in the fall of South Korean President ..

@soryang

Your dispatch sounds of much dirty politics.

Interior Minister, National Police Agency, Public Prosecutors Office

to curb excessive prosecution powers

A tale of power grabbing no doubt.

Thanks-

Nat'l Assembly votes to impeach interior minister over Itaewon tragedy

(ATTN: ADDS reaction from rival parties)
By Kim Na-young

SEOUL, Feb. 8 (Yonhap) -- The opposition-controlled National Assembly voted Wednesday to impeach Interior Minister Lee Sang-min over last year's Itaewon crowd crush, marking the first-ever impeachment of a Cabinet member.

The impeachment motion passed 179-109, with five votes ruled invalid, forcing the suspension of Lee from duties until the Constitutional Court decides whether to endorse or reject the motion.

Depending on the court's decision, Lee will either be reinstated or removed from office.

The court has 180 days to rule on the case.

The main opposition Democratic Party (DP) and two minor parties introduced the impeachment motion earlier this week to hold Lee accountable for the government's allegedly bungled response to the crowd crush that killed 159 people.

https://en.yna.co.kr/view/AEN20230208002756315?section=national/politics

Finally the opening salvo in the fall of South Korean President Yoon Seok-yeol. The reporting on this is so biased. "Allegedly bungled response?" LOL. Also the contention that is no constitutional basis grounds for the impeachment is ridiculous.

This is from an earlier Hankyoreh article:

In their motion, the opposition parties argued that Lee, as the main figure in charge of disaster and safety management, should have made relevant plans and taken preventive measures. However, he not only failed to do so but also violated the Framework Act on the Management of Disasters and Safety and the State Public Officials Act by not taking any action after the disaster took place and amplifying the disaster.

The opposition parties also argue that Lee violated Article 34 par. 6 of the Constitution, which states, “The State shall endeavor to prevent disasters and to protect citizens from harm therefrom,” as well as Article 10 of the Constitution, which explicates, “All citizens shall be assured of human worth and dignity and have the right to pursuit of happiness.”

https://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_national/1078690.html

What was the constitutional basis for putting the Minister of Interior in control of the National Police Agency? There was none. Yoon just did it by fiat to neutralize the prosecutorial reforms passed before he took office. Yoon's purpose was to effectively restore investigative powers to the prosecution, which had been taken away and given to police by the National Assembly to curb excessive prosecution powers. The Public Prosecutors Office, had become politicized under Yoon Seok-yeol's supervision as Prosecutor General and then President. These powers were and continue to be used by Yoon and his "dictatorship of prosecutors" to investigate, and prosecute, political rivals, union leaders, media critics and other civic groups typically on fabricated grounds.

By politicizing the police, and their control, the Interior Ministry under the direction of the presidential office took effective control of police deployment and dispatch operations. The consequent failure to have almost no police on duty in Itaewon on October 29, 2022, when a crowd of well over 100 thousand people celebrating Halloween were crowded into narrow alleyways was a direct result of these changes in the government administration directed by the president.

@on the cusp

This is what made the news.

Biden heckled during State of the Union address

The president was jeered by rival lawmakers after claiming some Republicans would like to take the US economy “hostage”.

He was boo'd and called a liar by his audience. No tomatoes thrown. Theater.
Snoopy mentioned he slurred thru his written speech. And something about
flipping burgers jobs?

https://www.rt.com/news/571145-biden-heckled-sotu-speech/

I was really busy, washing dishes, organizing my sock drawer.
Did he do anything worse than complaining that refrigerators losing jobs?

@ban nock

I couldn't bear watching the old fool. At least he didn't drool.
Kamala can't quite seem to lose that smirk she wears.
Maybe a mask would make her look more serious?

and I'm not a huge fan.

Partway through I figured out the speech was very populist.

Bear in mind Biden can change 180 without missing a beat, just how he is.

He ad libbed and skewered Republicans. First he got them all denying they would cut SS and Medicare, booing and hissing on camera because he accused them of it, then made them all stand up for seniors and say they were unanimously agreed not to mess with it. Good theater.

He did a lot of kissing up to US industry. He was Joe from Scranton.
Best line, "the supply chain begins right here in the US" or words to that effect.

Lately the Rs have been reverting to their mean. Club for Growth etc. The big money Koch funded groups said they wouldn't fund Trump. If Trump runs populist, which means left on economics, and Biden works to outdo him, Trump will simply run more left. I'd love to see this campaign about left economics. Granted talk is cheap, but talking about it is much better than talking about some pronouns.

I only watched part way through, maybe a little more than half.

The downside is that this morning Biden is still a day older. I'm not at all sure he has another 6 years in him. How does one diplomatically get rid of Harris? Who would be as far left on economics as Biden? or more so.

@studentofearth

It does fit with revelations at the time. The fact that Scholz went along with it is strange.
He must have known the damage to his country's energy market would be severe.
A very stupid ploy by the Sullivan group - Joint Chiefs of Staff, the CIA, and the State
and Treasury Departments. It is what we come to expect from the dying empire.

beginning today - Seymour Hersh. Some of you probably followed his writings on United States war crimes in Vietnam and Iraqi.

How America Took Out The Nord Stream Pipeline Substack Seymour Hersh Feb 8, 2023

Last June, the Navy divers, operating under the cover of a widely publicized mid-summer NATO exercise known as BALTOPS 22, planted the remotely triggered explosives that, three months later, destroyed three of the four Nord Stream pipelines, according to a source with direct knowledge of the operational planning.
...
It was at this unsettled moment that Biden authorized Jake Sullivan to bring together an interagency group to come up with a plan.

All options were to be on the table. But only one would emerge.

PLANNING

In December of 2021, two months before the first Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine, Jake Sullivan convened a meeting of a newly formed task force—men and women from the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the CIA, and the State and Treasury Departments—and asked for recommendations about how to respond to Putin’s impending invasion.

It would be the first of a series of top-secret meetings, in a secure room on a top floor of the Old Executive Office Building, adjacent to the White House, that was also the home of the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (PFIAB). ...
Throughout “all of this scheming,” the source said, “some working guys in the CIA and the State Department were saying, ‘Don’t do this. It’s stupid and will be a political nightmare if it comes out.’”

Nevertheless, in early 2022, the CIA working group reported back to Sullivan’s interagency group: “We have a way to blow up the pipelines.”

What came next was stunning. On February 7, less than three weeks before the seemingly inevitable Russian invasion of Ukraine, Biden met in his White House office with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who, after some wobbling, was now firmly on the American team. At the press briefing that followed, Biden defiantly said, “If Russia invades . . . there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2. We will bring an end to it.”

Twenty days earlier, Undersecretary Nuland had delivered essentially the same message at a State Department briefing, with little press coverage. “I want to be very clear to you today,” she said in response to a question. “If Russia invades Ukraine, one way or another Nord Stream 2 will not move forward.”
...
The plan to blow up Nord Stream 1 and 2 was suddenly downgraded from a covert operation requiring that Congress be informed to one that was deemed as a highly classified intelligence operation with U.S. military support. Under the law, the source explained, “There was no longer a legal requirement to report the operation to Congress. All they had to do now is just do it—but it still had to be secret. The Russians have superlative surveillance of the Baltic Sea.”

The Agency working group members had no direct contact with the White House, and were eager to find out if the President meant what he’d said—that is, if the mission was now a go. The source recalled, “Bill Burns comes back and says, ‘Do it.’”
...
Back in Washington, planners knew they had to go to Norway. “They hated the Russians, and the Norwegian navy was full of superb sailors and divers who had generations of experience in highly profitable deep-sea oil and gas exploration,” the source said. They also could be trusted to keep the mission secret. (The Norwegians may have had other interests as well. The destruction of Nord Stream—if the Americans could pull it off—would allow Norway to sell vastly more of its own natural gas to Europe.)
...
In the immediate aftermath of the pipeline bombing, the American media treated it like an unsolved mystery. Russia was repeatedly cited as a likely culprit, spurred on by calculated leaks from the White House—but without ever establishing a clear motive for such an act of self-sabotage, beyond simple retribution. A few months later, when it emerged that Russian authorities had been quietly getting estimates for the cost to repair the pipelines, the New York Times described the news as “complicating theories about who was behind” the attack. No major American newspaper dug into the earlier threats to the pipelines made by Biden and Undersecretary of State Nuland.
...
The Norwegians joined the Americans in insisting that some senior officials in Denmark and Sweden had to be briefed in general terms about possible diving activity in the area. In that way, someone higher up could intervene and keep a report out of the chain of command, thus insulating the pipeline operation.
...
It was both a useful exercise and ingenious cover. The Panama City boys would do their thing and the C4 explosives would be in place by the end of BALTOPS22, with a 48-hour timer attached. All of the Americans and Norwegians would be long gone by the first explosion.

The days were counting down. “The clock was ticking, and we were nearing mission accomplished,” the source said.

And then: Washington had second thoughts. The bombs would still be planted during BALTOPS, but the White House worried that a two-day window for their detonation would be too close to the end of the exercise, and it would be obvious that America had been involved.
...

@humphrey

Helmhuht heads. Fly the Ukie skies united.

That is begging for more weapons.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy presented the speaker of the UK's House of Commons with an air force pilot's helmet with the message ‘we have freedom, give us wings to protect it,’ during an address in London https://t.co/AmdG2s1MK8 pic.twitter.com/hTvCESmwKA

— Reuters (@Reuters) February 8, 2023

@randtntx

is that performer on speed or what?
they will never 'cancel culture' of these sorts

thanks!

this one born in Irkutsk, was apparently bared from performing at the music festival of Bergamo/Bresica because of the festival organizer's objections to free speech and/or free ideas.
[h/t commenter at NC]

The Collective West seems to be in a full-on embrace of McCarthyism and blacklisting. So much for Europe being a vibrant, diverse, open-to-all, cultural Mecca. It is increasingly turning into a place of censorship and authoritarianism.

Unfortunately we have the same situation here;

In 2022, due to his public support of Vladimir Putin, Matsuev's appearance with the Vienna Philharmonic in New York on February 25, 2022, was cancelled and he was replaced by pianist Seong-Jin Cho.
Matsuev and 80 other Russian artists signed a collective letter "to support the position of President Vladimir Putin on Ukraine and Crimea."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denis_Matsuev

Thanks for the OT and the Ludovico Einaudi piece. Hope all is well up there in the North country.

A double dose of great Russian artists below.