I think the Korean War just ended, and the U.S. is pissed off
Every history book will tell you that the fighting ended in 1953 with only a cease fire, not a peace agreement.
Well, guess what?
The Cabinet on Tuesday approved a wide-ranging peace agreement reached with North Korea at last month's third summit between President Moon Jae-in and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in a procedural step necessary for Moon to sign and ratify the deal.
Peace agreement sounds like "end of war" to me.
This is in addition to the military agreement, that the U.N. signed off on, that was agreed to last month.
1) South and North Korea agreed to completely cease all hostile acts against each other in every domain, including land, air and sea that are the source of military tension and conflict.
Peace is good news, right? Everyone says they like peace.
So how do you think this news is being reported (on the rare occasion it gets reported at all) in the U.S.?
You guessed it - it's a bad thing.
Washington’s Ire Shifts From Kim Jong-un to Moon Jae-inTrump infuriated and insulted South Koreans when he said “they do nothing without our approval.”
...
The Korean snub of the State Department may have triggered another flare-up in early October, when the two Koreas began removing landmines along the DMZ as part of the bilateral military agreement signed during the Pyongyang summit to prevent an accident from spiraling into another war. Their announcement of the pact greatly displeased Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. According to Korean press reports, he “furiously harangued” Moon’s top diplomat, Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha, in a blistering phone call that shocked many Koreans when its contents were made public in a parliamentary hearing.Pompeo’s impatience was reignited this past Monday, following a weekend agreement by the two Koreas to hold a groundbreaking ceremony in late November or December for a massive binational project to link roads and railroads severed during the Korean War. Asked to comment, a State Department official tartly observed that sanctions must be enforced until the North denuclearizes.
Now you might be incline to think that this is just the Trump Administration being belligerent. It's easy to assume that, but you would be wrong. We have two war parties in America.
The transportation deal also stoked the ire of the think tanks. “As North-South rails get linked, US-ROK alliance faces a new disconnect,” Patrick Cronin, the director of the Asia-Pacific Security Program at the Center for a New American Security, a Democratic Party–aligned think tank, tweeted. The influential Center for Strategic and International Studies chimed in, pointing out that “Seoul’s latest move is expected to increase friction with its traditional ally Washington over the pace of inter-Korean engagement.”Criticism of Moon is also coming from liberals, including former advisers to President Obama. They have zeroed in on South Korea’s interest in a declaration to end the Korean War, which the North has said should be a precursor to any nuclear agreement. “A peace declaration is not merely ineffective in establishing peace, it advances the North Korean push to unwind the U.S.-ROK alliance,” Daniel Russel, Obama’s top diplomat on Asia, told The Wall Street Journal on October 7. “This is not an argument we should be having right now.”
How dare the Koreans put their desire for peace above the interests of the U.S. military-industrial-complex!
Meanwhile, as if to underscore its contempt for the people of North Korea, the Trump administration—in a decision made by Pompeo himself—has blocked several predominantly Christian US aid groups from traveling to North Korea to deliver humanitarian aid.
...A few days later, Moon’s health minister, Park Neung-hoo, told the National Assembly in Seoul that the United States was blocking South Korea’s own efforts to provide medical aid to the North.
Give Trump a Nobel Peace Prize.
Yet in the U.S. the debate is about whether Trump should get credit for the peace process, despite fighting it every step of the way.
Comments
Let’s go Ride the Peace train!
A truth of the nuclear age/climate change: we can no longer have endless war and survive on this planet. Oh sh*t.
What's amazing is how little coverage this is getting
Not even the alternative media seems to care.
Isn't this a big deal? Am I confused?
Can you hear the spinning machines
weaving another web for this one?
question everything
I have been living in fear that N. Korea would get the Libya
treatment. Have been awestruck at how fast the two countries have moved!
I did notice on Twitter that Trumptrolls are already claiming the credit for Him.
Hope the Koreans are able to successfully follow through and cement change.
FWIW four months ago war profitteer stock dropped on the initial news. Not able to find anything today yet on whether this has had an impact on stocks. Could it be that they don’t know yet?
..
Are you missing something?
Heh.
In my experience reading you for years here and TOP, nah, you don’t miss much.
A truth of the nuclear age/climate change: we can no longer have endless war and survive on this planet. Oh sh*t.
I noticed
What part of 1) pulling out of peace talks, 2) freezing humanitarian aid, or 3) threatening to sanction South Korea for working with North Korea, allows Trump to get credit?
Successful application of reverse psychology?
Seriously, there are vast swathes of the political spectrum that will only applaud a development if Trump appears to be against it.
not all that much, no.
Mostly becuz Korea has
been out of sight, out of mind, for nearly as long as I've been around.
A long friggin' time.
Even Vietnam now fading from public consciousness.
I suspect the M$M gave it a yawn as much as we did.
the little things you can do are more valuable than the giant things you can't! - @thanatokephaloides. On Twitter @wink1radio. (-2.1) All about building progressive media.
Thanks, g.
Awesome work as always. We are the warmongers of the world. We MUST maintain all wars as our labor force depends on those jobs. And we are too stupid and morally bankrupt to think of more useful things for all those drones to do. So, sorry world, we gotta keep bombing ya. Quarterly profits, ya know.
We are the warmongers ...
WRONG! Wrong! wrong!
get it straight, pal. /s
@irishking Of course. How could I
Of course. How could I forget?
Maybe someone can research the following
I have a recollection that one of the leaked Clinton emails revealed that the US did not want the reunification of North and South Korea or even a substantial reduction in tensions because it would take away the hegemony the US has over South Korea. I am absurdly busy today and I would be grateful if someone else could check on this or refresh my memory on it.
Right you are. In the Goldman speeches,
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-04-11/what-hillary%E2%80%99s-goldman...
WIKI SUMMARY AS REPRODUCED: Via Disobedient Media - https://disobedientmedia.com/2017/04/what-hillarys-goldman-sachs-speeche...
IMAGE OF SPEECH TRANSCRIPT
CAPTION Speech 1, Page 7 of Hillary Clinton's Goldman Sachs speeches revealing that the United States has secretly opposed Korean reunification
Disobedient Media summary:
The speech further mentioned that the United States opted instead to maintain a balance with North Korean leadership, keeping the peninsula in a state of political flux. The death of Kim Jong-il and his son Kim Jong-un's assumption of power changed this equilibrium, however. Clinton's speech in 2013 revealed an already heightened level of annoyance with the new leader's willingness to seek confrontation not just with traditional enemies such as South Korea, Japan and the United States but also their strongest ally, China.
Wow, that was fast, thanks!
A truth of the nuclear age/climate change: we can no longer have endless war and survive on this planet. Oh sh*t.
Strategically speaking
...I've heard it said that if North Korea did not exist, the United States would have to invent it. Of course, that is exactly what happened. The US did invent North Korea and has held it frozen in time and space for the next 70 years. It has refused to end this particular "war" — or to even discuss the possibility. This is a fact that is so bizarre that most Americans would not believe it if you told them about it. North Korea is the "Cuba" of Asia — the existential "foreign threat" against the American People. It allows the US to force hegemony and extreme military presence in Latin America and Asia.
At the same time, these two ever-present "threats" are held over the American People's heads, who are forced to pay ever increasing amounts into the US "protection" racket. One is the artificial proxy for China, the other for Russia. But the People are fast approaching their own endgame. It seems they have had to take on massive debt because their tax revenues are not sufficient to keep them "safe" and healthy. So, in addition to paying the US war machine to protect them, the People must now pay the costs of servicing that debt. This has finally begun to strip away the last of their economic well-being and security.
The result is that as few as 20 percent of American children are currently born into an economic advantage that will prevent that debt from diminishing their lives. The other 80 percent are thus born into a more or less permanent "Indentured Class" that is saddled with a debt that eats away all of the benefits and personal security that normally come from a well-run representative government. All of them, nonetheless, will grow up in a social and cultural dystopia.
That's hardly sustainable.
Would be true if Americans
owed that $21 Tn. debt.
But we don't. At least American taxpayers don't.
"The Gov't" owes the "debt," not the taxpayers.
And while it could be argued they're one and the same, they're not.
No debt collector will be on the phone with me, my grandkids, or my great grandkids, asking for our individual share of some $64,000 to pay the "National Debt."
And despite all the woe is us, Inflation will soon be thru the roof, your dollar soon worth pennies! That hasn't happened either. And not likely to for any length of time, if at all, any time soon.
Is there to be a Day of Reckoning??
Dunno. Maybe. But, if Japan is any example, it hasn't happened there.
$21 Tn., very soon to be $22 Tn., is a boatload of dollars!
But, could we pay half of it off in 20 years without breaking a sweat??
Sure.
Keep paying off half the "Debt" every 20 years??
Sure.
So, not as big a deal as they'd have us believe.
Maybe a weekly Gov't $250 Million 50/50 lottery @ $5.00 a pop, half going to winner(s), half going to the "Debt" to the tune of $6.5 Billion /yr. Maybe pay for the interest, but more importantly, send a Ton of $$ into the Economy™, stimulating same. The answer to Repub prayers! But instead of a tickle down Economy™ we'd have a trickle Up Economy™ like gawd intended, newly minted $50 Million millionaires joining the upper 1% every week!
But, Paul Ryan is almost right. A rip roaring Economy™ truly kills that National Debt in no time!! From the taxes collected alone! If Millionaires and Billionaires (and their corporations) actually paid taxes. But they don't. Only little people pay taxes. So round and round we go... But that $22 Trillion would soon disappear if "we" had a president and congress with the spine to collect. But, nope! I won't be paying a nickel of that $22 Trillion. That "debt" is the Gov't's problem. Not mine. I have enough of my own, tyvm.
the little things you can do are more valuable than the giant things you can't! - @thanatokephaloides. On Twitter @wink1radio. (-2.1) All about building progressive media.
That's not what the constitution says.
The government is instructed to raise taxes from the states to pay off foreign debts. The states raise taxes from the people.
True. They will just garnish their Social Security and other benefits, like they do now when they think you own them money. You are rarely even notified. We have a growing class of older folks who are not receiving their Social Security because it is going to pay off their student debt.
Most of the debt is domestic.
Besides, T-bonds are not paid off in Gold and Silver. they are paid off with Federal reserve Notes. Those notes are not backed by anything but Treasuries ability to print more of them. Fiat money is very different from metallic money or "hard" currency. The price that is paid is inflation, but the concept of a debt owed individually by each American individually is Republican claptrap.
More on inflation: Why do you think a Coke is over one dollar when it was 8 cents when I was a kid. The standard price for hamburgers was 25 cents. Fries for an additional dime. Gasoline was 29 cents a gallon. Movie theater admission was 50 cents to a dollar depending on how classy the theater was perceived. daily newspapers were a dime and the Sunday paper was a quarter. THAT is what unbalanced budgets do. No foreign army coming to cash their bonds with the deed to your house or your daughter's virginity (assuming she has it, which is increasingly unlikely in today's society).
I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.
bing! "... but the concept of a debt
owed individually by each American individually is Republican claptrap."
Exactly. Most of that $22 Trn. in T-bonds are held by individuals.
Not China, and not Russia (although they both likely own some T-bonds). (maybe for a rainy day).
Despite the constitution, or in spite of, our taxes don't pay for Gov't debt. (although Repubs would Love for us to believe that). Hell, they don't pay for anything, so why should they pay for the debt??
T-bonds - our "National Debt" - are mostly owned by millionaires and billionaires and little old ladies. Prolly a hedge fund bozo or two. And they're paid off daily, or certainly weekly - as they come due. So, the "debt" is paid off. So to speak. The question is... does our enormous "debt" hamper any future spending, and the larger answer is no. Not in any significant way. As Alan Greenspan his self said, "There is nothing to prevent the federal government from creating ("printing") as much money as it wants and paying it to somebody." With the caveat (or "But... ") being, that those newly printed dollars are matched by the "productive capacity" (natural resources, skilled labor, manual labor) (or ability to make whatever the congressional bill is written to make) of the U.S.A. There are other caveats, but that's the big one, and the others don't include taxes.
So, in other words, if "we" (the U.S.A.) can physically make it (whatever "it" is), and Congress authorizes it, the money is then "created" out of thin air to do it. $700 Billion for Military Spending?? Done! Here's your money. Not enough Tax Dollars to cover the congressional spending?? Just add it to the Deficit (budget deficit) pile. (sell T-bonds to cover the difference). Becuz we'll Never have enough tax dollars to cover spending as long as we're spending $400 Billion /year - over $1 Billion /day - on G. Dubya's 17 year old War on Terra. Never. But, no, I won't be contributing one plug nickel to our "National Debt." at least not in any real sense.
Now, if our elected Dims allow them to steal my S.S. checks, Medicare bennies? Then, yeah, I guess that could be considered my contribution to the "debt." But we do not pay for it via federal taxes. After all, it's not my debt, it's their debt.
the little things you can do are more valuable than the giant things you can't! - @thanatokephaloides. On Twitter @wink1radio. (-2.1) All about building progressive media.
And, granted, that's a bit
of a brain twister,
to say the least, but if you're not buying any of that hokus pokus, then riddle me this...
Where did "The Government" get over $20 Trillion to bail out Wall Street Banksters for their Crash of 2008-'09?? huh? huh? Becuz it didn't come from taxpayers. Taxpayers don't have and didn't have $20 Trillion lying around at the time of the Crash. Hell, never have $20 Trillion lying around, or our "National Debt" would be paid off!!
So, where did G. Dubya and O'bummer get it?? Did they "borrow it??" Is that where "our" $20 Trillion "National Debt" suddenly came from?? Dunno, but I do know taxpayers didn't come up with it. And, I suspect they came up with it the same way they come up with money to pay for anything Congress authorizes - out of thin air. Here you go, Jamie Dimon. With our blessings! Go forth and prosper! "Don't worry, I will !!"
the little things you can do are more valuable than the giant things you can't! - @thanatokephaloides. On Twitter @wink1radio. (-2.1) All about building progressive media.
They borrowed it from the Federal Reserve
who literally creates it out of thin error (okay, really keypresses).
I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.
Brilliant comment, Pluto
McConnell, Ryan and Trump as well as their groupies think that too much money is going to pay for food stamps and other 'welfare' programs, but don't blink an eye at corporate welfare. Russian weapons can kick our weapons's asses and yet they spend a fraction of the amount of money we do on their military budget. This is why Russians have quality health care and Vlad has just decreased the budget so he can address poverty. Meanwhile we're raising the budget so that more people can slide into it.
The Pentagon Budget as Corporate Welfare for Weapons Makers
Divine order posted this in the EBs yesterday. Worth a full read as js would say.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.
~Hannah Arendt
You always have the best links to pass along.
Thanks, dawg.
This has to be why Americans receive no education in economics from the public education system. I believe it should be taught at every grade in the K-12 curriculum. That article suggests to me that it is a mistake to speak of government spending outside of the principles of macroeconomics.
But in that case, there would be no one to talk to. The fact that Americans think it works like their checkbooks, independent of the complex systems in play, makes it possible to keep them on the plantation shopping at the company store and loving monopolies because bigger is better.
No government could have left the American people so high and dry without centuries of careful planning.
See a pattern here:
Trump told Saudi Arabia that they were nothing without him (they would fail in two weeks).
Now he tells South Korea "they do nothing without our approval."
He told NATO they are on their own if he doesn't get his way.
He is talking about pulling out of the nuclear arms agreement.
He did pull out of the Paris climate agreement.
He has started several trade wars.
He is threatening to pull support for Central American countries for not keeping their people at home during a situation that was created by the US.
He has said that he will move the US embassy to Jerusalem.
Many, many unilateral decisions.
etc., etc., etc.
Does he believe he is a god?
We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.--Aristotle
If there is no struggle there is no progress.--Frederick Douglass
In effect, Trump is demonstrating the US is not G-d
Whether that demonstration proves to be to all of our undoing is yet to be seen.
But, like the invasion of Iraq that showed that a $9 million M1A1 main battle tank could be reduced to scrap with an IED that costs practically nothing, Trump's bluster is instructive as to the true impotence it betrays.
One of my (many) pet peeves is
anyone referring to Trump as "the most powerful man in the world." With any kind of luck, and barring total nuclear destruction, I would love to see the US and mostly Trump brought down to a level that puts us/him in a category with the rest of humanity.
Warning: Cheap shot ahead:
Only Melania knows for sure, and she probably won't tell.
We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.--Aristotle
If there is no struggle there is no progress.--Frederick Douglass
Of course! Him and Caligula.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1255285/quotes
I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.
As our friend Howard Zinn laments
"The “jumpers” reminded us that one day we will all face only one choice and that is how we will die, not how we will live." Chris Hedges on 9/11
Korea will proceed with reunification
Korea is a very old civilization. This division into North and South is artificial and a result of the Cold War. Both sides now have the same ultimate goal, one country, one people. It's a passion for many in government on both sides.
The US, of course, hates this because the claim that the US is needed to protect the South is one of its reasons for a massive military presence in the Far East, to offset China. As it has turned out, the South has been able to protect itself for a long time, but more to the point this is an absurd position as they are one people. Both leaders have realized that if they are in the process of reunification then the US position of having a aggressive military posture becomes meaningless. Who is the US opposing?
Korea will get help from China and Russia, her neighbors. It's also to their advantage. Railways will be built from China, through the North and into the South. An automobile/truck bridge will be constructed at the Russia-Korea border in the North. The will to reunite will overcome differences between the North and the South.
Korea's biggest problem will be the US, of course. The US will fight this all the way, and Trump has already said that the South cannot do anything without his approval. The US is going to insist that the war cannot conclude without a treaty with the US, because the US is a signatory to the armistice. He is going to find that this is nonsense. Agreements between the North and South will be a de facto peace treaty. The only way that the US can stop this is to overthrow the democratically elected government of the South and install a puppet government. Normally this is what the US would do, but the South is a very big, stable player in the world so I don't see this as a possibility, but who knows what Bolton is planning?
It's my opinion that reunification can't be stopped. The US has to think about the post Korean reunification world. If the US does everything possible to make it difficult then strategic alliances will be very different and the US will be facing a unified China-Russia-Korea alliance. It also changes Japan's perspective on it's political relationship with her neighbors. On the other hand if the US pulls out the military (28,000 troops?), halts sanctions and contributes to the process then the US can be seen as a positive partner. Are we smart enough to do the right thing?
Capitalism has always been the rule of the people by the oligarchs. You only have two choices, eliminate them or restrict their power.
Dupe
Duplicate
That's the right overview, IMO.
With all the key variables and salient questions:
The Neocon foreign policy cartel, which took control a year ago last April, are whom we must visualize in order to predict the answers. There are no other voices at the Federal level. Not a one. Of course that yields very different answers than those coming from the Frank Capra version of government where congress checks foreign policy. As we know, the 21st century Congress represent the people who tell them that, "War is good for business." They vote accordingly and unanimously to fund any war suggested.
Regime change is now the US government's highest form of restraint after extortion via sanctions and selective assassination. These are probably the best we can hope for. Sanctions against South Korea, to be specific. The problem here are the US missiles installed in South Korea, which is a condition of reunification. Personally, I see no future wherein the US would even think of removing them. The Neocon cartel is operating on the premise that they can finesse keeping them there, pointed at China, perhaps. (They simply have no idea who they are dealing with.) As Empire dies, I believe the Neocons will cling to the possibility of destroying it all rather than suffering another defeat like the one they experienced in Germany. That is certainly Bolton's view: Better dead than red.
I respect your analysis very much and you seem more optimistic about how this would play out.
Korea will proceed with reunification, by The Wizard
I agree with your take, Wizard and I think the next step away from America will be by Japan.
700,000 people rallied in Okinawa last month asking, yet again, that the USA remove its troop from their overcrowded island. Cutting, if not eliminating the US presence in Japan has been a campaign issue for years.
President Obama tried a middle course. He proposed moving the airbase on Okinawa to a less populated part of the island but that didn't go over well at all. The Okinawans want our troops, their helicopters, planes, pollution and noise Gone, not reduced. I don't blame them.
NYCVG
I don't either
I grew up hearing the HAFB jets flying over my house for an hour every evening after they came back from the western desert. This was horrible enough, but now we have the f-35's and some newer jets flying and doing touch and goes and the noise is almost unbearable. They are now flying over during the daytime when I'm on my walk. The noise is beyond irritating! Then there's the times that they rev the engines for some reason and it rattles the windows. I always thought that I'd live in my parent's house someday, but no not a chance. It's just too noisy. So yeah I can understand why they want the base closed down.
And every time I see them I think about the amount of fuel that they are using per hour. It doesn't make sense to me to use obscene amounts of fuel to get your hands on more of it.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.
~Hannah Arendt
The US is a petty, possessive, greedy, vain,
violent, arrogant nation. And TPTB are furiously watching as the Middle East and Asia tells up to go pound sand. They would rather kill us all than lose their ‘special’ place in this world.
I'm tired of this back-slapping "Isn't humanity neat?" bullshit. We're a virus with shoes, okay? That's all we are. - Bill Hicks
Politics is the entertainment branch of industry. - Frank Zappa
The way it's going here, they will probably try.
The numbers are on our side.
question everything
Oceania protecting southern front from Eurasia and East Asia
Surely you must have seen The Ministry of Truth party member Rachael Maddow explain to you prols that South Korea must be controlled as North Korea borders both Eurasia and East Asia southern boundaries. Party member Maddow clearly proved that North Korea borders what at one time was called Russia and China. From Pyonyang one can clearily see Vladivostok (which is named after Vladmir Putin, the first ruler of Eurasia).
Doubleplusgood
That's goodthink
MAGAturds/Media will find a way to give Dipshit credit anyway.
Modern education is little more than toeing the line for the capitalist pigs.
Guerrilla Liberalism won't liberate the US or the world from the iron fist of capital.
My father just missed fighting in the Korean War
(having done his time in Occupied Germany.)
Hopefully, everyone else can miss it too.
Gëzuar!!
from a reasonably stable genius.