The Evening Blues - 7-19-23
Hey! Good Evening!
This evening's music features Chicago blues singer Valerie Wellington. Enjoy!
Valerie Wellington - Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On
“Collective fear stimulates herd instinct, and tends to produce ferocity toward those who are not regarded as members of the herd.”
-- Bertrand Russell
News and Opinion
Worth a full read:
Chris Hedges: Cornel West and the Campaign to End Political Apartheid
The Republican and Democratic parties have no intention of allowing independents and third parties into their exclusive club. A series of arcane laws and rules governing elections make it extremely difficult for outsiders to get on the ballot, receive exposure, raise money, comply with regulations that are designed to advance the interests of Republicans and Democrats or participate in public debates. Third parties and independents are effectively disenfranchised, although 44 percent of the voting public identify as independent. This discrimination is euphemistically labeled “bipartisanship,” but the correct term, as Theresa Amato writes, is “political apartheid.”
“One of the best-kept secrets in American politics is that the two-party system has long been brain dead — kept alive by support systems like state electoral laws that protect the established parties from rivals and by Federal subsidies and so-called Campaign reform,” the political scientist Theodore Lowi noted. “The two-party system would collapse in an instant if the tubes were pulled and the IV’s were cut.”
Amato was the national presidential campaign manager and in-house counsel for Ralph Nader in the 2000 and 2004 elections. Her book “Grand Illusion: The Myth of Voter Choice in a Two-Party Tyranny” is a sobering account of our political apartheid, based on her experience in the Nader campaigns. It chronicles in minute detail the nefarious mechanisms, especially the Byzantine rules that vary from state to state, to even get on the ballot.
Third parties not already ballot-qualified and independents must collect valid signatures on a petition to run for president. Some states require a fee or a few hundred signatures. Others require tens of thousands of signatures. The Republicans and Democrats set the requirements in state legislatures, and then, flush with corporate cash and teams of lawyers, haul independents and third party candidates into court to challenge the validity of their petition signatures. These lawsuits are used to invalidate signatures to force candidates off the ballot, deprive voters the opportunity of supporting other candidates, as well as drain the campaign budgets of small competitors. Republican and Democratic party state-level officials, either elected or appointed, administer the federal elections to serve their party’s advancement. ...
Those that attempt to challenge the stranglehold of the Republican and Democratic party duopoly are attacked as spoilers, as being naive or egomaniacs. These attacks have already begun against Cornel West, who is running for The Green Party nomination. The underlying assumption behind these attacks is that we have no right to support a candidate who champions our values and concerns. ...
The ruling corporate parties are acutely aware that they have little to offer a disillusioned public other than more wars, more austerity, more government control and intrusion into our lives, more tax breaks for Wall Street and corporations and more misery for working men and women. They use their control of the electoral system to force us to choose between mediocrities like Donald Trump — and major Democratic donors such as Lloyd Blankfein said they would back Trump if Bernie Sanders was the Democratic Party candidate — and Joe Biden. The only electorally viable candidates outside the two-party structure are the very rich, such as Ross Perot or Michael Bloomberg, who, as Amato writes, are able to “buy their way around the barriers of ballot access restrictions and nonexistent media coverage.”
Voters do not vote for who they want. They vote against those they have been conditioned to hate. The oligarchy, meanwhile, is assured its interests are protected.
Rus Closes on Liman, Kupyansk; Rus Missile Odessa Port; Latin America Rejects EU; Milley Blames Kiev
CIA Is Playing "Outsize Role" in Ukraine Despite Biden Pledge Not to Send U.S. Forces
Ukraine attacks Kerch Bridge to Crimea
The Ukrainian military carried out an attack Monday on the Kerch Bridge, which links Crimea to the Russian mainland, according to reports by Ukrainian newspapers. ... The attack illustrates that, following the Vilnius NATO summit, which significantly increased the alliance’s preparations for global war, the conflict in Ukraine continues to escalate. ...
Although not officially admitting responsibility for the attack, Mykhailo Podolyak, adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, said, “Any illegal structures used to deliver Russian instruments of mass murder are necessarily short-lived.”
Significantly, the United States did not distance itself from the bridge attack. Deputy Pentagon Press Secretary Sabrina Singh, when asked about the attack, declared, “Crimea is part of Ukraine.”
“On the Kerch Bridge,” said Secretary of State Antony Blinken, “Ukraine must decide how it conducts this war in defense of its territory, its people, its freedom.” ...
The US has privately authorized Ukrainian strikes inside mainland Russia and publicly endorsed Ukrainian strikes inside Crimea. “Those are legitimate targets,” Under Secretary of State Victoria Nuland said in February, referring to Ukrainian strikes on Crimea. “Ukraine is hitting them. We are supporting that.”
Last month, Ukraine initiated a military offensive that has so far failed to penetrate any main Russian defensive lines. This week, the New York Times reported that as much as 20 percent of Ukraine’s battlefield equipment was destroyed or damaged during the offensive, including advanced Western tanks and armored vehicles. Given these enormous losses, the Ukrainian ground offensive has at least partially halted. Instead, Ukraine is aiming to conduct long-range strikes deep into Russian territory, using new weapons recently provided by its NATO backers.
Anderson Cooper CHIDES Cornel West "Inappropriate" Comparison of Iraq War to Putin Leveling Grozny
I guess we're not close enough to armageddon in the U.S./NATO war against Russia, an insurance policy is needed to make sure that there's some sort of nuclear conflagration, hence the provocation of North Korea.
US Nuclear-Armed Submarine Docks in South Korea for First Time Since 1981
A US nuclear-armed submarine docked in South Korea on Tuesday in a major provocation aimed at North Korea as tensions on the Korean Peninsula continue to rise.
The docking of the USS Kentucky, an Ohio-Class submarine, in the South Korean port of Busan marks the first time since 1981 that a US nuclear-armed submarine arrived in the country. It also marks the first time US nuclear weapons have been deployed to the Korean Peninsula since 1991, the year the US withdrew all of the tactical nukes it had stationed in South Korea.
Because US nuclear-armed submarines can covertly patrol waters anywhere in the world and have long-range missiles, docking one in South Korea has no strategic value, demonstrating the move is nothing more than a blatant provocation by the Biden administration. The provocation is also likely meant to send a message to China.
US Asset Managers Have 'Significant Investments' in Nuclear Weapons and Cluster Bombs
Amidst what the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists calls "an exceedingly dangerous nuclear situation" facing humanity today, the largest U.S. mutual funds—which manage the retirement and other savings of tens of millions of Americans—are profiting from investments in nuclear weapons, cluster munitions, and other banned or controversial arms, an analysis by a leading shareholder advocacy group revealed Tuesday.
Measured by dollars invested, the top 25 U.S. asset managers "all earn a D grade or worse, with significant investments in arms manufacturers and major military contractors, including companies involved with nuclear weapons and controversial weapons like cluster munitions, anti-personnel landmines, incendiary weapons, and depleted uranium," Berkeley, California-based As You Sow said in its new report.
Some of the largest corporate 401(k)s like American Funds, John Hancock Funds, and Franklin Templeton Investments were among the most heavily invested in these armaments, while "fund managers that focus on sustainable investing have less exposure to military weapons, on average."
State Spying Poses 'Roadblock' for Interstate Seekers of Abortion, Transgender Care: Report
A report published Tuesday details how digital surveillance can be used by police and prosecutors to criminalize patients seeking abortion and gender-affirming healthcare outside their home states.
The report—entitledRoadblock to Care: Barriers to Out-of-State Travel for Abortion and Gender-Affirming Care—was authored by the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project (STOP), a New York-based privacy and civil rights group. The publication comes as Republican-controlled state legislatures pass a wave of abortion and gender-affirming healthcare bans, forcing people seeking such care to travel out of state.
"Surveillance doesn't stop at the state line," STOP executive director Albert Fox Cahn said in a statement. "Even as progressive states seek to protect abortion and gender-affirming care within our borders, anti-choice states are continuing to expand the threat that they will prosecute residents who leave the state to find evidence-based medical treatment."
"It's crucial for patients to understand the ways that their movements can be tracked by law enforcement, even out of state," he added. "And progressive lawmakers and travel companies must take urgent steps to protect the right to travel anonymously and safely. Until we do, every hotel reservation and bridge toll will be just one subpoena away from being used against a patient in court."
Belying conservative arguments that issues like abortion and gender-affirming care should be left up to the states to decide, some GOP-led legislatures are trying to criminalize patients who leave their home states for either type of healthcare.
The report examines how police and state officials can use license plate readers, street cameras, ticket information, and other data to identify and track people seeking, assisting, or providing out-of-state healthcare.
Hell has been located:
Isolated, no air conditioning: Louisiana youth in solitary cells amid heat, ACLU says
Incarcerated youth in Louisiana have been locked for days in solitary confinement in a former death row prison unit, facing extreme heat in cells with no air conditioning or windows, according to declarations filed on Monday in an ACLU case.
Sworn statements from children imprisoned inside the Louisiana State Penitentiary, known as Angola prison, allege that youth spent roughly four consecutive days in isolation earlier this month, and were given only 8min a day outside their cells to shower. On those days, the heat index, which measures how hot it feels based on humidity and temperatures, ranged from 115F to 132F (46C to 55C), placing the youth at high risk of heatstroke and other serious health impacts, according to the ACLU’s experts. The youth remained shackled while they showered, one youth wrote. It’s unclear how many have faced these conditions, but state officials said earlier this month that there were 15 youth housed in the former death row, 14 of whom were Black.
“They’re in excessive Louisiana heat for days on end with no relief,” said Nancy Rosenbloom, senior litigation advisor of the ACLU National Prison Project, who said the water in their cells was not drinkable. “The kids are telling us they have to hold out a cup through the bars to ask for water … These are cells made for adults locked up for the most serious crimes.”
The latest claims of inhumane and dangerous conditions come one year after the state proposed transferring some youth from juvenile centers to Angola, the largest maximum-security adult prison in the US, which has a long history of abuse and neglect scandals. Officials announced the plan after six youth escaped from a juvenile jail last year, saying Angola would temporarily be used as a “transitional treatment unit” for youth who required a “more restrictive housing environment”.
The ACLU and other attorneys filed a class-action suit in August to block the transfers. Youth in the juvenile system are in civil delinquency proceedings and are not charged with criminal offenses, meaning they’re not supposed to be subject to punitive conditions.
Texas trooper says they were told to push children into Rio Grande and deny migrants water
Texas troopers employed by Greg Abbott’s border patrol initiative were instructed to push children into the Rio Grande and deny migrants water in extreme heat, according to emails sent by a state employee.
Nicholas Wingate, a trooper-medic from the state’s department of public safety expressed concern over “inhumane” actions towards migrants in a 3 July email to supervisors and reveals other unreported incidents involving migrants, the Houston Chronicle first reported.
The email, which the Guardian independently reviewed, gives a report of weekly events from 24 June to 1 July, detailing several cases of migrants being caught or injured by barbed wire in Eagles Pass, a Texas city along the US border with Mexico.
In the email, Wingate calls for several policy changes to prevent further injury to migrants, including removing barrels wrapped in razor wire in the river.“The wire and barrels in the river needs to be taken out as this is nothing but an inhumane trap in high water and low visibility,” Wingate wrote. He also told officials to reverse orders to withhold water from migrants. “Due to the extreme heat, the order to not give people water needs to be immediately reversed as well,” Wingate wrote, the Chronicle reported.
He added: “I believe we have stepped over a line into the inhumane.”
Sixteen people charged in Michigan 2020 false elector scheme
Sixteen people who signed paperwork falsely claiming Donald Trump won the 2020 presidential election in Michigan have been criminally charged, Michigan’s attorney general, Dana Nessel, a Democrat, announced on Tuesday.
Michigan was one of several swing states that Trump lost in 2020 in which he and his legal team convened alternate slates of electors as part of an effort to overturn the election. The Tuesday charges mark the first time any of the electors have been charged.
Each of the fake electors was charged with eight felony counts, including multiple counts of forgery, a felony punishable by 14 years in prison in Michigan. The other charges include conspiracy to commit forgery, conspiracy to commit uttering and publishing, conspiracy to commit election law forgery, and election law forgery. The charges were filed in state court in Lansing, the Michigan capital.
The 16 people charged include Meshawn Maddock, a former co-chair of the Michigan Republican party, and Kathy Berden, a national commiteewoman for the Republican National Committee. The other 14 fake electors held various connections to the state and local party.
Judge appears inclined to delay Trump classified documents trial into 2024
The federal judge presiding over Donald Trump’s classified documents case signaled that she could delay the trial until 2024, appearing inclined to find that the matter was sufficiently complex after hearing arguments from prosecutors and the former president’s lawyers on Tuesday.
The US district court judge Aileen Cannon did not rule from the bench on a timetable during the roughly two-hour pre-trial conference at the courthouse in Fort Pierce, Florida, and concluded the hearing by saying she would enter a written order at a later date.
Prosecutors in the office of special counsel Jack Smith, who is overseeing the documents case and the investigation into Trump’s efforts to obstruct the transfer of power, had asked Cannon last week to reject Trump’s suggestion to postpone the trial until after the 2024 election. ...
Cannon appeared skeptical of arguments from both sides at the hearing, telling prosecutors she was unaware of any trial involving classified information that went to trial in six months and telling Trump’s lawyers that the 2024 election would not factor into her scheduling decisions.
The judge said at issue was whether the documents case was sufficiently “complex” – because of novel legal issues and the volume of discovery materials that prosecutors will turn over to the defence – to warrant a timetable that would delay pre-trial proceedings beyond December.
Cornel West BLASTS James Carville for Calling His 2024 Run a "Menace Threat' to Constitutional Order
One in five New Yorkers may be drinking lead-contaminated water, report finds
One in five New Yorkers may be drinking lead-contaminated water, a new report has found. Roughly 900,000 households – or 21% of the city’s residents – live in properties with lead or possible lead service lines, the pipes that provide city water to individual properties. Lead can leach into the water from the pipes as the water travels through them.
“There is no safe level of lead,” said Joan Matthews, senior attorney at the Natural Resources Defense Council, which co-authored the report as part of the New York City Coalition to End Lead Poisoning.
A potent neurotoxic metal, lead can cross the blood-brain barrier, causing a host of neurological problems in young children, including behavioral disorders and lower IQ levels. “Lead in drinking water can be a significant exposure path, particularly for infants who are drinking formula,” Matthews said. Adults can also suffer serious consequences from lead exposure, including high blood pressure and kidney damage.
Brooklyn and Manhattan are the boroughs with the highest estimated number of lead service lines, at 46% and 44% respectively. Nearly a quarter of all water lines in the Bronx are confirmed to have lead. At a neighborhood level, Staten Island’s Port Richmond community has the highest concentration of lead water lines in the entire city, at roughly 61%.
The new report is based on data from the city’s department of environmental protection (DEP), which includes a publicly accessible map of every property in the city. The report identified water lines as “possible lead” if there is no record or conflicting records about the material type.
Ireland Tells Farmers To Kill 200,000 Cows – Cuz Of Climate Change!
Phoenix breaks heat record with 19th day of temperatures at 110F or higher
Tuesday marked the 19th day the city of Phoenix has been subjected to temperatures of at least 110F (43.3C) – the longest stretch of time spent in such brutal heat – as record-breaking summer weather continues to affect millions in the US and around the world.
The US city, which is the fifth biggest in the country, with a population of about 1.6 million that is only expected to grow in the coming years, often ranks as the hottest or one of the hottest. But pushing into new territory comes with amplified risks to human health, especially for those forced to endure the extreme conditions for longer periods of time. The previous record of 18 days at that temperature threshold was set in the city in 1974.
Phoenix, where dangerous heat can stretch from April to September, will not get a reprieve soon.
“The well-documented record heatwave will continue across the region through this week and likely beyond as an Excessive Heat Warning remains in effect through Friday evening,” the National Weather Service warned in a forecast issued on Tuesday afternoon. The agency has cast each of the coming days this week in the “extreme” category, the highest level that signifies everyone who is exposed is at risk.
The city’s residents are accustomed to hot weather but as temperature highs and lows continue to break records, risks are rising. Along with longer stretches of scorching days, nights are growing hotter, offering limited relief.
Also of Interest
Here are some articles of interest, some which defied fair-use abstraction.
Ukraine Sitrep - Reality Defeats The War Narrative
The Whitewashing of Neo-Nazis: Lev Golinkin & Ben Makuch on How Far Right Is Exploiting Ukraine War
Oppenheimer’s Posthumous Exoneration
Julian Assange Is ‘Dangerously Close’ to Extradition for Revealing US War Crimes
Nicaragua fails to back censure of Russia at end of EU-Latin America summit
The Dark, Shady Past of Spain’s Likely Next Prime Minister, Alberto Núñez Feijóo
Alzheimer’s most prevalent in US east and south-east, first-of-its-kind study finds
Florida rocked by home insurance crisis: ‘I may have to sell up and move’
As Skies Turn Orange, Media Still Hesitate to Mention What’s Changing Climate
Manchin SIGNALS 2024 Third Party Bid With No Labels
Congress EXPLODES After Jayapal Calls Israel Racist Apartheid
Tucker’s Move To Twitter PAYS OFF w/ Million-Dollar Ad Deal
AOC ACCUSES RFK Jr Of Antisemitism, Dems Want To STOP Him From Testifying At ALL COSTS
A Little Night Music
Valerie Wellington - Cold, Cold Feeling
Valerie Wellington - Down In The Dumps
Valerie Wellington- Voodoo Blues
Valerie Wellington - Fool For You
Valerie Wellington - You Can't Have My Monkey
Valerie Wellington - Bad Avenue
Valerie Wellington - Independent Blues
Valerie Wellington - Love Don't Love Nobody
Valerie Wellington - Let The Good Times Roll
Comments
If independents make up almost half
of the voting bloc, why does the duopoly treat them (us) as enemies?
(rhetorical question) but herding cats is difficult for any politician.
All these party rules, blue versus red, us versus them stuff is getting
old. Time to rip off their masks and expose this divisive game for
what it is. "Power sharing" is no longer a meaningful concept.
thanks for the eve bloos!
evening qms...
because they can. the two politics corporations collude to exclude so that one of their candidates can extrude.
Brilliant, friend!
Thanks for the ebs. I will dive into the stuff after Dear One prepares dinner, because I am busy. Always. Lol!
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981
heh...
i was having a jesse jackson moment.
have a great dinner!
Questioning the election results is forbidden
.
Democrats didn’t believe that Bush won the 2000 and 2004 elections and they refused to certify the results until they did more investigations. But it showed that the republicans that didn’t want to certify the Biden win were aligned with Russia and that they were Putin’s puppets.
Questioning the election of Biden gets you charged with felonies…..
But of course it’s okay when democrats asked electors not to let Trump become president…
.And of course democrats also said that Trump didn’t win fair and square because Putin robbed the Hellabitch of her coronation and spent the next 5 years screaming about Russia Russia Russia and took the country down the biggest rabbit hole in history!
Trump got impeached for asking Zelensky questions about Biden, but Biden openly admitted that he threatened to withhold funds for Ukraine unless they fired the prosecutor that was looking into the company that put Hunter Biden on their payroll because of his ties to his dad Joe Biden. And shitlibs think that this is a conspiracy theory.
Seriously you can’t make this reality up, but they did.
Btw I read an article on the Republican electors that put a different spin on the story than the one you posted. Trump is up to 70 felonies while Biden skates on any charges. But I still have a nagging feeling that Trump is totally on board with what the democrats are doing to him…just more patsy stuff. We’ll see.
There were problems with running a campaign of Joy while committing a genocide? Who could have guessed?
Was Humpty Dumpty pushed?
evening snoopy...
as i understand it, there is a difference between what the repulican alternate electors did and what the washed-up b-movie democrats were asking electors to do. the democrats were asking real, live certified electors to change their votes - which is fair game in the electoral college process. the republican alternate electors asserted that they were the real, certified electors of the states that they alleged themselves to represent and attempted to push aside the state-certified electors. the democrats may or may not have attempted to do the same in hawaii in 1960, though a recount in hawaii confirmed the election in the favor of democrats and they never asserted before the election results were certified that they were the "real" electors for hawaii, so i guess we will never know if they would have falsely asserted themselves.
that said, trump is clearly being attacked with lawfare and biden is clearly not being seriously investigated and charged with many particularly odious and illegal things he has done while in office. it gives the appearance of the establishment bureaucracy having a favored outcome.
IIRC, they didn't just question. They signed documents
under oath claiming to be Michigan's electors who were certifying that Trump won.
be well and have a good one
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --
Good evening Joe, thank for the evening blues.
The other day, under the headline "Once seen as ‘conservative,’ FBI faces GOP attacks",
the CSMonitor penned the following silliness:
So here they just automatically fall into the GOP = conservative (ergo?) Dems = Liberal/leftist trap. They may believe this or merely espouse it, but it doesn't take into account the possibility (in reality, a clear certainty) that the Dems too are conservative.
1) There is no american left
2) The GOP and Dems are both self serving, conservative, parties of the oligarchs.
This from a presumably apolitical source because they have their own distinctive and peculiar axe to grind.
be well and have a good one.
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --
evening el...
heh, the feebs have always been the establishment's political police force and still are. the parties have both shifted right, in no small part due to the efforts of the political police to stymie and suppress the left since the feebs creation as an entity.
thanks in some major part to bill clinton's rightward lurch the dems are now a neoliberal, right-wing party slightly less moderate than the republicans used to be. the republicans have shifted even further right to be the lunatic fringe of corporate lackies, religious whackos and fascists that don't mind if you know it. (the democrats prefer to hide their fascism)
the cs monitor needs a good sit-down update on the american political space.
Ritter discusses Russia's lethal drones
I posted a link last night that included a great video on the drones and how advanced they are now. Instead of being launched from a sling shot they are loaded into tubes and then they talk to each other about getting the mission done. Both the video and essay are worth a look. Both are about 3/4 down.
There were problems with running a campaign of Joy while committing a genocide? Who could have guessed?
Was Humpty Dumpty pushed?
thanks for the video...
i think that ritter may be on to something. i don't think that the war will be over, though, once the ukronazi army collapses. i would rather imagine that the current transition of ukraine to guerilla tactics will proceed and whatever territory they have left after russia pushes them back will be turned into a launching pad for guerilla actions and organizing and support area for terrorist attacks on russian territory.
Evening joe and bluesters
Wow wee, Valerie!
Collective fear also stimulates individual disorder.
Such a perfect combination to ensure sanity - music and news.
The "nuclear consultative group"
Kim Tae-hyo and Kurt Campbell are extremely misguided people. I'm sure China is Campbell's first priority, and he is just encouraging Kim's worst far right hard line policies concerning North Korea. The punch line quoted above in the group statement is a red herring. North Korea isn't going to attack South Korea unless they are attacked first. Their conventional forces are inferior. They lack basics like fuel, modern equipment, spare parts, training time, food, etc. They are developing their ballistic missile forces, guided rocket artillery, and nuclear weapons technology to compensate for their conventional inferiority. Their conventional artillery and missile artillery is their main conventional tactical threat.
At the same time, the North Korean nuclear threat is a deterrent to being attacked. They have stated this outright multiple times. More recently they have clarified, meaning any attack from the US and South Korea, including pre-emptive "de-capitation strikes." designed to end the regime by destroying the national command group. These pre-emptive strikes and the desire of the US and the South Korean far right in power now to overthrow the Kim Jong-un government have been discussed openly in recent years in South Korean media. In past decades the US openly threatened to complete destroy North Korea, a threat that carries special weight, because the US literally did so during the Korean war.
Given the great imbalance in both conventional power and nuclear forces, North Korea isn't about to attack anyone unless it is attacked. The real danger is that US/ROK operations would incidentally result in some sort of incident, accidental or otherwise, that would escalate to armed conflict. The almost continuous US-ROK military exercises near the DMZ and the buffer zones in the East and West Seas increase rather than decrease the chance of war by miscalculation. The presence of the SSBN is just a kind of "mine is bigger than yours" dick waving, that morons act out. No finesse, no subtlety, no diplomacy. It doesn't really change the tactical picture in any way except that it is intended as an overt threat that always existed anyway. Yoon is all in on whatever the US asks. The statement about nuclear plan consultations or whatever, is just propaganda for Yoon to show to the public to bolster his pitiful domestic situation, to make it look like he's achieved something while he has alienated large sectors of the domestic population with his police state tactics and his complete ineptitude in both domestic politics and international relations. People are asking just what the hell is he doing in Europe? Why is he pissing off China? Russia?
I'm sure almost all of South Korea's artillery reserve has been shipped off to Poland or Ukraine one way or another while Yoon poses in Europe as only supplying non-lethal support for Ukraine. The problem that Scott Ritter described for US stockpiles of ammunition probably applies to South Korea as well.
When I read North Korea's Kim Yeo-jong's recent statement, I think the most important take away is that if the US wants to do anything than make empty claims that it wants dialogue with North Korea, it needs to bring something to the table. In other words, North Korea has preconditions. Biden claims he will talk without preconditions, this is nonsense, the US wants a prior commitment from North Korea to disclose and give up their ace cards before the US yields anything. The US national security establishment, sincerely believes in their self delusional phantasy that they are elevating undeserving North Korea's status just by virtue of engaging in talks. In other words even agreeing to meet for talks detracts from the ultimate goal, destruction of North Korea as a state entity.
The second key take away for a couple of South Korean analysts concerning Kim Yo-jong's most recent statement involved a change in terminology, that suggested, along with party doctrinal changes, that North Korea just wants to be left alone, and has effectively abandoned the "revolutionary goal" of reunification. In other words, South Korea you do your thing, and we'll do ours. Or to put it more crudely why don't you people just shut up and go away. Obviously, they are bothered by all the large unnecessary military operations and encroachment on the buffer zones.
TK of the Blue Roof had a bit in his last update concerning this topic which I addressed earlier- the military agreement of Sept 2018. It's from his brief review of Choi Jong-geon's book, The Power of Peace, on diplomacy during the Moon Jae-in administration:
I've mentioned before the nuclear game theory that postulates that North Korea wouldn't dare do this and that, because "they would be totally obliterated." This means two things, some US analysts don't understand North Korean psychology and they don't understand deterrence. It's a dead hand system or a "doomsday machine." I looked at the social roster for the Biden- Yoon summit dinner at the white house or wherever it was. Kim Tae-hyo as deputy national security adviser was listed ahead of his nominal boss, the former ambassador to DC. They added the title "principal" to his deputy national security advisor status. This makes it clear he is running the show for South Korea. I saw also that Victor Cha was there, and Victoria Nuland as well as Campbell and the usual suspects. There were a lot of people I didn't know who were there, apart from the Korean-American political community showing the flag. I thought it would be a great poly sci project for someone with the time to examine these sort of summit galas and analyze them as C. Wright Mills might. Perhaps the unknown people are just campaign contributors. I could imagine what the guest list would be like for the Zelensky summit. Perhaps only the supporting cast would be different.
I won't dwell on the other Korea related stories, North Korea fires two more ballistic missiles, US private runs across the MDL at Panmunjeom apparently defecting, Yeon-mi Park star propaganda North Korean defector discredited, and Newsweek publishes McCarthyite smear on Christine Ahn's Women Cross the DMZ peace movement.
Speaking of Newsweek, Arkin's democracy now appearance made me feel ill. I was quite disappointed in his performance and literally couldn't watch it all the way through.
Bye Bye Ms American Pie
Thanks Joe!
語必忠信 行必正直
Speaking of 3rd Parties
Here's how it manifested in NZ ...
Since covid and mandates have only increased lack of trust in government we now have more parties to consider voting for. Where to place trust is all so confusing.