUBLISHED June 21, 2019

After threatening to strike Iran in retaliation for shooting down an unmanned U.S. drone, President Trump reportedly approved, and then abruptly called off, military strikes. The move came after the operation was already underway in its initial stages, with warships and planes already being put into position.

Watch the Video and Read the Transcript →
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

Surly1

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Iran Had the Legal Right to Shoot Down U.S. Spy Drone

Trump ordered military strikes against Iran to retaliate for its shootdown of a U.S. drone, but then pulled back and didn't launch them. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is falsely conflating Iran with al-Qaeda to rationalize striking Iran. But Iran has the legal right to control its airspace. The United States has no lawful claim of self-defense to justify a military attack on Iran.

Read the Article →

When you start to sift the ****, you learn that Iran and the US have different definitions of what constitutes Iran's legal airspace and operate accordingly. Not surprisingly Iran claims a wider border than. the US recognizes. A foreign policy version of heads-I-win-tails-you-lose.

AGelbert

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Iran Had the Legal Right to Shoot Down U.S. Spy Drone

Trump ordered military strikes against Iran to retaliate for its shootdown of a U.S. drone, but then pulled back and didn't launch them. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is falsely conflating Iran with al-Qaeda to rationalize striking Iran. But Iran has the legal right to control its airspace. The United States has no lawful claim of self-defense to justify a military attack on Iran.

Read the Article →

When you start to sift the , you learn that Iran and the US have different definitions of what constitutes Iran's legal airspace and operate accordingly. Not surprisingly Iran claims a wider border than. the US recognizes. A foreign policy version of heads-I-win-tails-you-lose.

True, but the one that plays by internationl rules here is Iran, not the USA. As a pilot and air traffic controller, I know all about the ADIZ (Air Defense Identification Zones) the USA created with TOTAL disregard for the international rules that the USA helped to craft AND is quite adamant about applying to everybody else. That's for aircraft, but it doesn't stop there.

I remember when the USA even denied foreign fishing vessels from fishing within 200 MILES of the U.S. coast because, uh, that's U.S. territory, don'tcha know?

Iran plays by the internationally accepted rules on the extent of its territorial waters next to its coast. The USA does not. What the US "recognizes" as to the Iranian territorial waters border is deliberately abusive and arbitrary. There is a formula for that in international law. Unlike the USA, the Iranians adhere to it.
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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Iran vs America: What's Next?
« Reply #322 on: June 24, 2019, 06:54:51 pm »
Iran vs America: What's Next?


Thom Hartmann Program

Published on Jun 24, 2019

Quote
Jamal Abdi updated us on the new sanctions on Iran.

Trump’s Iranian sanctions are designed to force Iran into accepting what the US wants. The Iranian sanctions are Trump and Pompeo wanting the Iranian administration to change. The US sanctions on Iran are making it harder for moderate Iranians to protest their government rather than easier.

The military strikes against Iran which were stopped ten minutes before launch and has confused both Iran and the US. Are economic sanctions ever successful?

John Bolton and Mike Pompeo are running the world and running Trump. They want military action, not economic ones.

Will there be a regime change in Iran as a result of the new economic sanctions?


YEAH, the M.I.C. wants Iran to be a nice little injun, roll over, invite some "objective" American inspectors in, along with a few thousand American "peace keeping" troops, of course, to give them "democracy" (good and hard) so the "great white father" in Washington (and Israel) won't get mad at them. If the Iranians "see reason", everything will be nice and dandy, won't it?
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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Re: War Provocations and Peace Actions
« Reply #323 on: July 22, 2019, 01:24:44 pm »

JUL 22, 2019

Scapegoating Iran

By Chris Hedges —  Don’t expect U.S. politicians and generals to accept responsibility for the Mideast mess when they can blame it on Iran.

Read more
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

Surly1

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Pentagon Wants 16-Year-Old Kids To Fight The Empire's Wars
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-07-25/pentagon-wants-16-year-old-kids-fight-empires-wars


Authored By Kurt Nimmo via The Ron Paul Institute for Peace & Prosperity



The Pentagon is desperate. Far too many millennials are criminals, so luring them in to become the latest crop of bullet stoppers for the state is a nonstarter.

Solution? Recruit 16-year-olds. Most have yet graduated to petty and violent crime, although a lot of them are in video game training for a future of violence and self-destructive stupidity.

It’s not being widely reported in the media. Recruiters are ready to go after tenth-graders. They are itching to snag kids before they engage in a life of crime, or before they have fully-mature brains (well, some of them) and decide to kill and be killed isn’t much of a career choice.

First, though, the state will have to give these little darlings the “right” to vote for a crop of handpicked carnival barkers, euphemistically called representatives of the people.

I don’t know about you, but when I was sixteen all I thought about was cruising in my father’s car with a freshly minted state permission to drive card in my wallet as I searched desperately for girls willing to make-out in the backseat.

It took a year or two before I was politically aware, mostly as a result of Richard Nixon’s plan to “draft” me (polite speak for slavery) into the meat grinder he inherited from LBJ, aka the Vietnam War, where I would either be minced, traumatized for life, or lucky enough to stay behind lines and scrub latrines while other kids fought and senselessly died.


Around this time college, high school students, and millions of other concerned Americans marched against the war, a truly remarkable one-time event now impossible in America because the military is “volunteer” and our wars are “humanitarian.”

Most of these so-called volunteers “joined” the military because they have so few other career options (if you consider killing other people a career choice). Brought up in largely single-parent homes and taught all manner of nonsense in public schools that now resemble locked down prisons, these “volunteers” are completely ignorant of the reason the state needs them to fight and die.

It’s all about the psychopathic dominance of a tiny elite. The elite doesn’t send its Harvard-bound kids into its neoliberal meat grinder (because so many of these silver spoon darlings have bone spurs and such).

But this system is breaking down, mostly because the state upholds standards that worked in the 1940s and 50s, but are completely irrelevant now. They insist it is not permissible to fill the empty ranks with criminals. Hired killers must be held to the highest moral standard.

So, like the United Kingdom, the US is looking to 16-year old kids to fight in the name of the corporate state and, of course, our freedom to live hand-to-mouth in a political and cultural cesspool.

Democrats like the idea of 16-year-old voters. Most are far more impressionable and less cantankerous than your average middle-age deplorable. They also approve the idea of feeding kids into the military, but you don’t hear a lot about that because Democrats and progressives don’t think much about war. It’s a big blind spot for them. There are more important issues, for instance trans-gender bathrooms.

I don’t think this is going to turn out like they think it will. Far too many 16-year olds will flunk out of basic training. Most don’t have what it takes, never mind all those formative years killing bad guys on computer screens.

If The Donald gets us into a big shooting war over in the Middle East or in the South China Sea, the mandatory servitude of conscription will be required. It won’t be a turkey shoot like Iraq or Libya. It will be an existential threat, so all males —criminally inclined or not — between 16 and 45 will be inducted, same as they were after FDR tricked the Japanese into invading Pearl Harbor, or Johnson said the North Vietnamese attacked our warships in the Gulf of Tonkin.

But the kids are oblivious. They were taught to be so. And the propaganda machine will tell them they’re sacrificing their lives (or limbs and mental health) for the noble cause of star-spangled democracy, which most of them know close to zero about.

AGelbert

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Re: War Provocations and Peace Actions
« Reply #325 on: July 28, 2019, 04:01:10 pm »
SNIPPET:

There is a reason that most countries polled in December 2013 by Gallup called the United States the greatest threat to peace in the world, and why Pew found that viewpoint increased in 2017.

But it is a reason that eludes that strain of U.S. academia that first defines war as something that nations and groups other than the United States do , and then concludes that war has nearly vanished from the earth.

Since World War II, during a supposed golden age of peace, the United States military has killed or helped kill some 20 million people, overthrown at least 36 governments, interfered in at least 84 foreign elections, attempted to assassinate over 50 foreign leaders, and dropped bombs on people in over 30 countries. The United States is responsible for the deaths of 5 million people in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, and over 1 million just since 2003 in Iraq.

Learn more:

U.S. WARS AND HOSTILE ACTIONS: A LIST
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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Laura Flanders Show: The Mad 🦍 Military Money 👹💵🎩 Machine

Partner Content Provided By:The Laura Flanders Show

August 4, 2019

There’s something sick about U.S. 🐍 Military spending. It’s certainly not keeping anyone safe. This week, why we the public spend billions on bad technology and what happens to service people who speak up about it. Then, a peace economy  – what might it look like? I’ll talk to Jodie Evans of Code Pink.


https://therealnews.com/third_party_content/laura-flanders-show-the-mad-military-money-machine



He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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Re: War Provocations and Peace Actions
« Reply #327 on: August 13, 2019, 10:42:56 pm »
Where is 👹 Jeffrey Epstein: Hell or Tel Aviv?
17,387 views


TruNews
Streamed live 4 hours ago

Today on TRUNEWS we discuss the fate of the world’s most notorious convicted and the glaring inconsistencies surrounding his alleged death. We also detail the unrest of the century unraveling in Hong Kong, as the city faces a potentially irreversible future toward ruin and military occupation. Rick Wiles, Edward Szall, Doc Burkhart, Kerry Kinsey. Airdate: August 13, 2019

#TRUNEWS #EPSTEIN #WITSEC
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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Re: War Provocations and Peace Actions
« Reply #328 on: August 17, 2019, 11:13:45 pm »
North Korea Suspends Talks With South Korea Because of U.S. Sanctions
August 16, 2019


While U.S.-North Korea nuclear talks fail to proceed because of a lack of unanimity within the Trump administration, the North suspended peace talks with the South because of the U.S.'s refusal to lift economic sanctions, says Tim Shorrock


Story Transcript

GREG WILPERT: Welcome to The Real News Network. I’m Greg Wilpert in Baltimore.

North Korea tested two short-range ballistic missiles on Friday according to South Korea’s military. This was the sixth time in the past month that North Korea tested ballistic missiles. Friday’s launches took place shortly after the North described South Korea’s President as “impudent” and announced that North-South Korean peace talks are over. The North Korean government protested against US-South Korean military drills that began last week, saying that these represented a “rehearsal for war.”

The cancellation of North-South Korean peace talks complicates the on-again, off-again nuclear talks between the US and North Korea. The two sides had agreed to restart talks in a personal meeting between North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and President Donald Trump in late June, but so far nothing much has happened. Last week, Trump said that Kim Jong-un had told him the talks could resume once the military drills concluded.

Joining me now to discuss the latest developments on the North Korean peninsula is Tim Shorrock. He writes about US-Korea relations for The Nation and for the Center for Investigative Reporting. Thanks for joining us again, Tim.

TIM SHORROCK: Thank you.

GREG WILPERT: So these were the sixth set of ballistic missile tests that the North has engaged in, in the past month. This seems rather bold considering that agreements had been made to restart nuclear talks with the US and peace negotiations with South Korea. Now, Trump has generally downplayed these launches, saying that they aren’t nuclear and aren’t intercontinental missiles. North Korea though is blaming the South for military drills. Now, first, are the two sets of talks really falling apart? And second, who would you say is responsible for the faltering of the talks?

TIM SHORROCK: Well, it seems that the North-South talks are definitely falling apart, which is too bad. I was there in Seoul almost a year ago in September when Kim Jong-un and Moon Jae-in had a very successful summit meeting in Pyongyang and they decided on some very sweeping agreements, including one to demilitarize the situation, de-escalate the military situation between the two sides. And they proceeded to do that. They also agreed at that time to begin a new round of economic projects, economic cooperation. And it really was a kind of exciting time and it seemed that a real corner had been turned.

But, unfortunately, since that meeting, the talks between the US and North Korea over its nuclear program has really gone nowhere. There’s been very few developments in those talks, very little progress despite the fact that Trump made this trip to Korea, and actually stepped over the line dividing the two sides, and walked into North Korea for a few minutes and had a meeting with Kim Jong-un where they agreed to restart their talks.

I think the problem is that the US apparently has not backed off its demands for total denuclearization before any kind of sanctions are lifted on North Korea. As you know, North Korea is very anxious to lift at least some of these sanctions imposed in recent years, because they’re really causing some harm to the North Korean economy and to Kim Jong-un’s plan to make the economy the centerpiece of his leadership, and to make some real economic progress in raising the standards of living of the North Korean people. And so these sanctions are very critical to him in that plan. But the US has not really changed its position. That was the reason for the collapse of the talks in Hanoi in the spring, earlier in March, when basically Trump told Kim at that time that they had to give up all their nuclear weapons as well as make progress in getting rid of some of their other conventional weapons, chemical weapons, that kind of weaponry, before any sanctions were lifted.

And North Korea has responded to that by testing these ballistic missiles, which are short-range and they’re conventional weapons. I mean, North Korea does have a military. They’re designed to defend North Korea against South Korean and US forces, as well as US forces in Japan. And so these missiles clearly hit pretty much any target in South Korea as well as in Japan, where US bases that are used for intervention in Korea are based. So there have been testing. As you said, there’s been a number of tests over the last few months. Almost every week it seems there’s been a new test. There was one yesterday.

And they’ve also been complaining that the exercises that the US has been holding this month with South Korea are designed, again, to practice basically regime change in North Korea, or a sign that South Korea is not serious about its negotiations. So I think it’s a combination of the US hard line combined with the North Korean demand that there be a sort of step-by-step process, including lifting of sanctions. I think that’s the cause for this. And like I said, I think it’s really sad because I think hopes were very high a year ago that things could move in a much better and more positive direction.

GREG WILPERT: All right. Now, as you said, the talks between the North and the South seem to be completely off the table at the moment. And it seems like North Korea is suggesting that they would rather engage with Trump instead of the South. Now, why is that? I mean, obviously negotiations are needed with both sides, but why completely dismiss the South at this point?

TIM SHORROCK: Well, North Koreans sees South Korea as basically completely dependent on the US. Until the US grants some leeway in sanctions, particularly on projects that North Korea might engage with, with South Korea and allows sanctions to be lifted so some of these projects North and South Korea have been talking about like linking their railroads, opening an industrial zone that’s North of the DMZ called Kaesong Industrial Zone. But those projects cannot happen without these sanctions being lifted, or some sanctions being lifted, and the US will not do that even though South Korea has clearly been wanting to have some relief on those sanctions so that South Korea can move forward.

So they see the US as the real power behind South Korea in terms of these military and political relationships. And they see that as a barrier. And so that’s what the tension is about. I can’t really say why they’re proclaiming that the talks won’t happen. I think that’s more of a negotiating position, but it is clear that they want to have a resolution of the tensions with the US, and that has to be resolved before there can be progress between North and South.

GREG WILPERT: Now I want to turn to the US side of this relationship with North Korea. That is, most Democratic Party presidential candidates are strongly criticizing Trump over his handling of the North Korea relationship, saying that he’s being too soft on Korea basically. You recently wrote an article for this in The Nation titled “Most Dem Presidential Candidates are Attacking Trump’s Korea Policy from the Right.” What do you mean by that? And how should the policy be criticized?

TIM SHORROCK: Well, I think the policy can be criticized from the standpoint of, if you have this very hard line on sanctions and nothing can happen in terms of a US relationship with North Korea, nothing can happen in those peace talks until they give up everything, that’s a problem. And I think the hard line of the US, of Trump and Bolton, is the problem in terms of progressing in North Korea-US talks. And so I think that’s a very good point for candidates to make rather than going back to, as Joe Biden has, and some of the other candidates have, and saying that the traditional Cold War policy of the US is the one that should remain. During Obama, the policy was no talks until North Korea showed clear signs of getting rid of all its nuclear weapons. They basically said, “You have to first surrender, and then we’ll talk.” That was the position of President Obama. And that was the position of Joe Biden. And that position is the sort of old-line position that goes way back and it just won’t work. That’s not a way to progress.

And so I think going at this from a hawkish point of view and then saying, “We should put more pressure on North Korea,” in other words, up the military ante, seems pretty stupid in the sense of going out there and campaigning for actually raising tensions with North Korea. I don’t think that’s going to win anybody any votes from a practical standpoint. But it’s also very dangerous. If you escalate the situation, it’ll get worse.

So I think, really, there’s got to be a realistic position here, a realistic look at North Korea. Denuclearization should be seen as the end goal and not the immediate goal because the goal that was set out by Trump and Kim when they met in Singapore in June 2018, number one, was to rebuild and create a new relationship between the US and North Korea— have diplomatic relations, economic relations, create a new relationship. And then, number two was to support the peace process between North and South Korea. And so, from the North Korean point of view, that new relationship has not developed and the US is still sticking to its hard line. And so, that’s been a problem.

And it’s very important to understand that, while Kim Jong-un has dictatorial powers, he has more militaristic people, he has a hardline military that wants to maintain their weapons and does not want to make concessions to the United States. And so he’s got his own hardliners to worry about. And so, like we have, in the White House, we have a clash between or there’s clear differences between Trump and his hardliners like Bolton and others that are advising him. You have differences of opinion about how to approach North Korea, and then same thing with North Korea. You have hardliners who say, “Don’t give up anything. We shouldn’t give up our weapons.” And so, he’s having to convince his hardliners that North Korea will benefit out of these talks. And so I think that’s one of the reasons he’s letting the military test these weapons, which again, yes, they are ballistic missiles, but they’re short-range. They’re the kinds of missiles that pretty much any advanced military has.

GREG WILPERT: Okay. We’re going to have to leave it there. I was speaking to Tim Shorrock, a writer with The Nation and the Korea Center for Investigative Reporting. Thanks again, Tim, for having joined us today.

TIM SHORROCK: Thank you so much.

GREG WILPERT: And thank you for joining The Real News Network.

https://therealnews.com/stories/north-korea-suspends-talks-with-south-korea-because-of-u-s-sanctions
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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John Pilger- We Are in a WAR SITUATION with China!
« Reply #329 on: August 26, 2019, 09:52:59 pm »
EP.788: John Pilger - We Are in a WAR SITUATION with China!
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goingundergroundRT

Published on Aug 21, 2019

On this season finale special episode of Going Underground, we speak to legendary journalist and film-maker John Pilger on a round-up of all the latest issues. John describes the current state of global affairs as in a state of world war, warning that the ‘coming war on China’ he warned about…has now arrived, he also discusses the Hong Kong protests and why they have grown, along with US involvement in the unrest.

He discusses the collapse of the global nuclear arms control framework with the end of the INF Treaty and the beginning of a new arms race with Russia, amid a situation where he describes it as Washington’s goal to break up the Russian Federation under Putin. He also warns of the increased risk of nuclear war as nuclear superpowers such as Pakistan and India are also entering major tensions between each other.

John Pilger also discusses his concern with John Bolton being at the ear of Donald Trump, how Brexit has created mass-distraction in the UK from the most pressing of issues at home (such as austerity and the NHS) and abroad. He slams sanctions on Venezuela and Iran and also updates us on the condition of Wikileaks founder and publisher Julian Assange, after he visited him recently in Belmarsh prison.
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

 

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