With aircraft carriers off the coast of Iran, ever new act-of-war sanctions being put in place, and calls to bomb Iran crescendoing in Washington, some of us had foolishly thought that this year’s King birthday observances might see a few prominent clerics calling attention to King’s condemnation of US wars, long taboo in mainstream military-oriented America.

Organized religion in America has, for forty-five years, cooperated with the  understanding that no one shall mention that the great civil rights leader and national hero had denounced his government as “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world.”

The buildup to war on Iran, the daily toll of human lives from military action in many Muslim nations, the invasions of Afghanistan , Iraq, Panama, Dominican Republic, etc., the CIA criminal and anti-democratic civil war creating activities, the continuation of the Vietnam war for eight years after King’s murder, all needed the silent cooperation of clergy that King condemned as betrayal.

King’s betrayers also betray those millions of innocents, who, in their own beloved countries, fall in harms way of heavily armed Americans and remain undefended by a US clergy busy praising and expressing love and gratitude for what King did for them, while it blackballs the King who worked to do the same for his equally loved brothers and sisters in countries under US attack.

Do all these many thousands of clergy imagine that no one significant will ever notice these betrayals? Do any of the elderly ministers, who knew King personally, not feel some bites of conscience?

It’s hard to believe that Rev. Jesse Jackson, and Andrew Young, who had held the dying King in their arms and went on to high political office within the establishment, did not have to grit their teeth to be able to hold themselves back from speaking of King’s condemnation of US wars at the unveiling of the King Monument last year.

Sincere antiwar scholars have long accepted that clergy adheres to a strictly conformist role in a society ruled covertly and overtly by the investment community consensus on Wall Street and the military-industrial complex through their control of all three branches of the government, of all important sources of information with power to disinform, of the Pentagon and of the vast secret functions of the CIA.

The sudden tempestuous 1967 King caused problems for religious leaders, implicating them in complicity for having never challenged pathetic lies justifying mass murder that King was exposing. Ensconced in the national body politic, they have stonewalled on. Even today, to our knowledge, not a single congregation in the nation endorses King’s condemnation of US wars.

Antiwar activists are always searching for clergy who have followed in the footsteps of King during his last year that provoked a national controversy long since carefully blacked out of public awareness. This writer feels fortunate to know Father Paul Mayer, who worked with King, endorses the King Condemned US Wars International Awareness Campaign, and was recently in Occupy Wall Street’s Freedom Park making sure people knew of King’s condemnation of US wars and predatory investments.

I am also lucky to have had the chance to chat briefly with Rev. Jeremiah Wright before hearing him speak at the Monthly Review 50th Anniversary, where he eloquently expounded on reasons solidly based on history and King’s teaching, why every sensitive person aware of the violent death of millions should want to consider what Wright was repeatedly shown crying out in video, “God damn America for its crimes against humanity.”

But the most educating King learning experience was spending an hour-and-a- half with Riverside Church Head Minister William Sloan Coffin in 1982, while working under his guidance in the church tower’s International Liaison Office in support of the UN 2nd Special Session on Disarmament.

Rev. Coffin’s life had been intertwined with King’s, and his trip to Hanoi as invited negotiator for the release of US POWs had antedated King’s own involvement. Rev. Coffin had been jailed many times and finally convicted of conspiracy to counsel, aid, and abet resistance to the draft.

Coffin was a musician and former CIA officer in its Russian Department. I had performed on the first cultural exchange with the Soviet Union and shared his passion for the language. He was interested that I had been in Moscow during the Cuban missile crisis and on two other State Department run tours in Latin America during CIA and Pentagon actions in a half dozen countries in turmoil. I remember being struck by his insight as he reviewed the history of organized religion as so often being on the side of repression and automatic opposition to revolution, noting that the revolutions of France, Mexico, Russia, Spain, and China had been anti-clerical for the people’s memory of the church having been hand maiden to conquering empires who produced the suffering that was the fertile ground for revolution in the first place.

So impressive to hear this from a minster famous for physically interfering with government crime in the name of Jesus, who never doubted the role of the  Christian church in caring for society, but was keenly aware that modern empires had used and perverted the church into materialism and as accessory to domination by powerful criminal elements.

I never saw him again, as I as spent most of the next  twenty years in China, Korea, Japan, Vietnam and Thailand (and returned a Buddhist).

During six years in Korea, I applied King’s teaching and discovered things were not as I had been led to believe by President Truman and from conversation in church courtyards.  Koreans, including Korean Christians, all know that American business interests had had President Theodore Roosevelt snub Koreans and recognize the Japanese occupation of Korea; that President Wilson had formally recognized Korea as Japanese territory (in all, making possible a brutal 40 year occupation); that Americans had not fought the Japanese in Korea, coming in rather when Koreans had already accomplished their own politically democratic free Korea; that after unconscionably cutting the nation in two, had brought Singman Rhee in from Washington, who would set up a hated government, whose police and special forces would massacre (now fully UN documented) a couple of hundred thousand unionists, socialists, communists often along with their families in the South in the years before the army of the Northern government invaded and with little opposition overran all of the South, uniting Korea in the five weeks before the US invaded, bringing death to three million and flattening every city but one in the North and South; that a severely militaristic North Korea is the result of it having been bombed so mercilessly, threatened with the atom bomb, and strangled with tight international sanctions and economic blockades for nearly 60 years, while under continual barrage of anti-communist propaganda in Western media; that Rhee fled for his life after the war, and a series of military dictatorships prevailed under a heavy US Army presence until the mid 1980s; that in spite of all this deadly result, many Korean Christians and their clergy feel the need to accept the international media version of American righteous protection of Koreans from communism.

Working as Assistant Conductor of the Vietnam Symphony Orchestra (founded by Ho Chi Minh) in Hanoi, during most of the 1990s, I  learned something of the human side of what the Vietnamese call the American war after the French war of recolonization paid for by US taxpayers.

All the musicians had lost family. “Killed by the Americans” they would smile in Buddhist equanimity when asked. Between preparing Beethoven and Brahms I got to know the most soft spoken, heroic, charming and fun to be with people in the world. If many of Americans recognize their complicity, why should not clergy, who turned their back on King’s revelations.

I cringe when I think of the Grimm fairy tale nature of the anti-Vietnamese propaganda heard over so many years. Do clerical stomachs not turn like ours do as candidates for public office are acclaimed as heroes for having “served” in Vietnam?

On the opening day of the US bombing of Baghdad in 2003, I marched in a London street protest. The next day as our flight on the way to India detoured well away from Iraq, we could see flashes on the horizon — Iraqis being killed and maimed supposedly to depose a Saddam Hussein who had been supported by the CIA for two decades. Had to ask myself is bull being sold as to why the US is bombing or invading this or that small country because clergy leaders deny the necessity to study history carefully, as King came to do to help his people.

This idea of clergy not properly protecting us from deception even of the crudest historically ass-backwards kind was still fresh in my mind as I read the three Calcutta English language newspapers, and watched BBC Asia, which interestingly is quite a bit to the left of BBC London or New York, because it has to compete with local channels serving a citizenry less gullible after suffering a century of racist colonialism. (The British, including clergy, back in England feed on the same outlandish nonsense excusing and justifying the colonial behavior of their armies abroad just as America’s clergy accepts absurd excuses for American neocolonial wars abroad).

At a dinner party thrown for the patrons of the concert series, I was introduced to an Anglican minister stationed in India. Revved up as I was from watching floods of videos and photos of piles of bodies of civilians, headless children, body parts and clothing strewn everywhere, (images not being seen in America), I thought to comment inquisitively, how the war, with British pilots bombing, must be weighing heavily on him, as one responsible for moral leadership. He looked at me puzzled, a little annoyed, and answered to the effect that a minister’s job had absolutely nothing to do with war or preventing it, that church and politics don’t mix. Altercation proceeded:

“Church and its government’s homicide surely don’t mix either – you bless the troops shipping out to kill.”

“Its the job of a priest, rabbi or minister.”

“It’s a political act of acquiescence or complicity in homicide .”

I thought to myself, yes, of course, Western establishment-entrenched religious leaders must be the same throughout the world. Wasn’t I in India, where pastors took tea with wealthy faithful, both well acclimatized to a multitude of the landless being starved so that a profit might be turned from what would have been their land to cultivate (predatory investments King spoke of). Charity, rather putting an end to the legalized starving of the poor, is the usual clergy-led Christian response.

When I was a kid, I tired of listening to sermons about the hem length of ladies skirts and such, when the headlines of the newspapers I delivered were about millions of people starving to death. It caused me to visit my schoolmates houses of worship looking in vain for better Christianity.

As an adult, I have, on many occasions,  confessed feeling as an American drenched in the blood of millions only to hear my minister or priest trying to help me be at peace with it.

Official clergy enjoy prestige as the guardians of morality, family and community values but unlike King are careful not to answer why Americans and Christians from other nominally white nations, are killing Afghanis in Afghanistan, for ten years designating Taliban as the enemy as were the Vietcong in King’s day.

The average cleric would most likely talk no differently than the average American, either in some agreement with an outrageous lie justifying war on Afghanis, or fielding a disarming remark to deflect such an uncomfortably serious and aggressive question, “Look, nobody likes war’ or the more fundamental oxymoron, “War is war’ and “God will receive the victims.’

By praising exceptional clergy King cut at the majority, “surely this is the first time in our nation’s history that a significant number of its religious leaders have chosen to move beyond the prophesying of smooth patriotism to the high grounds of a firm dissent based upon the mandates of conscience and the reading of history.”

Even on King’s birthday  the whole Baptist community leadership and the NAACP focused solely on domestic injustice, while the wars that King condemned as perpetuating domestic injustice rage on, unspoken of. Is this not an obvious repudiation of King’s guidance?

Do all these pastors and church officials think King was wrong when he taught, in the maturity of the increased awareness of his final year, the futility of trying to improve America while America is destroying other nations, using up social and material resources to conquer abroad for accumulation of capital by investors?

A prominent New York church, where King once denounced his government for crimes against humanity, held a special King birthday event in which the personable minister opening the service, though having on other occasions decried today’s wars, spoke of “that awful war” (in Vietnam) as if that is what King had spoken against and not described it as being a part of the bloody wars and calculated violence presently still going on for financial interests. Misleadingly listed in the program was hearing a recording of “Beyond Vietnam” (in which King had detailed US crimes.) We heard only a carefully selected few minutes long snippet calling for improving society along general principles of social well being that would not have offended supporters of today’s wars or even war criminals or war profiteers.

King had told us, “The war in Vietnam is but a symptom of a far deeper malady.”  We have seen  a pattern of suppression,  the presence of U.S. military advisers in Venezuela. This need to maintain social stability for our investments accounts for the counterrevolutionary action of American forces in Guatemala. It tells why American helicopters are being used against guerrillas in Cambodia and why American napalm and Green Beret forces have already been active against rebels in Peru. They will be concerned about Mozambique and South Africa. “Look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa, and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the country. This is not just.”

If antiwar activists would relentlessly quote from King’s Beyond Vietnam sermon nonstop, it would make it difficult for majority clergy to go on ignoring King’s condemnation of US wars. According to Howard Zinn clergy opposition would make it difficult for US wars to be continued and would make network entertainment/news hailing Vietnam and Iraq military ventures as glorious prosecutable as hate crimes.

In the past, however, many theorists of imperialism of varying political persuasion, ranging from Max Weber to Vladimir Lenin, argued that imperialism unified the country, reduced internal class polarization and created privileged workers who actively supported and voted for imperial parties.  A historical, comparative survey of the conditions under which imperialism and democratic institutions converge or diverge can throw some light on the challenges and choices faced by the burgeoning democratic movements erupting across the globe.

The Nineteenth Century

During the 19th century, European and US imperial expansion covered the world.  In tandem, democratic institutions took root, the franchise was extended to the working class, competitive parties emerged, social legislation was passed, and the working class increased its representation in the legislative chambers.

Was the simultaneous growth of democracy and imperialism a spurious correlation reflecting divergent and conflicting underlying forces, one favoring overseas conquest and another promoting democratic politics? In fact, there was a great deal of overlap between pro-imperialist and democratic politics and not simply among the elites.

Throughout the 19th and especially in the 20th century, important sectors of the labor and social democratic parties and numerous prominent leftists and revolutionary socialists, at one time or another, combined support for workers’ demands and imperial expansion.  None other than Karl Marx, in his early journalistic writings in the New York Herald Tribune critically supported the British conquest of India as a “modernizing force” breaking down feudal barriers, even as he supported (with criticism) the European revolutions of 1848.

The ruling classes, the driving force of imperialism, were divided. Some saw the democratic reforms, “citizenship”, as a means of raising mass conscriptions for imperial wars; others feared that the democratic reforms would enhance social demands and undercut the accumulation of capital and rule by the elite.  Both were right.  Along with greater popular participation came virulent modern nationalism, which fueled empire building.  At the same time  mass access to democratic rights led to heightened class organizations, which threatened or challenged class rule. Within the ruling classes, democratic institutions were seen as an arena to peacefully resolve conflicts between competing sectoral elites. But once they took a mass character they were perceived as political threats.

Imperial and class-based parties competed for voters among the newly enfranchised urban workers and rural poor.  In many cases, imperial and class allegiances “co-existed” within the same individuals.  The question of which of the two – imperialist or class consciousness – would become ‘operative’ or ‘salient’ was, in part, contingent on the success or failures of the larger competing political projects.

In other words, when imperial expansion succeeded in easy conquests resulting in lucrative colonies (especially settler colonies) democratic workers embraced the empire.  This was the case because empire enhanced trade; namely, profitable exports and cheap imports, while protecting local markets and manufacturers.  These in turn expanded employment and wages for substantial sectors of the working class.  As a result, labor and social democratic parties and trade unions did not oppose imperialism.  Indeed many supported it.

In contrast, when imperialist wars led to prolonged bloody and costly conflicts, the working class shifted from initial chauvinist enthusiasm to disenchantment and opposition.  Democratic demands to ‘end the war’ led to strikes challenging unequal sacrifice.  Democratic and anti-imperialist sentiments tended to fuse.

The conflict between democracy and imperialism became even more apparent in the case of an imperial defeat and military occupation.  Both the defeat of France in the German-French war of 1870-71 and the German defeat in the First World War led to massive democratic socialist uprisings (the Paris Commune of 1871 and the German revolution of 1918) attacking militarism, ruling class domination and the entire imperial capitalist institutional framework.

The Imperialism and Democracy Debate and “History from Below”

Historians, especially practitioners of the fashionable “history from below”, exaggerated the democratic values and struggles of the working class and understated the prolonged and deep felt support among important sectors for successful imperial expansion and conquest.  The notion of ‘inherent’ or ‘instinctual’ class solidarity is belied by the active role of workers in imperial conquest as soldiers, overseas settlers, merchant mariners and overseers.  Imperial collaborators and empire loyalists were numerous among English and French workers and, especially later, within the US labor movement.

The theoretical point is that the pre-eminence of democratic over imperial consciousness and action among workers is contingent on the practical material outcomes of imperial policies and democratic struggles.

Workers and Imperialism

Empire building makes demands on workers to produce more for less in order to export and invest profitably in colonized regions.  This led to capital-labor conflict, especially in the initial phase of imperial expansion.  As imperial rulers consolidated their control over the colonized countries they intensified exploitation of markets, labor and resources.  Imperial exports destroyed local competitors.  Profits rose, wages increased and workers turned from initial opposition toward imperialism to demanding a share of the increasing income of the export oriented manufacturers.  Labor leaders and trade unionists approved of the policies of ‘imperial preference’, which protected local industries from competition and privileged monopoly control of colonial markets.  They did so because imperial policies protected jobs and raised living standards.

Workers who were active in social struggles, blacklisted or jailed, voluntarily moved or were exiled to colonized countries.  Once settled overseas, they were given privileged access to better paying jobs as overseers, skilled employees or promoted to managerial positions.  Imperial based militant workers, once overseas, became colonial collaborators.  Many encouraged former workmates, relatives and friends to join them as successful settlers or contract workers.  The ‘domestication’ of workers and the reconciliation of democratic and imperialist sentiments was a cause and consequent of successful imperialism.

Empire Loyalism:  Not by Bread Alone

While material benefits accruing to workers from “successful imperialism” are one factor enhancing workers’ imperial consciousness, this was reinforced by symbolic gratification, the sense of being a member of the “leading country in the world” where “the sun never sets on the empire”, was equally important.  It is rare to find a country where the majority of workers express “solidarity” with the exploited miners, plantation workers or displaced peasants and indigenous small landholders in the ‘colonies’.  The stronger the hold of the colonial power, the greater the ‘colonial opportunities’, the longer the colonial ties, the deeper the economic penetration, and the stronger the sense of imperial superiority among the imperial states’ workers.

It is not surprising that the British workers, the unions and Labor Party raised few objections to the savagery of the imperial opium wars against China, the imperial-induced genocidal famines in Ireland in the 19th century and India in the 20th century.  Likewise, the French workers’ parties – Socialists especially – were in the forefront of the post WWII colonial wars against Indo-China and Algeria only turning against them in the face of imminent defeat and internal disintegration.

In the same vein, US successful colonial wars against Cuba and the Philippines, its invasions of Caribbean and Central American countries were supported by the American Federation of Labor and many ‘ordinary workers’, even as a minority of radicalized workers opposed these wars.  The ‘partial turn’ of labor against US colonial wars occurred during the Korea, Vietnam and Afghanistan wars, and was a result of prolonged losses and high economic costs with no victory in sight.  It should be added that US workers, in opposing the imperial wars, expressed no solidarity with the national liberation and workers movements of the colonized countries.

Imperialism and the “True Democrats”

To argue, as some on the Left have, that imperialism does not co-exist with “true” democracy, is to argue that the last 150 years have been devoid of free elections, party competition and citizens’ rights, however abbreviated, especially over the past decade.  The reality is that imperial intervention and expansion has drawn precisely from citizens’ sense of “obligation” to uphold the democratic institutions, which has enabled imperial leaders to elicit legitimacy and active citizen support or compliance in waging bloody, even genocidal, colonial wars.

If democracy has not usually been an obstacle to imperial expansion – indeed a facilitator under certain circumstances – under what conditions have workers and citizens movements turned against imperial wars?  What has been the political response of the ruling class when the majority of the electorate has turned against imperial wars?  In other words, when the democratic institutions no longer function as vehicles for imperial policies, what gives?

From Imperial Democracy to Imperial Police State

The past ten years provide important lessons on the relation between imperialism and democracy in the United States.

Beginning with the controversial political circumstances surrounding known terrorists’ gaining access to the US and subsequently hijacking the airplanes on 9/11/2001, the US government launched two major colonial wars and numerous overt ‘clandestine’ ground and air attacks in Somalia, Yemen, Pakistan, Libya and other countries.  The “global war on terror”, launched under the Bush regime, and implemented by non-elected senior militarist–Zionist officials in co-operation with NATO and Israel was supported by the democratically elected Congress.  For that matter the vast majority of the electorate, influenced by an immense propaganda campaign of fear, media manipulation and lies endorsed the wars on terror.

Given the unprecedented scope and breadth of the wars, (a global war on terror), the vast increase in military spending and the huge outlays for an all encompassing internal repressive (security) apparatus (Homeland Security), a new executive-centered police state was constructed which superseded the existing democratic institution and rights of citizens.

The trajectory of imperial politics moved from early military successes to problematic prolonged occupation.  This led to escalating resistance, growing state expenditures , a deepening fiscal crises , social decay and rising political opposition.

As in the past, contemporary imperial wars that are prolonged, costly and with no decisive victory in sight, have led to citizen disenchantment, followed by increased open rejection.  The wage and salaried majorities who voted for imperial policymakers and backed their enabling legislation, including laws (Patriot Act) which suspended basic civil and constitutional rights, have turned away from the imperial agenda.  Today the democratic majority prioritize their class, economic interests, especially in the face of a prolonged recession and unemployment and underemployment of close to 20%.  Beginning in 2008-2011 endless wars and prolonged crises have set in motion a conflict between democracy and imperialism.

In other words, the democratic majority has become an obstacle to the implementation and pursuit of imperial wars.  Imperial military activity in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, etc. did not lead to quick victories, the conquest of lucrative export markets and take-over of natural resource.  Jobs were not created and no benefit accrued to employees and workers in the imperial country.  High expenditures for arms undercut public investments in labor-intensive employment in critically overdue infrastructure projects.  The small number of dangerous jobs in occupied countries was unattractive and too risky for the unemployed.

In other words, unlike most previous imperial-colonial wars, none of the plundered wealth was used to secure workers loyalty to the empire.  The burden of empire progressively undercut wage and salaried workers’ living standards.  Over time, regressive taxation gradually eroded any sense of chauvinist grandeur or superiority.  Instead citizens of the empire developed a political inferiority complex.  Faced with determined Islamic opposition and China’s rising economic power, exaggerated bellicosity among a minority and critical introspection among the majority took hold.  Popular consciousness of “something basically wrong” in Washington and Wall Street took over.  The earlier war chants and mindless flag-waving, as the armies of Empire marched to Afghanistan and Iraq, were replaced by angry defeatism directed at misleaders.  Over 80% of the public now articulates a negative view of Congress, rejecting both war parties.  Similar negative views are held toward the White House, the Pentagon and Homeland Security.

After a decade of war and four years of economic crisis, mass protests erupted.  The “Occupy Wall Street” movement puts new options on the table, displacing the imperial agenda with a powerful denunciation of the militarist-financial elite.

The executive rulers, especially the judicial, intelligence and police apparatuses increasingly implemented arbitrary police state measures.  Tens of millions are subject to surveillance by Homeland Security.  The police state intercepts billions of faxes, e-mails, web sites and taps telephone calls.  The link between imperialism and democracy broke at the point where declining empire no longer could secure the electorate’s support or compliance.

More and more bizarre terrorist plots were fabricated by the intelligence agencies.  The Iranian bomb plot against the Saudi Arabian ambassador to Washington was the most primitive and crude effort to regain public support for imperial militarism in the Gulf region.  Apart from the politically influential, but infinitely small, pro-Israel Zionist power configuration, US public opinion is not distracted from its domestic agenda, its quest for jobs at home and opposition to Wall Street.

As the conflict between imperialism and democracy intensifies, the previous ‘consensus” fractured.  The White House and Congress opt for imperialism backed by a profoundly anti-democratic police state.  The majority of the electorate presses forward, utilizing their remaining democratic rights to change the political agenda from empire toward a social republic.

Conclusion

We have argued that empire and democracy have been complementary in times of ascendant imperialism.  We have shown that when wars of conquest have been short and inexpensive, and when the results have been lucrative for capital and job-creating for labor the democratic majorities joined in support of imperial elites.  Democratic institutions flourished when overseas empires provided markets, cheap resources and raised living standards.  Workers voted for imperial parties, held positive opinions of executive and legislative officials, and applauded the colonial war veterans (our troops).  Some even volunteered and joined the military.  With vast citizen support for empire, the state more or less ‘abided’ by the constitutional guarantees.  But the marriage of democracy and imperialism is not ‘structural’.  It is contingent on a series of variable conditions, which can cause a profound rupture between the two, as we are witnessing today.

Prolonged, losing, costly imperial wars that increasingly erode living standards for over a generation have undermined the consensus between imperial rulers and democratic citizens.  Early signs of this potential divergence were evident during the latter period of the Korean War, when public opinion turned against President Truman, architect of the Cold War and the US invasion of Korea.  More evidence emerged during the Vietnam War.  Faced with a prolonged, losing war, which imperiled the lives and opportunities of tens of millions of draft age Americans, millions in civilian life and the military opted to end the war and question imperial interventions.  The repressive state was still not organized sufficiently to terrorize and contain the democratic upsurge of the 1970’s.  The end of the Vietnam war represented the high point in democratic America’s quest to counter imperialism and rebuild the republic.

Subsequent small, quick, low cost and militarily successful imperial interventions in Panama, Grenada, Haiti and elsewhere did not provoke any conflict between imperialism and democracy.  Nor did imperial clandestine and surrogate wars in Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala, Angola, Mozambique, Afghanistan and the Balkans elicit any significant democratic opposition since they were low cost (in lives and funding) and were not accompanied by any sharp cuts in social expenditures and incomes.

The onset of the current Afghanistan, Iraq, and global offensive wars were seen by some imperial strategists in the same light: Quick, low cost victories with few domestic costs.  One highly placed pro-Israel official in the Pentagon even argued that the invasion and occupation of Iraq would be “self-financing” via an oil grab.

The 21st century wars turned out otherwise:  They followed the Korean-Vietnam pattern, not the Central American/Caribbean pattern.  Immensely costly, the 21st century wars have not led to quick victories and, worse still, occurred in the midst of an unprecedented economic crisis, without the manufacturing and market boom of the 1950’s/1960’s which had cushioned the retreat from Korea and Vietnam.

The divergence between imperialism and democracy has become acute.  Democratic dissent has increased and the police state has become more prominent and direct.  Imperialism increasingly relies on “fabricated domestic and external terror plots” to augment the powers of the repressive machinery and rule by fiat.  White House exhortations ring hollow.  The public puts less and less credence in their rulers’ claims of ‘justifiable’ arbitrary detentions, massive surveillance and extrajudicial assassinations of US citizens (and even their children).

We now face long-term, large-scale dangers, inherent in imperial democracies.  Not because of “internal contradictions” but because sooner or later imperial powers meet their match in the form of protracted struggles by anti-imperialist and national liberation movements.  Only when imperials wars take their toll on the wage and salaried majority, does the rupture between democracy and imperialism take place.  Then, and only then, are democratic forces set in motion to create a democratic republic, with social justice and without empire.

The present danger is that imperial structures are deeply embedded in all the key political institutions and are backed by an unprecedented vast and sprawling police state apparatus, called Homeland Security.  Perhaps it will take a major external political-military shock to ignite the kind of mass democratic uprising needed to transform an imperial police state into a democratic republic.  A growing sense of isolation and impotence affects the ruling regime in the face of overseas military defeats and unyielding, deepening domestic economic crisis.  The danger is that these fears and frustrations could induce the White House to attempt to regain popular support by attacking Iran under a manufactured pretext.

A US/Israeli assault on Iran will result in a world-wide conflagration.  Iran could and would retaliate.  Saudi and Gulf oil wells would go up in flames.  Vital shipping lanes would be blocked.  Gas prices would skyrocket while Asian, EU and US economies crash.  Iranian troops with their Iraqi allies would lay siege to the US garrisons in Baghdad.  Afghanistan, Pakistan and the rest of the Moslem world will take up arms.  US forces would surrender or retreat.  The war would shatter the US Treasury.  Deficits would spiral out of control.  Unemployment would double.  This likely sequence of events would trigger a massive democratic movement and a decisive struggle between an emerging republic struggling to give birth and a decaying empire threatening to drag the world into the inferno of its own demise.

Happy Memorial Day weekend everyone. By the way, should you happen to attend one of those militarized Memorial Day observances with parades, uniforms, flags flying and speeches about wonderful patriotic sacrificing of ones life, during the requested moment of silence, exclude my six basic training bunk mates buried somewhere in North Korea. They would be really pissed if anyone thanked them for dying while forced to participate in killing dirt poor people in their own country because of some phony radio and newspaper praise how we were protecting Koreans from themselves.

Four of those six buddies were draftees — in the army because didn’t want to go to jail. The fifth one had been persuaded to join and get off a jail sentence for petty thievery. The youngest one was glad to be drafted out of doing nothing at home in the jobless Ozark Mountains. He was wearing the first and only pair of shoes (boots) he ever owned when he died in a country in which no one spoke English.

In the sea of destruction, death and bleeding all around them, the occasional glimpse of wild eyed mothers in rags desperately trying to care for and save there little children, my friends learned that we had all been had by the rich bosses of the America they had naively believed in. Somehow, incredulously, these bastards must have been making money from this hell they had arranged by convincing enough stupid people that it was necessary.

If they (what was left of the them) could arise from the hole in the ground they must have been thrown in hurriedly, rise up through the green grass and bushes growing over their cadavers somewhere in the now again beautiful mountains up near the Chinese border, they would have loved to ghost in from the spirit world and bust up a Memorial Day service that praised the war that ended their young lives in an idiotic hail of flying metal.

If they could have lived, while raising families and getting to be 80 like their fellow draftee writing this, they would have seen other guys suckered into dying while openly murdering in Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia, in the Dominican Republic, Panama, in Iran, Lebanon, Grenada, Afghanistan, Iraq, Yugoslavia, Somalia, Yemen, Pakistan and as of a month ago, Libya. Killing people to protect them from their own people was the principle laid down.

During all these decades of U.S. military butchering millions of men, women and children, they would have read from time to time in investigative journalism or released CIA files, of their presidents secretly ordering the funding of destabilization, civil war creation, even assassination of popular leaders of the third world that had led to to the death of many more millions of men, women and children in Greece, Guatemala, Congo, Sudan, Cuba, Haiti, in Indonesia, Angola, Chile, Bolivia, Brazil, El Salvador, and Nicaragua. Many more died in these covertly warred upon countries than when and where U.S planes and American troops on the ground were doing their thing.

This incomprehensible total of uncountable billions of years of life cut from innocent human beings, just so millionaires could make money on top of the impossible to spend millions they already had. The United States of America, once the beacon of light for the oppressed all around the world, has now surpassed, in number of lives taken, the worse horrors of insane mass murder throughout the history of Mankind. And that is not counting the millions that die every year of starvation among the half of mankind that lives on less than two dollars a day, so business people can fill the world with weapons of mass destruction.

How has it been accomplished?

We see the attractive news telecasters with their calculated friendly charm. We don’t see the pentagon and CIA people in the board rooms of the media conglomerates which now have unprecedented power, owning press and television, book publishing, film production and databases, and flooding schools with war promoting, military idolizing magazines like Time, US Report, and Newsweek.

Sometimes their incredible mass deception is easy. “North Korea attacked a peaceful South Korea!” On that simple slogan, all U.S. atrocities become their fault. Simply never let the sheep know about the now well documented more than a hundred thousand massacred in the South by the U.S. sponsored government of hated Syngman Rhee during the years BEFORE the troops from the North came south – or that before the U.S. Army, Navy and Air Force attacked in force the short Korean civil war had been already over after five weeks – that the South Korean Army had defected or gone home – that South Koreans either welcomed their brothers from the North or at least were glad to be rescued from the American implanted murderous dictator Rhee. (Of course never let Americans be ashamed that the U.S. had divided Korea in two after W.W.II and that after WW I, President Wilson had Okayed what would be a 35 year long terrible Japanese occupation of Korea.)

Explaining why Obama had to order the destruction of Libya has been a little more hairy. The media had to lie that peaceful protesters were being targeted. There were no peaceful protesters. Wealthy Socialist Libya, with free health care and free education, had, according to UN assessment last year, a standard of living higher than nine European countries including Russia, better longevity and lower infant mortality. Most everyone owns a car, personal income level is high. Anderson Cooper has never mentioned this envious economy of Libya. There were no “peaceful demonstrations.”

Feb. 15 and 16: mobs of a hundred or so are setting fire to traffic police stations. During the week before, workers at Chinese and Korean building projects were being beaten and robbed and chased (they would soon all be brought home.) Feb. 17 saw a co-opting from overseas of the anniversary demonstration commemorating the 2006 wild demonstrations happening around the world which in Benghazi some protesters had died trying to burn down the Italian Consulate. In 2006, there were cries that Gaddafi was insufficiently enraged by the Danish cartoons.

American funded Libyan exile organizations in London had cleverly called for a “day of rage” against Gaddafi on that Danish cartoon anniversary. CNN filmed a crowd of people jumping up and down railing against Gaddafi. The next day, all the news agencies reported the same figure of about 26 dead, including policemen who had died. That was all CNN needed to proclaim, “Gaddafi is targeting peaceful protesters who only want democracy,” even though the only video footage shown was of a scattering of people running with the sound of shots from where or whom not visible.

CIA, with M16, Mossad and French intelligence, using a good amount of al Qaida manpower micromanages a successful armed attack, heavy weapons appearing almost immediately. In all the subsequent weeks of attacking cities and towns, these tough guys in pickup trucks will never be reported by CNN as having killed anyone. A civil war is whipped up taking advantage of the nine thousand year old tribal rivalry between Tripolitana and Cyrenaica.

The are horrific reports from German Reuters agency journalists in insurgent captured Benghazi, but CNN telecast reporters never report from the streets of Benghazi or any other rebel governed captured towns. CNN continues to report only from Tripoli where no effort is spared to portray the Libyan army as murderers and rapists. However BBC and Reuters reported rebels executed 50 black Libyan soldiers, during the very first days, some hanged in the street, one beheaded, all beaten.

Check out the background of the stooges the CIA has groomed to lead the Libyan insurgency and new American style democracy to come, thanks to U.S.NATO air strikes and increased funding and enhanced CIA leadership behind the scenes.

With all the decades of the conglomerate networks portraying Libya’s oil nationalizing Gaddafi a monster, CNN’s amazing announcement that “Gaddafi was going to kill everybody” immediately became such an disputable fact that Obama was able to cite it in explaining his order for air strikes.

That Gaddafi was for sure going to kill the Libyans he had lead so well for forty years was sold to the gullible US and European public as Obama’s and NATO leaders’ sole reason to bomb the Libyan government – bomb on the pretext of creating a no fly zone. A no fly zone call created by anti-Gaddafi’s Libya Western media. There had been videos of a couple planes shot down but none of planes attacking civilian population, only verbal accusations by telereporters Nic Robertson and Anderson Cooper, who for days pointed to the same bomb crater outside of town but admitting no one was hurt. Libya’s small air force did finally play a part in turning around the pickup trucks mounted with large anti-air craft and antitank guns headed for Tripoli.

Within less than a couple of weeks, awesome billions of dollars were stolen by Obama with all U.S controlled international finance institutions collaborating. Then U.S. NATO air strikes came to be ordered by a U.S. controlled UN Security Council in which China and Russia didn’t dare interfere. (Though China lost billions of dollars worth of construction projects and being the prime purchaser of Libya’s oil.)

U.S. and EU investors see opportunities as oil rich Libya will be stopped from selling oil to China and will be stopped from minting gold dinars to replace the the dollar and euro and stopped from pushing for African Unity to halt continued white world investor exploitation.

Gaddafi, Chairman of the African Union, another great leader of African Unity, will be removed as were Nkruma and Patrice Lumumba before him.
¹ (An imperative more basic than keeping US backed dictators in power and eliminating non-capitalist regimes is at work in Libya and the Middle East. An imperative that has created all wars. It is imperative for private investment financial capital to accumulate, and to accumulate at an ever increasing rate, pushing the wealthy owners of capital into ever new variations of same ancient conspiracy of the rich against the poor.)

“When Britain lost control of Egypt in 1956, Prime Minister Anthony Eden said he wanted the nationalist president Gamal Abdel Nasser “destroyed” murdered “I don’t give a damn if there’s anarchy and chaos in Egypt”. Those insolent Arabs, Winston Churchill had urged in 1951, should be driven “into the gutter from which they should never have emerged”.

The language of colonialism may have been modified; the spirit and the hypocrisy are unchanged. A new imperial phase is unfolding in direct response to the Arab uprising that began in January and has shocked Washington and Europe, causing an Eden-style panic. The loss of the Egyptian tyrant Mubarak was grievous, though not irretrievable; an American-backed counter-revolution is under way as the military regime in Cairo is seduced with new bribes and power shifting from the street to political groups that did not initiate the revolution. The western aim, as ever, is to stop authentic democracy and reclaim control.

The assault on Libya, a crime under the Nuremberg standard, is Britain’s 46th military “intervention” in the Middle East since 1945. Like its imperial partners, Britain’s goal is to control Africa’s oil.”²

General Wesley Clark says he was told years years ago in a briefing that the plan was to take out seven countries in five years. After Afghanistan and Iraq would come Syria, Libya, Lebanon, Sudan, Somalia and then Iran.

Ordinary Americans have been reduced from good common folk to commercial TV mesmerized dolts slap happily putting themselves on the side of the military of “an American government owned by a conspiracy of the strongest financiers of the wealthy’ (Franklin Delano Roosevelt writing confidentially in 1932). This amoral human machine has been intent on producing war after war for profit since the war of 1812, the wars against Native Americans, and the war of independence from England.

Enjoy the holiday weekend. What the hell, that’s why we mourn. We mourn all the enjoyments the war dead missed out on.

1. Documentation for the above section on Libya’s suffering was provided in a previously published comprehensive history from Feb. 15 through April 26 see copious footnotes in “Capitalism’s Warplanes: CIA & al Qaida Destroy Socialist Libya’s 53rd Highest Living Standard.”
2. From “Welcome to the Violent World of President Obama” by John Pilger.

Choi Daniel (崔檀悦), also known as Comet Black, a young Korean sociologist born in Japan, a Zainichi, protested by himself against a Japanese racist rally filled with ethnic hatred. The racist mob assaulted him, and he suffered severe injuries requiring three weeks to heal. The police, nonetheless, took no action against the perpetrators of violence, and arrested Comet Black, the victim of violence, for assaulting Shuhei Nishimura, a Japanese grass-roots racist activist.

Comet Black protested non-violently, standing alone before the racist march, holding a banner (See the following video). And the banner contained significant messages.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qvdXPdxFjt8

He did not resort to any physical violence. Rather, dozens of racists started attacking him at once, hitting him with fists, kicking him, using Hinomaru poles as weapons. A lot of police officers were present at the scene to see it. The Shibuya Police Station *1 arrested him, however; they took his finger prints; they did not offer him immediate medical care; moreover, they let the actual perpetrators of violence walk free without proper investigation.

Fortunately Comet Black was released after about fifty hours of detention. However, this incident revealed the corruption and depravity of the Japanese civil society and government. Today’s Japan tolerates hate speech that debases human beings, and also condones hateful collective violence.

Comet Black’s banner contained the following messages:

I am here for a dialogue.

We shall defend the rights to ethnic education!!

We shall hold onto the spirit of the HanShin Educational Struggle!

Unification of the homeland! 우리는하나 ANTIFA Comet Black☆

Comet Black was born in Japan, and grew up in the Republic of Korea until the age of 13; since then, he has lived in Japan. In the nineteenth century, Japan started invading Korea and unlawfully annexed the peninsula (then the Greater Korean Empire) in 1910. Through its colonization, Japan forced assimilationist education there, tying to deprive Koreans of their names and language and make them second-class Japanese. Even since its surrender in 1945, Japan has continued to violate the legitimate rights of Korean residents in Japan, Zainich, and other foreigners to ethnic education. Symbolic of the resistance to such oppression was the HanShin Educational Struggle, which protested against the order, issued by the General Head Quarters (GHQ) of the American Military Administration (AMA) in 1948, to close down Korean schools.

Instead of facing the historical responsibility for crimes against humanity, however, the Japanese government has persisted in its complicity with the division of the Korean Peninsula. Japan participated in the Korean War on the American side; even now, it poses a military threat to the Peninsula as an ally of the United States. In 2010, the Japanese government chose to take a further step: it excluded Korean schools from the “tuition-free policy for high schools,” which was supposed to be universal. The action was taken as a part of the unjust sanctions politics against the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. At the same time, it is also a clear sign of Japan’s continuing colonialism; it is an oppression of Korean residents in Japan, Zainichi, and it should not be tolerated.

Comet Black has been actively opposed to such discrimination. He has objected not only to discrimination against Koreans but also to discrimination against all foreigners living in Japan. He has been collecting signatures, participating in peaceful rallies; he has even organized an antiracist march himself; he is also networking people against anti-foreignism on the Internet. His supporters include his fellow Koreans, Japanese who oppose anti-foreignism, and even Japanese nationalists. He has been contributing to the antiracist movements in this country. His non-violent direct action on December 4 was no sudden caprice; it should be situated in the context of his steady commitment to the movements to counter anti-foreignism and discrimination against Korean schools.

Now, about the racists against whom Comet Black protested alone on December 4, 2010: they were celebrating the anniversary of their achievement on December 4, 2009, which was to attack the First Korean Elementary School of Kyoto, calling the students “sons and daughters of spies,” shouting “get out of Japan” (See the video). He expressed his opposition to such people in a non-violent way, and was heavily beaten up. The police arrested him; the Tokyo District Public Prosecutor’s Office *2 did not indict him after a lawyer (Kenta Hagio)’s interventions on his behalf, but made an ambiguous decision: under the Japanese legal system, they should have explicitly stated “no suspicion,” but chose not to do so.

We are disappointed at what has been going on; we are also filled with a sense of crisis. We should never let him be isolated. As a member of the Japanese civil society as well as a Korean and a world citizen, he should not be personally exposed to any social, economic, political costs because of what has been taking place since December 4 last year.

We are his friends; we are his comrades. And we never tolerate unjust discrimination and violence. It is our sincere hope that the international anti-racist communities agree. I express solidarity with Comet Black. We express solidarity with Comet Black. I am a Comet Black. In Japan, social sanctions on Comet Black still persist even after his release. That is just unjust. If the attacks on Comet Black are to continue, please add me/us to the list.

We never stop saying this:

We do not tolerate discrimination under any circumstances.

OUR struggle has a long way to go.

January 9, 2011

Signed by the Rescue Committee for Comet Black, December 4

For example, much has been said about the March 2010 (alleged) North Korean torpedo attack on the Cheonan (a South Korean naval vessel) near Baengnyeong Island, and the November 2010 North Korean artillery attack on Yeonpyeong Island (which houses a South Korean military base).

The conventional wisdom is that both attacks were motivated by North Korean elite efforts to smooth the leadership transition underway in their country. The take away: North Korea is an out-of-control country, definitely not to be trusted or engaged in negotiations.

But is that an adequate explanation for these events? Before examining the facts surrounding them, let’s introduce a bit of history. Take a look at the map below, which includes both Baengnyeong and Yeonpyeong Islands.

The armistice that ended the Korean War fighting established the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) which separates North Korea from South Korea. At that time, the U.S. government unilaterally established another dividing line, one intended to create a sea border between the two Koreas. That border is illustrated on the map by line A, the blue Northern Limit Line (NLL).

As you can see, instead of extending the DMZ westward into the sea, the U.S. line runs northward, limiting North Korea’s sea access. The line was drawn this way for two reasons: First, when the fighting stopped, South Korean forces were in control of the islands off the North Korean coast and the U.S. wanted to secure their position. Second, control over those islands enhanced the ability of U.S. forces to monitor and maintain military pressure on North Korea.

North Korea never accepted the NLL. It argued for an alternative border, illustrated by line B, the red West Sea Military Demarcation Line (MDL). Acknowledging the reality of Southern forces on the islands off its coast, North Korea sought recognition for a sea border that went around the islands but otherwise divided the sea by extending the DMZ line.

The critical point here is that the South Korean and U.S. promoted NLL is not recognized by international law; it has no legal standing. Don’t take my word for it. The following is from Bloomberg News:

Then-Secretary of State Henry Kissinger wrote in a 1975 classified cable that the unilaterally drawn Northern Limit Line was “clearly contrary to international law.” Two years before, the American ambassador said in another cable that many nations would view South Korea and its U.S. ally as “in the wrong” if clashes occurred in disputed areas along the boundary. . . .

The line snakes around the Ongjin peninsula, creating a buffer for five island groups that South Korea kept under the armistice that ended the 1950-1953 Korean War, in which U.S.-led forces fought under a UN mandate against North Korean and Chinese troops. The agreement doesn’t mention a sea border, which isn’t on UN maps drawn up at the time.

The 3-nautical mile (3.5-statute mile) territorial limit used to devise the line was standard then. Today almost all countries, including both Koreas, use a 12-mile rule, and the islands are within 12 miles of the North Korean mainland. The furthest is about 100 miles (160 kilometers) from the closest major South Korean port at Incheon.

“If it ever went to arbitration, the decision would likely move the line further south,” said Mark J. Valencia, a maritime lawyer and senior research fellow with the National Bureau of Asian Research, who has written extensively on the dispute. . . .

North Korea, after spending two decades rebuilding its forces, sent vessels across the border 43 times between October and November 1973, sparking confrontations, according to the South Korean Navy’s website. At a meeting with the UN Command, the North’s claim that it was operating within its own waters because the NLL was invalid was rejected.

Kissinger and other U.S. diplomats privately raised questions about the legality of the sea border and South Korea’s policing of it in cables that have been declassified and are available to the public.

“The ROK and the U.S. might appear in the eyes of a significant number of other countries to be in the wrong” if an incident occurred in disputed areas, U.S. Ambassador Francis Underhill wrote in a Dec. 18, 1973, cable to Washington, using the acronym for Republic of Korea.

South Korea “is wrong in assuming we will join in attempt to impose NLL” on North Korea, said a Dec. 22, 1973, “Joint State-Defense Message” to the U.S. Embassy in Seoul. . . .

The line “was unilaterally established and not accepted by NK,” Kissinger wrote in a confidential February 1975 cable. “Insofar as it purports unilaterally to divide international waters, it is clearly contrary to international law.”

I doubt that discussions of the two events noted above mentioned this history.

Tensions in the region are not just the result of past political decisions. Critical decisions continue to be made. For example, in October 2007, an inter-Korean summit meeting between Roh Moo-Hyun (the previous South Korean president) and Kim Jong Il (the North Korean leader) produced a commitment by both sides to negotiate a joint fishing area and create a “peace and cooperation zone” in the West Sea. This agreement could have greatly reduced tensions between the two countries and helped to promote a peaceful reunification process.

However, a few months after the summit, the newly elected and current South Korean president, Lee Myung-bak, rejected the agreements reached at that summit and the previous one held in 2000. Lee openly derided past South Korean efforts to improve relations with, and called for aggressive actions against, the North. The U.S. government supported Lee’s position.

With this as background, let’s now consider the first event, North Korea’s alleged sinking of the Cheonan. The Lee administration claims that a North Korean submarine was responsible for the sinking of the Cheonan and the deaths of 49 sailors. The Cheonan was an anti-submarine ship, participating in war games at the time of its sinking in the disputed waters surrounding Baengnyeong Island. Significantly, after weeks of official investigation into the cause of the sinking, Lee publicly blamed North Korea only one day before local elections were scheduled, elections that the ruling party was predicted to lose. In fact, Lee’s party did take a beating at the polls.

But what about the evidence for North Korean responsibility? North Korea has denied any involvement in the sinking. In fact, there is good reason to believe that the Cheonan sank because it hit a reef; that is what its captain reported when he radioed the South Korean coast guard seeking help.

As I noted in a previous posting, perhaps the most compelling evidence casting doubt on South Korean government claims that the Cheonan was torpedoed by a North Korean submarine is the fact that all the Cheonan victims died of drowning, nearly all of the 58 surviving crew members escaped serious injury, and the ship’s internal instruments remained intact. According to several scientists, if the Cheonan had been hit by a torpedo, the entire crew would have been sent flying, leading to fractured bones and the destruction of instruments.

What about the most recent incident involving the North Korean artillery attack on Yeonpyeong Island? The South Korean position is that its military was merely engaged in ”routine” war games (involving over 70,000 troops), which also happened to include the firing of live ammunition into the sea from a military base on the island. It had done nothing to provoke a North Korean artillery attack on the base.

In reality, the South had been strengthening its artillery on the island for some time, engaging in ever more aggressive (non-live ammunition) artillery drills with the apparent aim of boosting its capacity to inhibit the movement of the North Korean navy even in its own waters. These drills were a direct threat to North Korean security given how close the island is to its coast.

Moreover, although the South claims that its war games and artillery fire were routine, it may be the first time that the South has staged major war games and simultaneously engaged in firing live ammunition into territory claimed by the North. The North fired on the South Korean artillery batteries located on Yeonpyeong Island only after its repeated demands that the South stop its live ammunition firing were rejected by the South.

Many unanswered questions remain about the Cheonan sinking and the Yeonpyeong attack. However, what does appear clear is that there are many complexities surrounding these events that are never made public here in the U.S., and that these omissions end up reinforcing a view of North Korean motivations and actions that is counterproductive to what should be our goal: achieving peace on the Korean peninsula.

What might help? How about encouraging the U.S. government to accept North Korean offers to engage in good faith negotiations aimed at signing a peace treaty to officially end the Korean War as a first step towards normalized relations. The fact that our government is reluctant to publicly acknowledge the contested nature of the NLL or pursue an end to the Korean War raises important questions about the motivations driving our own foreign policy.

Some years ago I was part of a negotiation where we were forced to do exactly that. It was a contract bargain between the Kimberly-Clark Corporation (headquartered in Dallas, Texas) and Local 672 of the AWPPW, the union representing K-C’s Fullerton, California facility.

This bargain began like any other bargain, with each side reading its agenda and making its opening statement.  Our agenda was long and ambitious, theirs was short and modest.  But after the agendas were read, the meeting took a sobering turn.  Management closed their notebooks, put down their pens, looked solemnly across the table, and declared that they would “not be signing any contract that raised the costs of the facility.”

As defiant (and, arguably, as rude) as that statement was, it wasn’t particularly original; indeed, from what I’d been told, K-C management had been making speeches about the importance of cost-cutting since the facility opened, way back in 1956.  But because it was uttered with such melodramatic weightiness, it got our attention.  And as negotiations dragged on, admittedly, we became increasingly spooked.

Two things bothered us:  (1) This was our first contract since a 57-day strike three years earlier, and both sides knew that union members rarely strike twice in a row.  This gave the company undeniable leverage.  (2) They never deviated from their position.  They never modified it, never softened it, never so much as hinted that it could be negotiated away, which made us believe it wasn’t simply a bargaining chip.

Then, in the fourth week they dropped the hammer.  They announced that we would be receiving lump-sum payments in lieu of traditional roll-ups.  A lump-sum is exactly what it implies — a wad of cash, a one-time payment, something you can easily piss away on a weekend shopping spree.  Roll-ups are permanent; lump-sums are transient.

Example:  Take a standard 3-year contract with raises of 3-percent per year.  If you start at $20/hour, that first raise brings you to $20.60.  The second year you get another raise, but it’s computed at 3-percent of the $20.60. That brings you to $21.21.  The third year you add 3-percent of $21.21, which brings your total to $21.85. And so on.  It rolls up.

Without roll-ups, your wage at the end of three years is still $20/hour.  You gain nothing.  Roll-ups are also important because vacation pay, holiday pay, medical leave, personal holidays and overtime are computed on your hourly wage.  In a facility like ours, where overtime was king, you lose out considerably — not only on your weekly paycheck, but on your pension, which is based on gross earnings.

So when the company announced lump-sums, we emphatically rejected it, using all the above examples to make our case.  But as hard as we tried (and we came close to making fools of ourselves), we couldn’t get them to budge.  It was clear that lump-sums were going to be included in their “last, best, and final offer,” and there wasn’t a thing we could do about it.

Worse, we all remembered what happened at that AWPPW local who screwed up years earlier.  In the early1980s, a union bargaining board in Washington had been so opposed to lump-sum payments, they didn’t even make an effort to get the company to sweeten its offer. The negotiating team didn’t want to confuse the company by appearing to take that first bite of the apple.

Instead, they presented the lowball offer to the membership and urged them to send the company an unambiguous message by rejecting lump-sums on the spot.  Unfortunately, fearing that a rejection could lead to a strike, the membership, by a narrow margin, voted to accept it.  This meant that a substantial amount of money — very likely several hundred dollars per person, per year — had been left on the table.

Because we couldn’t make that same mistake, we were forced to negotiate on two contradictory fronts.  On the one hand, we pounded the table and told the company we had absolutely zero interest in accepting anything even resembling a lump-sum payment; and on the other hand, we kept driving the numbers upwards, insisting that their lump-sum figures were nowhere near high enough.

It’s reminiscent of that old joke about the two ladies complaining about the lousy meal they were just served in a restaurant.  “The food was terrible, just terrible,” the first lady says.  “I agree,” the second lady says, “and such small portions.”

Although we finally got the company to increase each year’s lump-sum by about 30-percent, we knew we’d been had.  We knew it, they knew it, and our savvy membership  knew it.  But because it was the best deal we were going to get, we ratified the contract, saddled up, and moved on.

Which is what the UAW did with the Korean trade pact.

Instead of continuing to reject every inferior treaty that comes down the pike — and watching those treaties become law — the UAW chose a different tactic.  They chose to work within the framework, to chip away at it from the inside, and as a result were able to get some meaningful concessions.

Make no mistake:  Unions still need to oppose these one-sided, often rigged trade agreements; but they also need to be nimble enough and willing enough to carve out language that benefits them.  It’s a schizo way to do business, but until someone figures out a better approach, it may be their only choice.

Despite the UAW’s woes (among other things, they’ve lost more than one million members) labor critics pounced on them.  Apparently, no one seems to care whether or not the UAW stops hemorrhaging.  How bad is it for them?  Consider:  In 2009, GM sold more cars in China than it sold in the United States; and almost all the cars it sold in China were made in China….not Detroit.

Yet the critics piled on.  One observer accused the UAW of being “stupid” for jumping the gun on this deal because there is a “burgeoning, grassroots, fair-trade movement in Congress,” which the UAW is either too dumb to recognize or has chosen to ignore.

Really?  Congress is poised to abandon these trade pacts — the ones that have ravaged American industry and led to the exploitation of child labor all over the world?  That’s terrific news.  Presumably, those 63 seats the Republican Party gained in the last election will be filled by pro-labor Republicans willing to lead the charge.

The quotation, presumably from a US official, came across as brash, irrational, and contradictory.

Is sitting in judgment of other countries and making public pronouncements about such “the way countries are supposed to act”? Does this follow diplomatic protocol?

Was South Korea’s live-ammunition military drill on the disputed Yeonpyeong Island (less than 11 km from North Korean shores) an example of “the way countries are supposed to act”?

Given how a similar live ammuntion military exercise by South Korea had triggered shelling from North Korea a month earlier, was this a “reckless military provocation” (as North Korea described it), or was it “the way countries are supposed to act”?

Was South Korea’s firing of 1500 artilllery shells into the sea off Yeonpyeong Is. behaving “the way countries are supposed to act”?

Is the holding of military maneuvres by the US and South Korea in the Yellow Sea that upset China and North Korea “the way countries are supposed to act”?

If China and North Korea had staged military drills (with live ammunition even) a few km off the coast of California, would this be behaving “the way countries are supposed to act”?

Is not living in harmony and peace and refraining from displays of military might by all sides the preferred way for countries to act?

Is the US the standard by which countries should base their actions?

Was kidnapping the elected president of a sovereign country (Haiti), sending him into exile, and preventing his return (in defiance of the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights) “the way countries are supposed to act”?

Was conjuring a war pretext and invading a sovereign country (Iraq), laying waste to the land, sending millions of refugees spilling into neighboring countries, and killing over a million citizens “the way countries are supposed to act”?

Is the US’s diplomatically, financially, and militarily supporting the ongoing dispossession and liquidation of an Indigenous people (the Palestinians) by European emigrants (Ashkenazi Jews) “the way countries are supposed to act”?

Is the neglect (no apology, no reparations, and diplomatic coverups) of great wrongs against Africans captured and forced into slavery “the way countries are supposed to act”?

Is the perpetuation of the dispossession — wrought by genocide — of the Original Peoples of Turtle Island and the ongoing consolidation of the lands garnered through dispossession “the way countries are supposed to act”?

Was splitting apart the Korean nation following World War II “the way countries are supposed to act”?

Are these examples of “the way countries are supposed to act” that other countries in the world should follow?

1. “N. Korean guns silent as South’s drills go ahead,” Shanghai Daily, 21 December 2010: 1.

Last March, the latest confrontation began when North Korea was falsely blamed for sinking a South Korean ship. At the time, evidence suggested a false flag, manufactured to blame Pyongyang.

Then on November 23, US media reports said North Korea incited the gravest incident since the July 1953 armistice. Analysts called it a deliberate provocation, even though South Korean forces fired first, goaded by the Obama administration for what Pyongyang, with good reason, called a rehearsal for invasion.

Decades of sanctions crippled its economy. Ten years under Bush/Obama were intimidating. South Korea’s right-wing Lee Myung-bak Grand National Party replaced Uri Party’s Roh Moo-hyun’s Sunshine Policy, initiating hostile, provocative relations.

Lee rescinded his cooperative economic agreements, cancelled emergency communications between both sides to avoid possible conflict, stopped family reunions, ended the North’s Mt. Kumgang tourist operations, and closed the North-South railroad benefitting both sides, keeping only a Kaesong, North Korea industrial park operating.

He also violated a 2004 agreement to halt propaganda campaigns, sending 400,000 disinformation leaflets north on balloons. Annual South Korean/US military exercises heighten tensions, especially with extra Washington/Seoul saber rattling. Pyongyang warned about current ones, calling them “reckless military provocations (in) our maritime territory.” Promising another response, Reuters, on December 20, said:

“North Korea stepped back from confrontation over ‘reckless’ military drills by the South on Monday and reportedly issued a new offer on nuclear inspections, drawing a cautious response from Seoul and Washington,” preferring confrontation to diplomacy.

On December 19, an emergency Security Council meeting failed to reach consensus urging peninsula calm with language condemning only Pyongyang. China and Russia want both sides blamed. They also urge reducing tensions and above all avoiding conflict.

Reuters said US, British and French delegations rejected Russia’s proposal for a UN envoy mission to Seoul and Pyongyang, seeking “maximum restraint.”

On December 21, Al Jazeera said Security Council negotiations “ended in an impasse, with Russia and China resisting an explicit condemnation of North Korea for last month’s attack.” As a result, a planned December 20 meeting was cancelled.

Korea Policy Institute analyst,  Christine Ahn, believes “the threat of war with North Korea is very real.” If so, Washington and Seoul will provoke it, not Pyongyang, with nothing strategic to gain. Moreover, it would “draw in both the United States, and potentially China, into a larger conflict that nobody wants….I think that (both US and South Korean) leaders are playing a very dangerous game that could really escalate into a full-blown war.”

No one in the region wants one. With America embroiled in two unwinnable conflicts, it’s hard imagining Washington does either. No matter. Given Obama’s reckless agenda, no possibility can be ruled out.

Russia’s UN ambassador, Vitaly Churkin, said:

Now we have a situation of very serious political tension and no game plan on the diplomatic side.” He also warned that “within hours there may be a serious aggravation of tensions, a serious conflict for that matter.

A statement from Wang Min, China’s ambassador and permanent UN representative said:

We strongly appeal (for) relevant parties to exercise maximum restraint, act in a responsible manner and avoid increas(ing) tensions….Calm rather than tension, dialogue rather than confrontation, peace rather than warfare, this is the strong aspiration and voice of the peoples from both sides of the Peninsula and the international community.

He also called the situation “perilous.” Washington and Seoul were unmoved, blaming Pyongyang unfairly. They also participated jointly in South Korea’s provocative December 20 military exercises.

Held on Yeonpyeong Island, they included 90 minutes of live artillery fire with US trainers and observers present. Local residents stayed in bunkers in case Pyongyang retaliated. South Korean officials went on emergency standby. Washington and Seoul’s military were on high alert. Provocative overhead flights threated attack. Warships patrolled the Yellow Sea near the disputed Northern Limited Line, unilaterally imposed by Washington in 1953, one of many thorns affecting relations.

Earlier, South Korea’s Defense Minister, Kim Kwan-jin, said Pyongyang’s artillery batteries would be bombed if its territory again was shelled. Instead of cooling tensions, Seoul and Washington exploit them to the fullest, including inflammatory media reports condemning the North as aggressor, the South a victim, and America as neutral arbiter.

Nonetheless, Pyongyang showed restraint, cooling tensions that heightened fears along one of the world’s most heavily fortified frontiers. Its official KCNA news agency said:

“The revolutionary armed forces of the DPRK did not feel any need to retaliate against every despicable military provocation,” calling the drills “childish play with fire.”

In a show of good faith, Pyongyang also agreed to let UN inspectors return to its Yongbyon nuclear complex, offered to sell its 12,000 fuel rods to another country, and proposed creating a joint military commission and hotline with Seoul and Washington to avoid future conflict. Hardly proposals from a belligerent, yet they were quickly dismissed, US State Department spokesman PJ Crowley saying:

We’ve seen a string of broken promises by North Korea going back many, many years. We’ll be guided by what North Korea does, not (what) it might do under certain circumstances.

Unmentioned was Washington half century of broken promises, intimidation, threats, isolation, and economic aggression against Pyongyang to force its adoption of a market oriented economy dominated by US capital. Resistance draws ire and provocations that could escalate to war, no matter the risks of pitting a potential Pyongyang/Beijing/Moscow alliance against Washington and Seoul.

Ignored also was America’s refusal to resume six-party talks to ease tensions and avoid what no one, except perhaps Washington, may want. It includes greater confrontation with China, its main economic rival that, if unchecked, will surpass the US in the current century as the world’s dominant economy. A potential showdown looms to prevent it – the unthinkable, another Asian land war against a super-power far stronger than Vietnam and a land mass the size of America.

America’s Global Dominance Agenda

Imperial America also threatens Russia, its main military rival with a near-matching nuclear capability and strength to strike globally if attacked. Pentagon strategists regard Afghanistan as strategically crucial to project military power against Russia, China, Iran, and other oil-rich Eurasian states, including Middle East ones.

Russia and China know the stakes – that Washington wants unchallengeable military power to assure control of global resources, as well as “full spectrum dominance” over all land, surface and sub-surface sea, air, space, electromagnetic spectrum and information systems with enough overwhelming strength to fight and win global wars against any adversary, including preemptively with nuclear weapons.

As a result, nuclear war by miscalculation or design remains as conceivable under Obama as Bush – a reckless possibility for “mutually assured destruction.” During the Cold War, it was prevented. The two Koreas  are just pawns in this reckless game for dominance that potentially could consume everyone, including an American aggressor.

After nearly 60 years of confrontation and hostility, any nation would feel paranoid. More recently, Pyongyang recalls that, in 2003, George Bush, told Chinese President Jiang Zemin that if North Korea’s nuclear issue wasn’t resolved peacefully (meaning entirely abandoned for commercial use) he’d “have to consider a military strike.”

The possibility remains, especially with Obama as belligerent as Bush. He also rejects diplomatic efforts to cool tensions and resolve differences peacefully. Instead, US policy remains aggressive and confrontational, risking nuclear war, an unthinkable alternative anywhere, but design or miscalculation may cause it.

Targeting North Korea

A charter “axis of evil” member, imperial America targets North Korea, perhaps more aggressively than earlier with help from the International Criminal Court (ICC). On December 7, Washington Post writer John Pomfret headlined, “Court looks into alleged war crimes by N. Korea,” saying:

The ICC “launched a preliminary investigation into allegations that North Korean forces committed war crimes when they shelled civilian areas in South Korea and allegedly sank a South Korean warship, the court announced Monday.”

Chief prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo said complaints prompted its action, notably from South Korea. In fact, the alleged ship sinking was a red herring, and Seoul’s belligerence precipitated Pyongyang’s response, shelling military, not civilian, targets on Yeonpyeong Island, eight miles from its coast.

Instead of holding responsible parties culpable for crimes against humanity, war crimes, illegal aggression and genocide, the ICC serves US, Western, and Israeli interests, guilty of enough criminality to demand prosecution for decades. Instead, victims, not aggressors, are charged and convicted. Pyongyang’s leaders may be next if they travel abroad and become vulnerable. The rule of might over right prevails, justice always denied.

A Final Comment

For decades, Israel has been a regional bully and global menace, more proof from Amos Harel’s December 20 Haaretz article headlined, “IDF to deploy super-armored tanks along Gaza border,” saying:

Equipped with “active armor (Windbreaker) protection, they’ll deploy in January “following assessments that the threat of anti-tank missile attacks in the area is on the rise. (Israeli) security sources (claim Gazan) militants upgraded their anti-tank missile capabilities. (Windbreaker) neutraliz(es) advanced anti-tank missiles at different ranges.”

In fact, Palestinians don’t initiate attacks. In self-defense, they occasionally respond legally to Israeli aggression. On December 18, Reuters reported a recent incident involving Israeli air strikes killing five Gazans. Israel called them “terror operatives who were preparing to launch rockets toward Israeli territory.” They’re always freedom fighters or civilians.

On December 21, Al Jazeera headlined, “Israeli fighter jets attack Gaza,” saying:

Two Palestinians were wounded according to witnesses. “The overnight raids came after the Israeli army accused Palestinian fighters of firing nine mortar shells into southern Israel, which fell on open ground and caused no deaths.”

Seven raids were conducted against Khan Younis and northern Gaza locations, “targeting the Jabailya refugee camp and the towns of Beit Lahya, Beit Hanoun and Zeitoun.” No casualties were reported, but often civilians are killed or wounded. A tunnel near Rafah was also attacked, again with no casualties. Israel, in fact, reported that throughout 2010, only around 200 rockets or shells were fired, causing little damage and few casualties.

In contrast, Israel launches regular air and ground attacks, destroying non-military targets, targeting civilians, and causing frequent deaths and injuries, including Gazan farmers, workers and fishermen. In the West Bank and East Jerusalem, homes and communities are assaulted, property destroyed, and civilians attacked, including women and children.

Virtually daily, Israel violates international law with impunity. Western leaders and ICC justices stay silent despite decades of criminal acts. Silence makes them complicit.

Instead, might rules over right. Victims, not aggressors, are blamed, even 1.5 million Gazans suffocating lawlessly under siege since June 2007. They’re denied enough food, medicine, electricity, fuel and other essentials to survive.

In mid-2010, Israel cut wheat and animal feed let in by 25%, making conditions more dire. As a result, Gazans’ fundamental human rights, dignity, and right to life are compromised. No one cares enough to act, nor in Asia where nuclear war might erupt unless global pressure prevents it.

The IAM (International Association of Machinists) and CWA (Communications Workers of America) have already depicted the treaty as being a step backwards for the American worker, and the AFL-CIO is expected to issue a formal denunciation on Thursday.

Admittedly, the UAW’s approval was a bit of a jolt.  Indeed, for the last 20 years — even before passage of NAFTA in 1993 — organized labor has been vehemently opposed to what’s euphemistically known as “free trade.”  And while that opposition has been unflatteringly portrayed by the media as selfishness or near-sightedness, it was organized labor who instantly saw these bogus treaties for what they were.

First of all, free trade isn’t free.  Although the word “free” happily connotes an enterprise that’s unfettered and unrestrained, these treaties — cruelly and ironically — are the opposite of that.  They are rigidly delineated, highly regulated and carefully monitored by their signatory governments and, more importantly, by the corporations they represent.

Second, free trade isn’t fair trade.  Those who profit from these agreements are the governments who approved them, the corporations who brokered them, and the Wall Street banks who financed them — not the workers who produce the goods.  All one has to do is look at the current labor unrest in places like Bangladesh, Colombia, Guatemala, Honduras, and India to see that these arrangements are creating victims, not “partners.”

So why did the UAW buy into the Korean treaty?  To answer that, one needs to identify what their choices were.  Clearly, there were only two available:

1. The UAW could do what it and every other large industrial union have been doing ever since NAFTA became law.  They could continue to spend millions of dollars lobbying against “free trade,” donate money to sympathetic politicians, deplore these treaties publicly, mobilize progressive groups to join in their protests, hold rallies, attend conventions, sponsor boycotts, urge union members to write their congressmen, etc.

Unfortunately, these tactics haven’t been effective.  Drawing a line in the sand and refusing to cross it didn’t stop NAFTA and CAFTA, didn’t get single-payer health care, didn’t get the EFCA, didn’t get striker replacements made illegal, didn’t get the Fed-Ex exemption repealed.  And as disappointing as the Democrats have been, organized labor’s avowed enemy, the Republican Party, just gained 63 seats in Congress.  No, playing Mr. Tough Guy hasn’t worked.

2.  Or the UAW could try and cut the best deal possible.  Instead of banging its head against the wall, futilely hoping to get Congress to do what it — and the White House — are clearly unwilling to do, the union could push for specific provisions in the treaty that would result in more American cars being sold in Korea and, accordingly, more jobs for American workers.

Which is what this treaty does.  Its provisions call for the 2.5 percent tariff on Korean cars and the 25-percent tariff on SUVs to remain in place for six more years.  Without the treaty these tariffs were set to expire this year.  Also, Korea will cut the tariff on American cars from 8-percent to 4-percent, and will allow 75,000 American cars to enter Korea each year, even if they don’t meet Korea’s strict (aka “protectionist”) safety standards.

Give the union some credit.  No one knows more about what will help the UAW than the UAW itself.  No one has to tell this union about the implications of globalization or new technologies or pension liabilities or an aging workforce or the rising costs of health care.  The UAW’s president, Bob King, has become an expert on these subjects.

While it’s clear why the UAW endorsed the pact, why did the UCFW embrace it?  Substitute “processed meat” for “cars,” and you have your answer.  This treaty significantly opens up the Korean grocery market by eliminating its prohibitive 40-percent tariff on American beef, a move which, some economists have estimated, could result in as many as 20,000 additional U.S. meat-processing jobs.

Although the treaty still needs to be ratified by both the House and Senate, as well as the South Korean National Assembly, Korean farmers and Korean labor union members have been publicly protesting, fearing that the pact places them at a disadvantage.

If the debate were all about ideology, then, yes, the UAW would deserve criticism for “caving.”  But if it’s not about theory, it’s about economic survival.  And despite America’s hundred-year love affair with the automobile, and despite the UAW’s sterling history and undeniable influence on virtually every industrial union that followed it, nobody’s been hit harder than the UAW.

They’re not only squeezed by Japanese, Korean, and German exports (all of whom benefit from government incentives), they’re under attack by the American South, which tantalizes these foreign automakers with offers of non-union labor, tax breaks, and few environmental regulations.  At last count, there were more than 40 assembly and parts factories in Dixie.

And not only are foreign automakers and the American South drawing blood, but the U.S. media have also cut into them.  Instead of noting how many staggering wage and benefit concessions the UAW has already made (starting pay is now $14/hour, or about $28,000 a year), the media continue to portray the union as bloated and obsolete.  They do it because organized labor presents an easy target and because they haven’t got the courage to go after corporate America.

Incredibly, the UAW’s membership now stands at about 390,000.  Which means, going back to its glory days in the early 1970s, that it’s lost more than one million members.   That’s not just a million men and women who no longer have jobs, that’s a million middle-class paychecks that no longer contribute to the economy.

So if you think you’re justified in calling the UAW a “bunch of selfish pigs” for trying to hang on to its membership, that’s your privilege.  But unless you can offer a meaningful alternative, no one’s going to take you seriously… least of all working people.

Why is Pyonyang so concerned? One example can be found in a recent article in the Washington Post. According to the article written by John Pomfret and dated December 6, 2010, the International Criminal Court (ICC) is considering war crime charges against Pyongyang for its attack. Meanwhile, George Bush and his retired administration, who reinvigorated the enmity between Washington and Pyongyang, walks free after clearly admitting in his memoirs (among other things) to a criminal conspiracy to torture prisoners–a war crime.

As for the deadly North Korean shelling, even the New York Times acknowledged that the North Korean shelling may have been provoked by South Korean forces when it wrote : “North Korea blamed the South for provoking the attack by firing at it from the island, Yeonpyeong, which lies in waters disputed by the two sides. The South, which returned fire, insisted it had been firing only test shots and that none were in territory it recognized as the North’s.” In other words, South Korean forces fired into disputed territory and the North fired back. This does not excuse the actions of the North Korean forces, but it does provide a more understandable rationale than that favored by those who dismiss the regime in Pyongyang as suicidal and just plain crazy.

As I write this, there are those in the United States military and political establishment who are urging that the US not attend the six-party talks scheduled for later this month. To do so, they state, would be rewarding Pyongyang’s aggressive behavior. The hypocrisy of this position is all too clear. If one applies this logic to Washington, then it becomes quite clear that in almost all negotiations the US has with any country it is being rewarded for its aggressive behavior. Indeed, there is no negotiation the US enters into that is not underscored by the bloodshed and mayhem Washington’s military has let loose on innumerable nations and peoples. If one keeps this in mind, it becomes clear that the so called irrational behavior of Pyongyang is not irrational according to the rules of international relations. In fact, it is precisely how military power enforces political claims and demands.

The question remains, as it has for sixty years, why is Washington so opposed to signing a peace treaty and/or the reunification of Korea? It seems like the primary opponents to reunification even today are Washington and elements of the South Korean political and military establishment. The latter, keeping the experience of Bonn after the reunification of Germany, might fear the costs involved even though Korea’s northern half is mineral rich. Washington, however, mostly fears that any reunification agreement would require US forces to leave the country, which would meant the loss of a major military outpost flanking China. For those who have not been paying attention, there is a growing sense in the halls of US power that China is Washington’s once and future enemy. In the minds of those espousing this concept, this enmity goes beyond a competition for the world’s markets. Indeed, according to the proponents of this concept, Beijing is quickly becoming Washington’s military enemy as well. Other than the need for the Pentagon and its associated industries needing an enemy whose threat is more convincing than the non-threat presented by the Afghan people, the framing of Beijing as an enemy of the US seems foolish and counterproductive. Then again, the neverending war in Afghanistan is also that, yet it continues in large part because it makes money for the war industry.

Speaking of industry, how does the new “free trade” agreement fit in with the current situation vis-a-vis the Koreas, China and the United States? It would seem not very well. After all, if almost all tariffs are now going to be dropped on US goods going into South Korea, how will a war help? Any real conflict would severely limit the influx of US goods certain to flood South Korean markets once the agreement takes effect. Then again, if the government in Pyongyang can be done away with, a whole other frontier opens up for US and Korean monopoly capitalism. Still, it seems that the preferred method of opening that frontier is to do so over time and without war. This particular moment then, is a moment where the political desires of the Empire’s militaristic right wing appears to collide with those in the power elites who prefer profit over imperial prowess. A somewhat similar instance of this was the US relationship with Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. The energy and arms industries had no problem dealing with Hussein’s government despite its cruelty and repression. However, there came a time when those with the political desire to get rid of the Hussein regime positioned themselves so they could act and the 2003 invasion was unleashed. When it comes to Korea, the question is not whether Washington wants the regime in Pyongyang to collapse, but how that collapse will occur: through continued isolation and sanctions or a war?

Seoul said there’s “no other plausible explanation…. The evidence points overwhelmingly to the conclusion that (a) torpedo was fired by a North Korean submarine,” even though none was detected in the area.

At the time, evidence suggested a false flag, manufactured to blame the North. The incident occurred near Baengnyeong Island opposite North Korea. US Navy Seals and four US ships were conducting joint exercises in the area. The torpedo used was German, not North Korean as claimed. Germany sells none to Pyongyang. Yet it was blamed for what it didn’t do, what apparently was Pentagon-manufactured mischief.

What now? According to US media reports, North Korea incited the gravest incident since the Korean War armistice. For example, on November 23, New York Times writer Mark McDonald headlined, “Crisis Status in South Korea After North Shells Island,” saying:

“The South Korean military went to “crisis status” on Tuesday (11/23) and threatened military strikes after the North fired dozens of shells at a South Korean island, killing two of the South’s soldiers and setting off an exchange of fire in one the most serious clashes between the two sides in decades.”

America, Britain and Japan condemned the attack, the White House calling on North Korea to “halt its belligerent action and to fully abide by the terms of the Armistice Agreement.”

“Analysts,” said McDonald, “were quick to see the shelling as a deliberate North Korean provocation,” even though South Korean forces fired first, AP reporting:

“The skirmish began when Pyongyang warned the South to halt military drills in the area, according to South Korean officials. When Seoul refused and began firing artillery into disputed waters, albeit away from the North Korean shore, the North retaliated by bombarding the small island of Yeonpyeong, which houses South Korean military installations.”

A Pyongyang supreme military command statement read:

“The South Korean enemy, despite our repeated warnings, committed reckless military provocations of firing artillery shells into our maritime territory.”

A November 24 McDonald article headlined, “Nerves Are Rattled in Seoul by Attack on Island,” discussing the incident solely from a South Korean/Washington perspective, much like other Western media reports.

The BBC, for example, quoted a Seoul analyst, calling Pyongyang’s action “an act of war.” Other accounts were also inflammatory, Britain’s Foreign Secretary, William Hague, condemning the “unprovoked act.” Other comments were similar, citing various reasons for the incident (like internal North Korean tensions during a transition of leadership period), except for what, in fact, may be true, though at this point not everything is known.

However, the exchange occurred while South Korean forces were conducting “Hoguk” military exercises scheduled to end on November 30, including simulated landings. Pyongyang called them a rehearsal for invasion.

Now the aftermath, a David Sanger, Mark McDonald Times article headlined, “South Koreans and US to Stage a Joint Exercise,” saying:

Obama and South Korean President Lee Myung-bak “agreed Tuesday night to hold joint military exercises as a first response to North Korea’s deadly shelling (as) both countries struggled for the second time this year to keep a North Korean provocation from escalating into war.”

America’s USS George Washington, a nuclear armed aircraft carrier, and accompanying ships will participate, clear saber-rattling over diplomacy that all US administrations, to one degree or another, have emphasized in US-North Korean relations for decades. That despite Pyongyang wanting rapprochement with the West, only to have Washington rebuff them, choosing confrontation over stability and risking war, potentially with nuclear weapons.

On Russia Today, investigative journalist Wayne Madsen called South Korean President Lee Myung-bak “very warlike,” in contrast to his predecessor, Kim Dae Jung’s “Sunshine Policy” to establish greater North-South political contact and better relations. South Korea’s current president “is very aggressive, very right-wing, very unpopular at home, and the only thing he has going for him is to get into a military showdown with the North.” In other words, incite fear and conflict for political advantage, the same Washington policy Bush, Obama, and past US presidents adopted to justify imperial adventurism.

What next? So far, Pentagon officials said no additional forces are planned for the region, and America’s 29,000 in South Korea haven’t been placed on high alert. For now, Washington ruled out resumed six-party talks, including both Koreas, China, Russia, Japan and America. China and Russia, however, disagree, saying the incident shows the importance of restarting them now.

China’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson, Hong Lei, said it’s “imperative… to restart six-party talks as soon as possible. We hope the relevant parties do more to contribute to peace and stability on the Korean peninsula,” adding that Beijing needs to clarify events leading up to the clash. “The situation needs to be verified,” he said.

Russia’s Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov, stressed “a colossal danger which must be avoided. Tensions in the region are growing.” A cool response is needed. North Korea has no reason to want conflict. Washington and South Korea may have other ideas.

It has been more than six decades since America fought a defensive war. Peace organizations going along with honoring veterans of previous wars in poor countries after WW II appear NOT to be against war in principle, rather only against the current wars we are losing. Calling for peace while permitting our now permanent war military establishment to turn all national holidays into celebrations hailing all U.S. wars, past and present, is contradictory.

What does it take? Peace activists are weary of quoting Albert Einstein, Helen Keller, Eugene Debs, General Smedley Butler, Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., Howard Zinn, and the voices of today’s dissenters who are wise to the homicide for lies and money that has be going down for the last sixty-five years.

Tired of calling attention to Mohammed Ali having led the country in an inspiring way by refusing to eventually become a veteran of mass murder.

Tired of gritting our teeth watching militarized Network News promoting war to our children and gullible citizens.

Tired of the hypocrisy of religious leaders backing present wars. Evangelists on TV carefully avoiding the theme of Jesus’ nonviolence teachings because they conflict with the mainstream ‘patriotic’ mindset of permanent self-righteous counter-terror on terror. In the United States there is a separation of Jesus and state; of Moses’ Fifth Commandment and state; separation of Buddhist meditation and war; separation of the teachings in the Qur’an and what is going on in America.

How can any knowledgeable veteran march in parades that in reality are like an ‘Honor Warriors of Immoral and Illegal Wars Day’, ‘Honor the Pentagon Day’, ‘Honor the CIA Led Assassins Day’, ‘Honor Lying Presidents Day,’ ‘Honor War Mongering Media Day’ ’Honor Clergy Who Blessed War Day?’

How can antiwar groups allow themselves to be intimidated by traditions that are now long used to support foreign policies of war on the Third World.

Cannot every citizen of antiwar persuasion have the courage to honor Americans who fled to Canada, rather than those who dishonored themselves and became veterans of crimes against humanity?

How can a veteran like this writer be a traitor to our deceived dead buddies, disgracing them by honoring on Veterans Day their having been suckered into dying while killing innocent foreign brothers and sisters in their very own homes.

Enough! Away with our hypocrisy and shaming ourselves in embarrassment, unable to confront ignorance, fear and manipulation by media for the amoral and homicidal bankers who own the government.

Citizens against war! Don’t show indiscriminate respect for all veterans. We veterans know that many of us even followed criminal orders on top of participating in unjust wars in places like Vietnam.

Veteran! Denounce your veteranship if you know you ‘served’ killing innocent people in a dishonorable, illegal, undeclared war. Be determined to know, to learn, how you were duped, tricked, hyped into ‘service’ in dishonorable wars costing the lives of millions of innocent human beings.

And if you think there was anything moral in the particular war you fought in after World War Two, study encyclopedia Britannica articles and read CIA files released under the Freedom of Information Act. Read Pentagon published material. Read only what is documented to order to unlearn what the TV networks, radio and tabloid newspapers sold you on.

On Veterans Day, remember the informed and strong willed who cried “Hell no, I won’t go!”  Be conscious of our own ‘Damn, I shouldn’t have gone!’ regret.

Speaking out against the glorifying of war intention of Pentagon-fed corporate media programming on Veterans Day should come easy for veterans who have had the courage to brave death in the confusion of unjustified imperialist wars.

Am I, as a veteran, going to march unwanted in another egotistical display of honor for ourselves while phony wars go on? Wars of killing anyone designated a suspected insurgent against our occupation of his country – labeling him or her a terrorist just like we used to label a targeted person communist?

We did our ‘service’ in helping put the equivalent of thousands of 9/11s on the heads of people in poor countries that never attacked the U.S. None of these poor countries ever got back at us until 2001. If the Vietnamese and all the other small nations we invaded since World War Two can forgo justice and getting revenge, why can’t our big deal exceptionally great America?

Politically awakened veterans must teach our pro-war fellow veterans some history, not to mention morality, ethics, humanity and true patriotism. Not the patriotism of scheming bankers and their Military Industrial Complex, their media and their secret CIA, but defense of the nation from war profiteers’ patriotism.

No! No Veterans Day for me. Instead, a day for veterans to mourn participation in killing, maiming and damage done invading the lands and lives of others.

Let knowledgeable, compassion-motivated veterans turn the tables on the war industry and recreate Veterans Day into VETERANS MOURN KILLING DAY.

If anyone cannot see at least the logic in the all the above, we seven would like to know. The seven being Jay Janson and his six bunk-mates buried in North Korea, who would be pissed if someone tried to ‘honor’ their being tricked into dying trying to kill Koreans in Korea.

Before they died, they knew they had been suckered. All six did not want to kill Koreans, even go to Korea, which they knew nothing about. Nothing about our dictatorship in the South’s massacre of tens of thousands of men, women and even their children during the years BEFORE the Koreans of their northern government swept the South, welcomed by many, the southern government conscripts deserting or refusing to fight.

My six buddies would understand why today there is a unrelentingly severe military dictatorship in the northern part of Korea, knowing what we did in both northern Korea and southern Korea, flattening almost every city, town and village from the air, threatening to drop the Atomic bomb on Koreans still fighting us, more than a million of them dying north of the line dividing the Korea nation, and all this happening AFTER Korea had already been unified in six quick weeks.

Would that my six bunk-mates could know of Communist (capitalist) China today and the nearly peaceful dissolution of the Soviet Union. Know it was not necessary for them and two-and-a-half million Koreans to die for a political Cold War confrontation with a USSR that would cease to exist anyway.

For them and others to have died fighting millions of so called communists in small countries that were former Japanese or French colonies is sad. That my buddies and many millions of good people could be alive today but for successful lies spread in media. Were they alive, I would tell them of how Korea was divided by the U.S. and how, after the First World War, President Wilson officially recognized the Japanese claim that Korea was Japanese territory by the right of conquest.

We seven were veterans of what exactly? Veterans of blind service to those who invest in and promote wars for profit? Of an undeclared war on a poor country?

Forget it! Better VETERANS MOURN KILLING DAY! And I have some friends who are veterans of the only legal war, World War II, that would be glad to join in because they know Rockefeller, Ford, du Pont, and just about every big U.S. industrialist invested heavily into building up Nazi Germany (while my dad sold apples on a street corner in depressed and jobless America.)

Come on, Americans, especially fellow veterans! It’s normal to mourn any death, isn’t it? We can have a day to mourn violent death instead of praising those who brought it overseas in our name.

The US and South Korea said their “exercises” are aimed at deterring North Korea, which they blame — without any solid evidence — for torpedoing the Cheonan, a South Korean navy ship, during earlier joint US-Korean “exercises” in March. Vietnam was less disingenuous, heaping praise on the US after its own “games” for its willingness to confront China over the Spratly and Paracel islands in the South China Sea. Vietnam has, since 1995, been an enthusiastic member of ASEAN, created at US prompting in 1967 during the height of the Vietnam war. This year, it hosted both the ASEAN Summit in April and an ASEAN Regional Forum in July, and will host yet another “East Asia” ASEAN mini-summit in October.

In addition to getting ASEANs to send troops to Afghanistan, US arms producers have $12 billion worth of arms deals with Taiwan, while the US military is transforming Guam into its new strategic strike centre to patrol the Asian Pacific, consolidating its bases in Japan, South Korea and the Philippines, expanding its military ties with India, and making up with former pariahs such as Myanmar. United States President Barack Obama claimed in Tokyo last year that he was the first US president with an “Asia-Pacific orientation”. Watch out when Washington “orients” itself towards you. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in Hawaii early this year that the future of America is closely linked to the Asian Pacific. Watch out when you are “linked” to America.

Why China, which has never, ever threatened the US? In a word, China is the new rising world power and must be put in its place. In addition to cutting all military ties, the Chinese have reacted with a torrent of words. Major General Luo Yuan, deputy secretary general of the Society of China Military Sciences, attacks American pretenses to “manifest destiny” and world hegemony.

He points to the new “Naval Operations Concept 2010: A Cooperative Strategy for 21st Century Seapower”, approved by Obama in May, outlining six core competencies: forward presence, deterrence, maritime security, sea control, power projection and humanitarian assistance. There is in fact precious little sign of its “cooperative” nature. Translated into plain English, the “competencies” mean: provocation, bullying, world policing, world policing, war (sorry, “peace”) and US crumbs for those who obey. Luo Yuan translates it into Chinese as “gunboat diplomacy: If you do not obey me, I will flex my muscles first. Then, if you do not behave better, I will teach you a lesson with my fists.”

The reasons behind this very Bush-like “cooperative” sabre-rattling are just as much economic as geopolitical. First there is the long-standing massive trade deficit the US nurses with the Eastern giant and China’s $2 trillion reserves, though this is hardly China’s fault. The US answer is to demand that China revalue its yuan, effectively transferring billions of dollars to the US trade account and forcing China to deflate its economy, as happened in Japan in the 1980s. China’s answer is to resist US pressure, demand a seat at the world monetary table and the establishment of a new international reserve currency ASAP.

China is already moving away from US treasury bonds as a way to absorb the trade surplus, investing overseas, lending to other countries, and using the yuan in cross-border trade. This will spur demand for yuan-denominated assets overseas and speed up the opening of China’s capital account, Li Ruogu, chairman of China’s Export-Import Bank, predicts. More worrying yet to the US are Chinese plans to dispense with the dollar altogether in its oil trade with Iran, much like Saddam Hussein did in 2000. Iran has been trying to do this with its oil bourse since 2008 but so far has been able to trade only in oil derivatives.

How does the US respond to such moves? Threaten, subvert, boycott, and when all else fails, invade, of course. The US empire is nothing without the US dollar as world reserve currency. And the US dollar is nothing without oil backing. The twists and turns in US policy reflect precisely this logic, right up to embracing the legendary US nemesis Vietnam.

Clinton arrived in comradely Vietnam following a visit to Georgia. Clearly addressing both Russian and Chinese leaders, Clinton insisted first in Georgia and then in Vietnam that the US recognises no “spheres of influence” by any other nation anywhere in the world, and that Washington reserves the exclusive right to intervene in regional conflicts around the world and to “internationalise” them when and how it sees fit. “The Asian ‘NATO’ must stand-up [sic] a credible, united effort against China’s intimidation and hegemonic actions much as NATO formed the backbone of our defence against the former Soviet Union,” malapropped neocon commentator Robert Maginnis approvingly in “Winning the New Cold War” following Clinton’s trip.

“The US is capitalising on the contradictions among East Asian countries to form a front against China,” stated analyst Shih Yongming glumly. The ability of the US empire to change its public face and charm erstwhile foes is truly remarkable. Though it killed three million Vietnamese and never paid a penny of reparations, the US is now Vietnam’s largest trade partner and investor. More naval visits and ASEAN meetings are in the offing, as well as cultural exchanges, training exercises and — Iran take note — a civilian nuclear fuel and technology deal that would allow Vietnam to enrich uranium on its own soil.

Beijing would do well to learn some statecraft from its sometime enemy, sometime friend. US strategists don’t rest a moment as this flurry of activity shows. Get hopping! Say things that your listeners want to hear. Kiss some babies.

Beijing would also do well to reflect on its own sorry diplomatic history as the people’s republic. After supporting Vietnam for a quarter century first against the French and then the US, China proceeded to invade Vietnam in 1979 to curry favour with China’s new “friend” the US. (Vietnam had just put an end to the bloodbath of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia.) It thereby abandoned its principled anti-US pro-Vietnam position for an unprincipled pro-US anti-Vietnam one. Is it any surprise that this has so quickly degenerated into an anti-US anti-Vietnam one? Is it any wonder that Vietnam, once anti-US pro-China, is now pro-US anti-China?

Beijing has two options: turn itself into a military monster, a mirror image of the US, and terrify and estrange its neighbours. Or launch its own charm offensive, make some gestures of conciliation over its maritime claims. Instead of using its phenomenal resources to build deadly military hardware, use a fraction of them to shower its neighbours with generosity, all the time ignoring or rather deflecting US barbs and shafts.

Kick the US out, but do it politely with the help of friendly neighbours who don’t operate according to “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.” Luo Yuan argues that if the US is really all that democratic, it should “listen to the public opinions of other countries, using wisdom but not gunboats to solve problems.” Over to you, Hu.

But I’m not holding my breath.]

A new documentary, directed by Lucy Walker and produced by Lawrence Bender, entitled Countdown To Zero, is set for wide release on July 23, 2010. The film has been heavily publicized and promoted for many months now and is surely already a heavily-favored Oscar contender.

Though the stated goals of the film, exposing the horrifying danger of nuclear weapons and reducing the planet’s nuclear stockpile to zero, are noble and necessary indeed, some ideas promoted within the film — which can be gleaned solely from the film’s trailer and recent interviews with film contributor Valerie Plame and producer Lawrence Bender — appear to ominously echo the same sensational claims made about Iraq’s non-existent WMD, this time about the United States’ favorite scapegoat, Iran.

Countdown To Zero acknowledges that there are currently an estimated 23,000 nuclear weapons in the world, spread among nine nations. Though I have not yet seen this film, I am confident that it omits some vital information when mentioning these nuclear-armed countries and their stockpiles, namely that the list consists of all five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council (The United States, Russia, France, China, the United Kingdom), the only three states on earth to refuse to become signatories of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (Israel, Pakistan, India), and the only country to have ever withdrawn its membership from the Treaty (North Korea).

Additionally, the film states that Israel only has about 80 nuclear bombs, in stark contrast with many estimates that put its nuclear arsenal somewhere between 200 and 400 warheads.

The film lauds the Obama Administration’s position on nuclear weapons and promotes the claim that Obama is really interested in reducing the US stockpile, using the START treaty with Russia as an example, as if agreeing to decommission a few hundred old nukes is evidence of an “historic” commitment to disarm. This seems a bit hard to believe considering that Obama has already requested $80 billion for rebuilding and upgrading the US nuclear arsenal in clear violation of the requirements of the NPT. Obama’s twenty-year spending plan calls for the United States to actually increase the nuclear weapons budget to about $8 billion a year and while spending $175 billion between 2010 to 2030 on new weapons production, testing and simulation facilities, and on extending the life of nuclear weapons already in the arsenal. Meanwhile, the Pentagon’s current and future spending to maintain and operate the equipment that delivers the warheads, such as missiles, bombers and submarines, is not even included in this plan. The Los Angeles Times reports that “spending for the weapons complex would peak between 2014 and 2018 under the plan.”

The legal transgressions of the United States with regard to its NPT obligations are legion. In fact, the US has nuclear deals with both India and Israel, despite the fact that neither country is a member to the NPT. These deals, as per the US’ non-proliferation requirements, are illegal. Ironically, the US opposes China’s recent nuclear deal with Pakistan citing, of all things, the terms of the NPT.

Additionally, the Obama Administration’s new Nuclear Posture Review, which is praised by the film’s producer, actually leaves the door wide open for a first-strike nuclear attack on Iran, which it accuses of NPT violations on par with North Korea, thereby demonstrating a startling lack of truth in the Pentagon’s assessment of the Iranian program. The NPR doesn’t even mention India, Pakistan, or Israel at all.

The film’s trailer features scary music, lots of mushroom clouds, and menacing titles like “Rogue Nations” and “Terrorists” over montage clips of Kim Jong Il, Osama bin Laden, flag-waving Iranian crowds and images of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in a lab coat. It’s clear what the agenda is here.

Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair is one of Countdown To Zero‘s talking heads-of-state. More than living up to his war criminal track record of inventing pretenses for foreign invasions, Blair (with his serious face on) looks into the camera and states, “Iran. North Korea. They are prepared to start trading nuclear weapons technology.” This is coming from a man who lied about Saddam Hussein’s capabilities, is unrepentant in the face of reality, and who actively advocates military strikes on Iran in order to destroy its nuclear energy program. In January 2010, during the British Iraq Inquiry, Blair made it clear that “Tehran’s actions have made him even more worried today that a rogue state could supply weapons of mass destruction to terrorists than he was when he took Britain to war with Iraq.” He told the Chilcot committee,

My judgment – and it may be other people don’t take this view, and that’s for the leaders of today to make their judgment – is we don’t take any risks with this issue.

My fear was – and I would say I hold this fear stronger today than I did back then as a result of what Iran particularly today is doing – my fear is that states that are highly repressive or failed, the danger of a WMD link is that they become porous, they construct all sorts of different alliances with people.

Since then, former UK ambassador to Tehran Sir Richard Dalton has revealed that Blair’s view that Iran had cooperated with and aided al-Qaeda due to “common interest” was an “exaggeration” and a “misreading” and misinterpretation of the truth. Dalton recently stated that the Iranian “objective was never to destabilise Iraq.”

In fact, the film intentionally blurs the lines between sovereign states and terrorist organizations and concentrates on the devastating consequences of a nuclear weapon falling into the hands of nefarious groups. A review of the film points out that Countdown To Zero “claims that the pieces are all in place: that al-Qaeda, and also Iran, badly wants a nuclear weapon,” then questions the film’s sensationalism by musing, “if it really is that easy, then why hasn’t it been done?”

In a recent interview with Keith Olbermann, outed CIA operative Valerie Plame, who believes fervently that al-Qaeda wants a nuclear bomb and has been actively seeking the build or acquire one and says so in the film, had the opportunity to dispel some of the widely-held myths about the Iranian nuclear program, but chose to bolster them instead. Olbermann, left the door to truth wide open, as he asked:

2002, as you will recall, we were told nukes, nukes to terrorists: Iraq. Now we’re told, nukes, nukes to terrorists: Iran. How much of it is hysteria and how much of it is real? And how can that threat and the idea that a state sponsor for some sort of terrorism might actually, that connection might actually exist at some point?

Plame slammed the door in his face. “That’s the scary part,” she replied. “That it is not hysteria. The threat is very real.” She also revealed that Countdown To Zero doesn’t tackle the issues of nuclear fuel, enrichment, or energy in any way.

Beyond the single off-hand mention, it is highly unlikely that Israel’s massive nuclear arsenal is addressed any further in the film, especially with Lawrence Bender, a Reagan-loving Zionist, at the helm. During an April 2010 broadcast of HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher, Bender, who also produced An Inconvenient Truth Pulp Fiction, was a featured guest and Maher steered the conversation around to discuss which countries actually have nuclear weapons. The discussion proceeded like this:

Maher: I want to give the people some facts here so they have something to work off of, because I think this is an issue that people don’t know a lot about. You bring it up in the movie, people have no clue like how many nations have nuclear weapons, how many nuclear weapons there are in the world. There are about 25,000, most of them in Russia and the United States, of course.

Bender: About 15,000 in Russia, 10,000 in the United States.

Maher: But nine countries have them that we know of, I mean, I would say the ones that worry us the most: India, Pakistan, and Israel.

Bender: [scoffs]

Maher: Ok…

Bender: [mockingly] Right right right, cuz we’re real worried that Israel’s gonna blow up the world.

Maher: Well..the…I…no. [Audience laughs] But they might have cause to use one, let’s say that.

Bender: [dismissive] Ok, I don’t…yeah…I don’t think so, but…I mean they, y’know, I guess Israel…

Maher: Israel’s hardcore. [Audience and Bender laugh] I love Israel, but, y’know, but if you fuck with them, they will blow the fuck out of you.

[Audience erupts into applause]

Bender: They do have a pretty strong conventional army, though, that we support and I think is – [trails off]

Later in the show, when filmmaker Laura Flanders finally starts questioning Maher and Bender’s praise of Obama’s lip-service nuclear initiatives and Israel’s denial of having nuclear weapons, editor-in-chief of The New Yorker David Remnick steps into the fray in order to further laud Israel and classify their nuclear arsenal as a non-issue and non-threat (during a conversation that’s supposed to be about global disarmament, no less!). Remnick states, “The idea that Israel is gonna use first-strike nuclear weapons is just wrong, I think…they’re not gonna use this as a first strike weapon, nor is Russia, nor is the United States. I think the real fear, and maybe you [Flanders] don’t agree, but the real fear has to do with Pakistan and Iran becoming a nuclear weapon country.”

Bender enthusiastically concurs, exclaiming, “Absolutely!”

Then, to his credit, Maher jumps in and says, “There is a big double standard when it comes to Israel and nuclear weapons, I mean, let’s get real,” to which Bender replies, in horror, “No, I don’t think so.” Remnick counters, “But we’re talking about use and this is quite a different issue from the Israeli-Palestinian issue which is, I think we’d agree on.”

At this point, Bender, in an effort to take the heat off Israel, chimes in, “But let’s not focus on, there’s no reason to focus on this issue…”

The conversation then moves on to another topic.

So, according to the producer of the film itself, we should all just ignore Israel’s deadly arsenal of up to 400 nuclear weapons, which is unmonitored and unsupervised by the International Atomic and Energy Agency (IAEA), in contrast to Iran’s wholly legal civilian nuclear energy program. Iran’s nuclear sites and facilities are all under the 24-hour video surveillance by the Agency, which has unfettered access to inspect and monitor all activity, and has conducted 38 unannounced inspections since March 2007. Every single IAEA report on Iran’s nuclear program have consistently affirmed that, not only does Iran not even have the technology to enrich uranium to bomb grade (over 90%), Iran is not deviating nuclear material to any unknown applications and never has, Iran’s stockpile of fissile material is fully accounted for, and Iran’s known nuclear facilities are fully monitored and there’s no way they could be used to build a secret bomb without first kicking the IAEA out of the country.

Apparently, according to Bender, of all the countries in the world that actually have nukes, Israel is the non-threat, as opposed to the country that abides by international treaties and doesn’t even have a single nuclear warhead. With Israel’s history of violence, ethnic cleansing, genocide, and the use of illegal and banned chemical weaponry on civilian populations, who could argue? It’s not like they’ve ever shown criminal disregard and outright contempt for international law or anything, right?

Meanwhile, the IAEA has passed a resolution “expressing concern about the Israeli nuclear capabilities and called upon Israel to accede to the NPT and place all its nuclear facilities under comprehensive IAEA safeguards,” which Israel defiantly rebuffs and the United States ignores.

Furthermore, this Spring, when the 189 member nations of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty agreed to “the establishment of a Middle East zone free of nuclear weapons and all other weapons of mass destruction,” Israel denounced the accord, describing it as “deeply flawed and hypocritical,” and declared, “As a nonsignatory state of the NPT, Israel is not obligated by the decisions of this Conference, which has no authority over Israel. Given the distorted nature of this resolution, Israel will not be able to take part in its implementation.”

Obama, the hero of Countdown To Zero for his supposed non-proliferation efforts, also criticized the document (even though the U.S .signed it), saying that his administration “strongly oppose[s] efforts to single out Israel, and will oppose actions that jeopardize Israel’s national security.” National security adviser, General James L. Jones, also released a statement which read, “The United States deplores the decision to single out Israel in the Middle East section of the NPT document.”

The document, in fact, calls upon Pakistan, India, and Israel to all sign the treaty and abide by its protocols “without further delay and without any preconditions,” and demands that North Korea abandon “all nuclear weapons and existing nuclear programs.”

During his address to the UN General Assembly last September, Obama spoke of the necessity of supporting “efforts to strengthen the NPT” and warned that “those nations that refuse to live up to their obligations must face consequences.” He continued,

Let me be clear, this is not about singling out individual nations — it is about standing up for the rights of all nations that do live up to their responsibilities. Because a world in which IAEA inspections are avoided and the United Nation’s demands are ignored will leave all people less safe, and all nations less secure.

Obama then accused the government of Iran of ignoring “international standards” by putting “the pursuit of nuclear weapons ahead of regional stability and the security and opportunity of [its] own people.” Obama promised to hold Iran “accountable,” and declared, “The world must stand together to demonstrate that international law is not an empty promise, and that treaties will be enforced.” And when, Mr. President, will Israel be held accountable…for anything?

This past April, Obama held a nuclear conference in Washington which was attended by representatives of 47 countries and hailed as “the largest assembly of world leaders hosted by an American president since the 1945 San Francisco conference that founded the United Nations.” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu refused to attend for fear that his state’s unacknowledged nuclear arsenal would not only be a topic of conversation, but of consternation. Representatives of Iran and North Korea were not invited.

Five days later, Tehran held its own nuclear conference, entitled “Nuclear Energy for All, Nuclear Weapons for None.” Prior to the gathering, Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki laid out the official Iranian position on nuclear arms. “Iran does not believe in nuclear weapons nor does it need one,” he stated. “Iran believes that the era of nuclear weapons is over. These weapons are not even of use to those who possess them. If they were, they would have prevented the collapse of the Soviet Union. They would have prevented the Zionist regime’s losses in Gaza and Lebanon.”

A statement by Iranian head of state, Ayatollah Khamenei, declared that “any use of or even threat to use nuclear weapons is a serious and material violation of indisputable rules of humanitarian law and a cogent example of a war crime.” His message concluded, “We regard the use of these weapons to be illegal and haram [forbidden by religion], and it is incumbent on all to protect humankind from this grave disaster.”

The President of the only country to have ever used nuclear weapons (on civilians, no less) has made no such pronouncements, yet he has won a Noble Peace Prize while presiding over two deadly occupations and bankrolling another. During his acceptance speech for the prize, Obama took the opportunity to justify war and point out the limitations of non-violent resistance, saying that, “The instruments of war do have a role to play in preserving the peace.” He also made time for some threats. “Those regimes that break the rules must be held accountable,” he declared, in reference clearly implicating Iran.

The two-day Tehran conference, which was attended by official delegations and “eminent experts” from about 60 countries, resulted in a statement which “stressed the importance of redoubling efforts to overcome the current deadlock to achieve nuclear disarmament in all its aspects and promotion of multilateralism in the field of nuclear disarmament and non proliferation.”

The declaration also “affirmed the inalienable right of the NPT State Parties to use nuclear energy in all its aspects,” called for the promotion of international cooperation as an obligated by Article IV of the treaty, and “emphasized that attacking the peaceful nuclear facilities results in grave negative consequences for human beings and the environment, and is a gross violation of international law and the UN Charter.”

Meanwhile, U.S. officials, from the President on down, frequently warn Iran that “all options are on the table” with regard to a military attack on its nuclear facilities if Iran doesn’t give up its inalienable rights and do what they say. This was made perfectly clear, especially in relation to the Obama Administration’s Nuclear Posture Review, when Robert Gates sent, what he termed, “a message for Iran,” during an April 6, 2010 press conference held alongside Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Navy Adm. Michael Mullen, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and Secretary of Energy Steven Chu. With regard to an unprovoked nuclear attack on Iran, as now authorized in the NPR, Gates stated that “if you’re not going to play by the rules, if you’re going to be a proliferator, then all options are on the table in terms of how we deal with you.” Gates chose not to elaborate on which rules Iran wasn’t playing by, nor did he address the rules by which Israel plays.

Two weeks ago, Obama reaffirmed his administration’s commitment to double standards when it comes to Israel during Netanyahu’s conjugal visit to the White House. Stating that, of all countries in the world, “Israel has unique security requirements,” Obama then pledged to the Israeli Prime Minister that, with regards to any international efforts towards weapons control and decommissioning nuclear weapons, “United States will never ask Israel to take any steps that would undermine their security interests.” Obama also promised to maintain Israel’s “qualitative military edge” in the region.

A Time article published this past week reports that “the U.S. Army’s Central Command, which is in charge of organizing military operations in the Middle East, has made some real progress in planning targeted air strikes [on Iran].” Reporter Joe Klein reveals that an Israeli military source told him, “There really wasn’t a military option a year ago…But they’ve gotten serious about the planning, and the option is real now.”

This, Mr. Bender, is your Noble laureate. This is your champion of peace.

Furthermore, apparently Israel has been brought into the planning process for an Iran assault in order to curb the possibility of Israel acting alone. This means that two powerful nuclear-armed states, one that violates the NPT with abandon and one that refuses to even sign the treaty, are actively planning on attacking a third country, which has no nuclear weapons of its own, on the suspicion that this third country might decide to build nuclear weapons at some undetermined point in the future, a suspicion for which there is absolutely no evidence.

It should not need repeating that Article 2 of the U.N. Charter, to which both the United States and Israel are bound, clearly forbids “the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state.”

Basically, based on the trailer for this film and hearing interviews with its own producer and participants, all of which ignore Israel’s arsenal in favor of scaremongering about Iran, it becomes clear what one of the purposes of Countdown To Zero really is: yet another glossy attempt to jump on the Obama bandwagon and further beat the drums of war against the Islamic Republic on behalf of Israel.

It is a shame that a film on such an important topic and vital goal should, in part, just repackage anti-Iran rhetoric and Israeli exceptionalism as a call for non-proliferation and disarmament. It would have been refreshing for the filmmakers of Countdown To Zero to abandon the same old propagandistic falsehoods in favor of revealing to its audience some vital truths, however inconvenient they may be to the current ‘Iranian Threat’ narrative.

Entertainment Weekly describes Countdown To Zero as “a piece of responsible fear-mongering” and “nuclear-anxiety porn.”

Bender, in a recent interview on the ABC News/Washington Post broadcast Top Line, credited the overwhelmingly positive response to the film to “good story-telling.”

Unfortunately, not all documentaries tell true stories. This one, in particular, appears to be chock full of pulp fiction.

It really hurts that we are killing so many of our Muslim brothers and sisters and their kids right in their homes, in their streets, in their own countries. I’ve been reading about Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome, wondering why it doesn’t apply to people like me. I’m mentally and emotionally upset about us killing a vast amount of people in their own residences in cities, towns, and the countryside across six Muslim countries (as I put down these words, I notice I’m breathing short, feel a light press of anxiety on the left side of my chest).

For more than fifty years I’ve been reading about, and listening to, news of body counts and bombings (I’m seventy-nine) — fifty years of trying to protect my mind and the bottom of my stomach.

I wonder how many people in the world understand what I have had on my mind and in my stomach off and on for years — I mean, outside of people in the couple of dozen countries actually bombed by us?

How many other Americans feel as bad as I do about it? All this bombing, invading, occupying? It’s always done in our name. Am I oversensitive?

I have always tended to take my responsibilities seriously. As a school boy, when I saw newspaper headlines about death by starvation in China, it would bring to mind the nun who had prepared me, as a seven year old, for my First Holy Communion. Her instruction really stuck in my serious child’s mind, especially the story of  Cain fluffing off God with, “Hey, am I my brother’s keeper?”

I never really recovered from the post traumatic stress from fifteen years of us slaughtering millions of poor Vietnamese in Vietnam and bombing the living hell out of Laos and Cambodia.

A long time before this present decade of anguish over our killing Muslims in a half dozen countries (but not in Saudi Arabia where the 9/11 highjackers came from), my peace of mind had been radically disturbed for having learned the reason for all this mass butchery going on for a half-century, starting with our taking the lives of a couple of million Koreans in Korea.

Each psychological upset led me to do a little research. Confusing reports of why Eisenhower was bombing Laos started me off. Slowly it became a habit to research every news bite explaining why we had to go somewhere on the other side of the world and kill to stamp out communism in little countries, but not the two big ones already governed by communist parties.

It didn’t make me feel any better in my heart to learn that our unimaginably horrible taking of innocent peoples’ lives in smaller countries overseas was in every case brought about by lies that made it acceptable to the American people. Hard working decent people, busy with their personal lives, careers, and families, who simply trusted what each president told them since it was backed up and well explained as being right and necessary on their television, which they trusted even more.

But that knowledge did give me strength, made me angry, and motivated me to tell my family and friends how this enormous death toll was made possible by naively believing astonishing or bewildering news we should have suspected all along. Blatant lies, so easily disproved using the government’s own publications, readily available encyclopedia articles, and just plain common sense.

So for a few years, thinking that if a stupid guy like me could uncover all these pretty obvious lies, I could help spread an opposition to these wars by passing the simple truth around to people more intelligent than me and capable of doing something about this vicious mass murder.

What astounded me was the reaction from colleagues and friends. “Not interested in politics.” “What are you talking about?” “Have my own problems.” Only a few were willing to at least listen, maybe a couple answering, “Well, maybe we make mistakes sometimes, but we’re trying to do the right thing over there.”

My brother stopped corresponding for three years, angry that I was “duped by communist propaganda” about the Vietnam war. (After the war, he apologized, agreeing that I was right, but I’m afraid he still goes on believing most of what is said on the networks’ evening news.) Last year my loving sister asked me to take her off my mailing list — I was outraging her and her Texas fundamentalist husband.

Apart from two very politically aware sons, and a politically concerned nephew, it was  only my 9th-grade educated immigrant Mom who understood, was upset, and would complain on her own about “the terrible things the government was doing.” Seems the more government-sponsored education we get, the more we are purposely misinformed and made to accept our government’s homicidal violence. (A perception, by the way, that logically leads to the awareness that our government is not of, for, or by the people.)

People at work (in the orchestra) did not want to hear about “US foreign policy.” If pressed regarding our responsibility as citizens, many would answer, “Look! I vote in elections.” My unrecognized PTSD over a war on the other side of the world was widely regarded as a sign of mental unbalance, a personality problem.

The next most important sensitizing influence after that nun was a junior high Afro-American civics teacher, “If you have free speech and you don’t speak up, you are guilty of complicity in the crimes of your government, and ignorance is no excuse in a court of law.” So off and on I took graduate level history courses at four universities and an institute in Germany.

Music was miraculous, and performing was a wonderful way to make a living, but awaiting the downbeat at the Mostly Mozart Summer Festival, looking out at an audience of professionals, I would be thinking that right about this time, 8 PM, 8 AM morning in Asia, the planes were taking off in Guam for high-altitude bombing over Vietnam while we listened to Mozart just the way the Nazis had listened to Wagner.  I would get a burning feeling beneath my feet to stand up and say, “Hey, could we take a break? The planes are taking off to bomb right now and Mozart didn’t have that in mind as he composed this music.”

But I didn’t stand up, and when Martin Luther King said “Silence is treason,” it was me he was talking about.

I’m sure Mozart would have approved of the “let’s stop and consider what we are doing” tone of the articles Jay Janson, historian, has been composing. I figure it’s my therapy for my present Muslim killing Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. PTSD initially was called “Shell Shock’. It got broadened to apply to people listening to the awful explosions from afar. Perhaps the medical profession, itself, will come to diagnose people like me, wincing for imagining the agony in death throes of fellow human beings, (reported in daily AP Press reports from the Middle East as a ”success”), as suffering from Post Traumatic Stress.

Would psychologists and mental health experts deny that millions of kind and compassionate Germans experienced a type of PTSD as their German armies invaded dozens of nations? Or was it only the many millions of Russians having their families and homes blown to bits who experienced PTSD?

Treating sensitivity to the pain of others as a serious malady would lead to considering how to prescribe cures.  It would require society to halt the dropping of explosives on people or perform some sort of lobotomy on those suffering from PTSD that would permit the patients to adjust to exploding human beings.

Since society in the self-proclaimed “greatest country in the world” has not yet evolved to being able to control its criminally insane, and since lobotomies (except those done painlessly over many years by commercial mass media) are a drastic procedure no longer much in use, therapy must be the answer

In some cases just talking about what’s bothering you can work as therapy. It didn’t work for me in America because it was too difficult to find anyone who would listen. So I began to write.

My first therapy was to become enlightened as to why the killing that was causing my distress was happening. Advanced therapy has become doing everything possible to stop the killing that is bothering me.

Therapy can wind up turning PTS into something useful. The PTS disorder becomes only a relatively easy way to deal with the symptoms of the serious mental illness — War-For-Profit Criminal Insanity (which is probably caused by a prolonged exaggerated life-style of institutionalized greed.)

Therapeutic activism goes beyond being an exercise for the protection of one’s own sanity. It bolsters one’s personal integrity, citizen responsibility and accentuates love of life.

Consider how the “Shell Shocked” people in America feel when looking at the eye-repelling photos of the Holocaust. The obvious reaction is to just punish Germans. But the logical therapy would be to go after the owners of the majority of U.S. banks and industries which backed and invested in turning an initially prostrate Nazi Germany into the world’s foremost military power, fully aware of Hitler’s hatred of Jews and communists and plans for expansion eastward with his armies. All this investment was done right out in the open and is fully recorded for anyone suffering PTSD from remembering the Holocaust to read and identify: Rockefeller, Henry Ford, DuPont, etc.

Had such a course in therapy been completed, and the profiting banking industrialists who backed Hitler punished, this same group of scions of banking might not have been able to pull off a second Holocaust in Vietnam.

Holocaust PTSD therapy for me is to tell all the young folks of the virulent anti-Semitism in the United States before WWII, when I was a child. One didn’t have to be actually Jewish oneself to have been acutely aware of it all around you. Therapy is knowing that Henry Ford’s published writings were required reading for the Hitler Youth organization.

The therapy would have been, and still is, the same for the Vietnam war, the Korean war, the bombing of Lebanon, and the Dominican Republic, Panama, and Cuba invasions.  Identify the bankers and powerful business leaders who required these wars for their balance sheets of profit, and accumulation of capital and resources of the invaded countries to control, and if they are too powerful to imprison, try to prevent them, and the media they own, from promoting future wars.

If you don’t have PTSD, and enjoy your mornings with no disturbing thoughts of some lovable Asian child who had all its mornings suddenly obliterated along with his or her life on earth, by some American operating a weapon of mass destruction thinking he was doing duty in your name, it’s odd that you have continued to read this article.

Maybe even “well adjusted” citizens of the empire have some PTSD lurking in the corners of their minds. Maybe many will someday have an outbreak of PTSD if they happen to do some reading and overcome the severe American disability to put oneself in the shoes of our designated enemies (but not the shoes of their children too small to fit in) or if they happen to think of some lovable Asian child, one of millions, who never got to see a single morning as a grown up, the apple of some mom and dad’s eye, a promise to nation and community, and imagine his or her pathetic cadaver or body parts buried lovingly by parents (if they, themselves, be not exterminated as well by fellow Americans using weapons of mass destruction.)

If the reader has read this far, it is more probable he or she is suffering from the continual Post Traumatic Stress of being a citizen of the blood soaked American empire, or at least uneasy that there is no real secure immunity from a future attack of PTSD — not as long as the sun never sets on the nation’s network of military bases.

1. Cluster Bombs And Civilian Lives: Efficient Killing, Profits And Human Rights, by Ramzy Baroud, Dissident Voice, July 8, 2010.

It is not my intention here to prove what or who is responsible for the sinking of the South Korean warship. However, it is useful if we review the history of the Korean peninsula over the past couple decades to understand how things got to the current situation. Foremost among recent causes leading to the present standoff between Pyongyang and Seoul are the election of George Bush in 2000 in the US and the election of Lee Myung-bak to the presidency of the Republic of Korea in 2007. Both men and the forces they represent are not only ideologically opposed to the regime in Pyongyang, they were and are determined to make that regime and its people suffer until the regime is gone. This is despite their public statements claiming they have no animosity toward the northern Korean people. Their actions speak otherwise. Despite the fact that the two states of the Korean peninsula are still officially at war, serious efforts were made to reconcile during the 1990s. These efforts increased substantially after a series of truce violations almost erupted into conflict in 1993. The southern Korean people elected an administration and legislature genuinely interested in rapprochement with their northern brethren. Despite US efforts to block it, aid flowed into the north and goodwill exchanges became a matter of course. Washington, meanwhile, did send aid for a few years but never did fulfill their end of the agreement made after the near war in 1993.

Then George Bush was elected in 2000. It wasn’t more than a year or so that Mr. Bush purposely turned back the clock on Washington’s approach to Pyongyang. After naming the Pyongyang regime part of a so-called “axis of evil,” the White House began to once again isolate the regime and refused to fulfill the remainder of the aforementioned 1993 accords. Pyongyang saw these moves as belligerent and restarted its nuclear weapons program, eventually producing a few nuclear bombs. The government in Seoul at the time was displeased with Washington’s belligerence but was unable to influence the much stronger nation’s change in policy. Pyongyang’s test of one of those weapons in 2006 heightened tensions in the region and gave room for Lee Myung-bak and other right-wingers in southern Korean politics an opening to take power.

Notoriously corrupt, Lee has managed to keep out of prison and consolidate both economic and political power. The first right-wing South Korean president since the 1980s, his actions include refusing to acknowledge the Kwangju rebellion memorial holiday as president and a series of economic policies that tend to favor the wealthy classes. His foreign policy is more in line with the desires of Washington than his predecessor, whom some Koreans criticized for what they perceived to be Seoul’s handouts to northern Korea without conditions. Lee’s government has restricted freedom of assembly and increased press restrictions as well as championing his Christian religion and putting into place policies that discriminate against Buddhists. His foreign policy is more in line with the desires of Washington than his predecessor, whom some Koreans criticized for what they perceived to be Seoul’s handouts to northern Korea without conditions These accusations logically return the debate back to why there are two Koreas in the first place.

As I wrote in a piece several years ago:

Near the end of the Second World War, right before the U.S. dropped the bomb on Japan, the Soviet Union moved into northern Korea to fight the occupying Japanese troops. Within weeks of Japan’s surrender, democratic groups of Korean peasants, merchants, and workers formed local governing organizations and begin to organize a national assembly. The U.S. and U.S.S.R., meanwhile, chose to maintain a “temporary” occupation of the country with the 38th parallel as the dividing line. This occupation was to end after the Koreans established their own government, and Korea was to reunite. However, after the United States realized that the makeup of any Korean-organized government would be anti-colonial, it reneged on its promise.

Within weeks of the election of a popular national assembly, the Soviet Union began to withdraw its forces. The U.S., however, increased its military strength and coordinated security with the remnants of the hated Japanese army. At the same time, Synghman Rhee, an ultra-right Korean politician who was living in America, was flown back to Korea (with the assistance of the US intelligence community). He immediately began to liquidate the popular movement in Southern Korea and, with the complete support of the U.S. military, refused to acknowledge the existence of the newly elected national assembly. In the weeks following his installment as ruler of Southern Korea, over 100,000 Korean citizens were murdered and disappeared. The United States military provided the names of many of the victims.

After realizing that the United States had no plans to withdraw its troops, the Soviet Union put its withdrawal on hold and asked for assistance from the People’s Republic of China. In the days and weeks that passed, military units from the south persistently forayed into the northern half of Korea, testing its defenses. Eventually, although the exact details remain unclear, Northern Korean troops attacked. On June 25, 1950, the U.S. responded, using the authority of the U.N. Security Council, and the Korean war began. Three years and one month later an armistice was signed between the warring sides. The official toll in lives was: 52, 246 US soldiers, an estimated 4 million Koreans on both sides of the parallel (mostly civilians), 1 million Chinese soldiers, and another 4000 soldiers from armies that allied themselves with the United States.

Ever since, the US has refused to sign a peace treaty, even when Seoul wanted them to. The current tension over the sinking of the South Korean ship in March 2010 and the assertion that the North Korean military was responsible has ratcheted that tension to its highest levels since 1993. So far, Seoul has been rational and measured in its response. Pyongyang denies the charges. The world awaits. Pyongyang is not blameless in this situation. It is possible that their navy did sink the South Korean ship. Their actions on the world stage appear to be those of a paranoid nation. Indeed, they are not unlike Israel in that regard.

However, unlike Israel, Pyongyang’s greatest enemies are not disenfranchised people living in poverty under occupation. In fact, Pyongyang’s enemies include the world’s most heavily armed nation and several of its subordinates. Perhaps they have a reason to be paranoid. After all, it’s not like they can call on a world power to back them up like Israel can. Indeed, Washington could sign a peace treaty with Pyongyang and make the entire region considerably safer. Yet it has refused to do so for almost sixty years and twelve US administrations.

Important ones caused the Spanish-American War, WW II, the Vietnam War, and Iraq and Afghanistan wars post-9/11 (a glaring false flag). 

Besides constant Middle East tension, more now looms after North Korea was blamed for the March sinking of South Korea’s Cheonan warship near the western border with the North.

At the time, New York Times writer, Choe Sang-Hun, headlined (March 26), “S. Korean Navy Ship Sinks in Disputed Waters,” saying:

A South Korean Navy patrol ship sank… after suffering damage to its hull… raising suspicions about the possible involvement of North Korea, whose navy has skirmished with South Korean ships in the waters off the Korean Peninsula.

Then on May 19, Sang-Hun headlined, “South Korea Publicly Blames the North for Ship’s Sinking,” saying:

“South Korea formally accused North Korea… of responsibility for the sinking… killing 46 sailors in one of the deadliest provocations” since the July 1953 Korean War armistice, leaving a “state of war” in place to this day. Also, longstanding economic sanctions in violation of the armistice and UN Charter’s Article 39, permitting them only to restore international peace and security during war or when they’re verifiably threatened.

Washington bogusly imposed them, saying  “North Korea is seen as posing a threat to US national security,” although for years Pyongyang sought normalization and was rebuffed; ”North Korea is designated by the Secretary of State as a state sponsor or supporter of international terrorism,” despite no evidence to prove it; ”North Korea is a Marxist-Leninist state, with a Communist government,” though nothing in international law prohibits it; and ”North Korea has been found by the State Department to have engaged in proliferation of weapons of mass destruction,” — true or false, America not only proliferates, it threatens their use preemptively against any nation perceived as a threat, even non-nuclear ones.

South Korea Blames Pyongyang for the Cheonan Sinking

Claiming a North Korean attack, Seoul said there’s “no other plausible explanation…. The evidence points overwhelmingly to the conclusion that (a) torpedo was fired by a North Korean submarine,” even though none was detected in the area. 

Official statements from Britain, Australia, Sweden and Washington backed Seoul, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs saying on May 19: 

The United States strongly condemns (this) act of aggression. (It’s) one more instance of North Korea’s unacceptable behavior and defiance of international law. The attack constitutes a challenge to international peace and security and is a violation of the armistice agreement.

 South Korean President Lee Myung-bak said, “We will take resolute counter-actions against North Korea. We should make North Korea admit to its wrongdoing through international cooperation.” Obama promised full support.

South Korea investigator, Yoon Duk-yong, said fragments were found, consistent with North Korean torpedo specifications listed in materials it distributes to export them, and they matched a stray Pyongyang torpedo found seven years ago. He added that the Cheonan “was split apart and sunk due to a shock wave and bubble effect produced by an underwater torpedo explosion (manufactured) in the North.”

Pyongyang categorically denied it, calling it a “fabrication,” threatening “full-scale war.” Seoul refused its offer to send inspectors to challenge the allegation, forcing its Notational Defense Commission, headed by Kim Jong-il, to threaten retaliation against any further provocations.

On June 4, AP reported that, for the first time, South Korea officially referred North Korea to the Security Council, its ambassador Park In-kook handing a letter to Mexico’s Claude Heller, its current president, asking for a response to “deter any further provocations.”

On May 23, Japan Today released poll numbers showing more of their readers think America, not North Korea, sunk the ship: 48-46%, and at one point Washington lead by 10 points.

Appearing on Democracy Now on May 27, Korean expert, Bruce Cumings, discussed similar past incidents, including in 1999 when “a North Korean ship went down with 30 sailors lost and maybe 70 wounded.” Then last November, another “North Korean ship went down in flames. We don’t know how many people died in that. This is no man’s land… off the west coast of Korea that both North and South claim. We have no idea what” happened to the Cheonan, but whatever did “is being blown way out of proportion.”

Aggression or a False Flag?

The incident begs the question as to what Pyongyang could possibly gain from an attack, especially since for years it’s wanted a formal end to the Korean War, a lasting peace, and normalization with America and Seoul, despite decades of betrayal and snubs by successive US administrations, Obama no different than his predecessors.

Writer, Stephen Gowans, calls the North a “product of its history,” from Japan’s colonization through “its daily struggle with the United States to survive.” Like other nations, it rejects domination, wants its economic and political sovereignty recognized, and normalization with its neighbors and the West. Washington has other aims, its customary imperial ones, needing enemies that would have to be invented if they didn’t exist. In Asia, it’s North Korea like Saddam was in the Middle East and the Soviets were during the Cold War. As a result, it’s been vilified, isolated, and called a regional threat, again after a very suspicious incident, unlikely that Pyongyang caused. So who then?

Investigative journalist, Wayne Madsen, suspects a false flag, manufactured to blame the North. So does Beijing after Kim Jong Il’s hurried visit to explain as well as Seoul’s unconvincing, contradictory story. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov also expressed doubts about South Korea’s account, and wants independent verification of the evidence. 

Stephen Gowans also is suspicious, saying the sinking had “all the markings of another Gulf of Tonkin incident (by) the aggressor… accus(ing) the intended victim of an unprovoked attack to justify a policy of aggression under the pretext of self-defense.” 

Key perhaps was to pressure now former Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatayoma “to reverse course on moving the US Marine Corp base off Okinawa,” Japan’s southern-most, poorest prefecture, home for thousands of US troops.

Since WWII, America has maintained 88 bases in Japan, 37 on Okinawa, a tiny sliver of land about the size of a large US city. Understandably, Okinawans are furious, and with good reason. Their choicest real estate was stolen. They’ve practically been pushed into the sea, and for decades US forces have committed thousands of robberies, rapes, homicides, assaults, and other abuses they’d never get away with at home. 

On Okinawa, they’re subject to “administrative discipline” under US jurisdiction, not Japan’s, the result of America’s Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) Article 17 (on criminal justice) stating:

“The custody of an accused member of the United States armed forces or the civilian component (shall) remain with the United States until he is charged.” 

In other words, it shields US felons from prosecution under Japanese law, whisks them out of the country to avoid it, and creates an intolerable situation for Okinawans or wherever US forces are stationed. The Pentagon is in charge, not the host country. Imagine how that would go down in America if, say, China or Russia had bases here. Okinawans have no choice but to protest as 100,000 did in late April, to no avail.

After the Cheonan‘s sinking, Hatoyama agreed to change course; clearly Washington’s aim has everything to gain from stoking tensions, even more conflict, to gain popular support for diffusing a threat by a self-proclaimed nuclear power that threatens only self-defense if attacked.

Madsen said the incident occurred near Baengnyeong Island opposite North Korea, “heavily militarized and within artillery fire range… across a narrow channel.”

“The Cheonan, an ASW corvette, was decked out with state-of-the-art sonar, (and) was operating in waters with extensive hydrophone sonar arrays and acoustic underwater sensors.” Yet it detected no evidence of a submarine, mini-sub or torpedo in the area. Everything was quiet at the time.

However, Baengnyeong “hosts a joint US-South Korea military intelligence base,” US Navy SEALS, and four US ships were in the area for a joint exercise. Further, the suspect torpedo’s “metallic and chemical fingerprints” were German, not North Korean as claimed. Germany sells no torpedoes to Pyongyang. It does to Israel and the Pentagon.

Other red flags further arouse suspicions, including the “presence of the USNS Salvor,” a Navy salvage ship, earlier involved “in mine laying activities.” Former Japan Times editor, Yoichi Shimatsu, reported them at lower depths, able to explode with enough force to sink the Cheonan. He also said Pyongyang has no underwater vessels stealthy enough to slip past Byeongnyeong Island’s advanced sonar and audio detectors. 

Navy SEALS may have attached “horizontally fired anti-submarine mines on the sea floor of the channel (or perhaps) a magnetic mine to the Cheonan, as part of a covert program aimed at influencing public opinion,” stoking tensions enough to get Japan and South Korea to want our forces in the region — Washington’s aim by whatever means, including perhaps sinking an ally’s ship and killing 46 members of its crew, a minor externality to tighten its imperial grip, even at the risk of all out war.

For example he writes: “The TRNN story presents as fait accompli that North Korea fired a missile that sank a South Korean navy ship. The viewing public, however, is presented no definitive evidence to examine? Has TRNN not learned from previous US lies — for example, about Iraqi WMD — to be skeptical of US statements?”

Let’s establish first of all that this was an interview with Wilkerson, not a news report or a piece of analysis authored by myself. Wilkerson is not presented as a journalist but as the former Chief of Staff to Colin Powell. It’s obvious that he presents his own opinions and not those of TRNN.

I questioned Wilkerson repeatedly about the veracity of his claim that the North Korean’s were responsible. Here are a few of my questions:

JAY: And how do we know that it’s a torpedo? How do we know that the North did it? People are assuming this.

JAY: Now, why would the North do this? The North is denying it. They’re saying that this is being done to facilitate the reelection of the South Korean prime minister. The South has returned by re-designating the North as its main enemy, which—apparently it dropped that phrase a few years ago.

JAY: But why cause a provocation at such a level …

Mr. Petersen writes: Jay asked why would North Korea commit such a horrendous act. Notably, Jay did not pose another question: why would anyone else do it? Thus he omitted other possibilities, such as a false flag?

Petersen neglects to inform his readers that one of my questions was precisely that:

JAY: Is there anyone that gains if war breaks out on the Peninsula? Who’s got to gain from this?

WILKERSON: I can’t find anyone who gains.

JAY: I mean, if you go back to Richard Perle’s book, Perle actually wrote that he thought that the US troops should pull back to the south of South Korea and encourage South Korea to take on and get rid of North Korea.

Doesn’t this question raise the issue Petersen says I omitted?

Petersen writes:

TRNN allows demonization of North Korea: Wilkerson calls it an “Al Capone country” and a “bankrupt regime.” It is a well-known axiom that people in glass houses should not cast stones. Therefore, if North Korea is a bankrupt regime, what of Wilkerson’s own country’s regime? Is the Obama regime above being described as a “bankrupt regime”? What about the GW Bush regime that Wilkerson served under?

As Mr. Petersen well knows, TRNN has published hundreds of stories that characterize the Bush government as “criminal” and many more that describe the Obama administration as “bankrupt” or words to that affect. In fact, Wilkerson himself has called much of what Bush/Cheney did was criminal (as you will see in an upcoming series of interviews with Wilkerson on Cheney). I don’t think we need to make these points every time another country is discussed or critiqued.

On the day following the publishing of this story, we ran a Al Jazeera debate that included Bjornar Simonsen of the Korean Friendship Association, who said the charges against North Korea were speculation and raised doubts about the evidence that had been presented by the South. He also discussed China’s not condemning North Korea over the sinking of the ships.

In March of last year, TRNN presented a story titled “The cost of empire” which reports on the role of the US military base in South Korea. In this piece we say,

FREESTON: Since that time, North Korea has gone on to announce that it can no longer guarantee the safety of South Korean commercial flights in its airspace. For its part, North Korea claims it is only responding to what it believes to be the region’s real provocative act, March’s US-led war games, an exercise North Korea has condemned as a rehearsal for invasion.

One can always do better, and I think some of the issues Petersen raises are fair enough. It would have been better if I had challenged some of Wilkerson’s cold war assumptions more vigorously. We will do more on the North Korean story in the coming days and attempt to provide a fuller picture of the situation.

I should add this. When Petersen writes that North Korea is simply a ‘socialist country’, a la Cuba, he may lead his readers to assign a level of rationality to a leadership that might not be worthy of it. I would be more likely to label it a ‘xenophobic cult-of-personality in the midst of a catastrophic economic failure’.”

Our “special relationship” with this rogue state has placed the U.S. outside the same system of international law that we now seek to impose on others, including Iran.

Our handling of the current crisis on the Korean peninsula could restore our tattered reputation.

What’s the first issue that needs to be addressed?

Here’s where you the reader may well ask: “Do you mean the issue concerning the collapse of Building 7 of the World Trade Center?” No, but nor is that question irrelevant to this latest crisis.

Here’s the second issue that must be addressed: to which nations has Israel transferred nuclear weapons or nuclear weapons technology? Is North Korea on the list?

That issue became relevant with the release of The Unspoken Alliance: Israel’s Secret Relationship with Apartheid South Africa. Archival research by author, Sasha Polakowsky-Suransky, uncovered “top secret” minutes of a military agreement signed in April 1975 between Shimon Peres, now president of Israel, and South Africa’s defense minister, P.W. Botha.

Though Israel denies the conclusions reached by reporters for The Guardian (U.K.), the agreement suggests an offer of nuclear weapons while its Apartheid regime was under international sanctions.

Israel was then building a surrogate arms industry in South Africa using what was, in practical effect, slave labor. That industry has since moved to Israel where it employs “guest workers.” Peres was responsible for building Israel’s nuclear program with help from France in the 1950s.

Some weeks before the offer, Israel and South Africa signed a covert agreement (code name Secment) governing their military alliance. In the subsequent meetings, “correct payload” was used to describe the nuclear warheads Israel would provide for a Jericho missile system. As The Guardian explained:

The use of a euphemism, the ‘correct payload’, reflects Israeli sensitivity over the nuclear issue and would not have been used had it been referring to conventional weapons… the only payload the South Africans would have needed to obtain from Israel was nuclear. The South Africans were capable of putting together other warheads.

South Africa did not go ahead with the deal it was offered though it did develop its own nuclear weapons, possibly with Israeli assistance. The Apartheid government revealed the program to Nelson Mandela when he became president.

In 1986, nuclear technician, Mordechai Vanunu, revealed Israel’s nuclear weapons program to the Sunday Times (London). Vanunu was kidnapped by Mossad agents in Rome and returned for trial in Israel. Sentenced to 18 years, he served 11 years in solitary confinement. On May 23rd, he was sentenced to another three months in prison for breaking the terms of his release by having unauthorized meetings with foreigners.

Evil Doers vs. Evil Doing

Even now Israel strives against all odds to maintain “ambiguity” about its nuclear weapons. But how can you offer nuclear weapons you don’t have?

Who provided nuclear technology to North Korea? That backward state, now nuclear-armed, was included in G.W. Bush’s post-911 “Axis of Evil” speech. Care to guess who wrote that speech?

Shortly thereafter the U.S. invaded Iraq to remove an Evil Doer. Only later did we learn that our “flawed” intelligence was “fixed” around a goal long sought by Israel as chronicled in A Clean Break, a strategy document written for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu by a team of Israeli-Americans led by Richard Perle.

In 2001, Perle became chairman of the Pentagon’s Defense Policy Review Board.

The United Nations has long been scheduled to review the 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and to consider the creation of a Middle East free of nuclear weapons. As the date approached, the world community experienced a well-timed torpedo attack on a South Korean warship, reportedly by a North Korean submarine.

In the midst of these negotiations, mainstream media has been flooding the national consciousness with power-of-association stories about Iran, its nuclear program and even its links to North Korea. Tehran, of course, was the third member in the trio of Bush-era Evil Doers.

News outlets controlled by Israeli-American, Rupert Murdoch, are particularly active, including Fox News and The Wall Street Journal.

Is it true that Tel Aviv transferred to Pyongyang a German-made submarine? If so, does that qualify as evil doing?

Perhaps here is a good place to pose an out-of-sequence question: What about the collapse of Building 7?

Master Myth Makers

Does Israel routinely transfer war materiel to nations subject to international sanctions?

That would help explain their status as the world’s third largest arms exporter. The U.S. holds first place with Russia second. Israel and France vie for third and fourth, trailed by the U.K. and China in the Dirty Half Dozen.

If Israel has an extensive arsenal of nuclear weapons, why does the U.S not insist on inspections?

How does U.S. protection of Israel’s illegal conduct advance U.S. interests?

How is our conduct consistent with the behavior we are now pressing on Iran?

What is so valuable about the U.S.-Israeli relationship that we should sacrifice our credibility to cover-up violations of international law that make us appear guilty by association?

By law isn’t the U.S. obliged to support U.N. sanctions for Israel?

Why discredit the U.S. and undermine the stature of the United Nations? Wasn’t the U.N. the post-WWII organization founded in large part by the U.S. to discourage just such behavior?

Serial Provocations and Murderous Misdirection

Instead of sanctions, what do we see instead? Misdirection and intimidation.

The Internet is awash with Men in Black accounts featuring the usual array of conspiracies. Elvis may yet be blamed for a Korean peninsula incident that could ignite a nuclear war in the region.

How long before we see a story blaming Hezbollah terrorists led by the Pakistan Taliban aboard an Iranian submarine advised by Syrian nuclear scientists and Palestinian strategists?

Or aliens.

The stage has been set for another 911, possibly featuring a nuclear incident. A series of “plausible” Evil Doers have been prominently featured in assorted “terrorist incidents.”

Enough pre-staging has been done that Americans again feel insecure following the media coverage given the Ft. Hood shooting, the Christmas Day Bomber and now the Times Square Terrorist.

One small problem: none of these storylines hold up under close scrutiny. But then that’s not the point. Neither did the “intelligence” on which we relied to wage war in Iraq in response to the provocation of 911. It didn’t need to be true, just believable.

Time to Redo the Report

Anyone of substance associated with the report of the 911 Commission knows we still need a good faith investigation. Mainstream Europeans routinely call for it. Those demands are routinely couched in code due to the perils facing those in the EU who question our “special relationship.”

Instead, commentators ask about the “collapse” of Building 7. Good question. Also a fair question. The answer could lead somewhere useful. Therefore, don’t ask, don’t tell.

This entangled alliance has been an exercise in deceit since a Christian-Zionist president, a Democrat, was induced to extend recognition to an enclave of extremists.

Harry Truman dismissed the concerns of the Joint Chiefs who warned him about their “fanatical concepts” and their plans for “military and economic hegemony over the entire Middle East.”

We were deceived by our own better nature to embrace a relationship that has long been at odds with our national interest. The durability of the relationship has long failed to pass muster as either rational or consistent with our values. The relationship has changed for the worse who we are as a nation.

Yet somehow the relationship endures. Along with the perceived legitimacy of this “state.”

Deception and Self-Deceit

Its persistence can be traced to the strength of a lobby that, to date, has escaped registration as a foreign agent. Those known for their skill at waging war “by way of deception” have routinely betrayed the nation that first befriended and most reliably defended them.

Even when a Christian-Zionist president, a Republican, led us to war on fixed intelligence, we were unable to identity the common source of our troubles. Some blamed G.W Bush. Others now blame Barack Obama. Both critiques miss the point. This treachery is now systemic and thoroughly embedded in both political parties.

Even now, an undisclosed media bias blocks Americans from the facts they require to make an informed choice about this relationship. And about the legitimacy of a transnational operation that murders with impunity (as in Dubai) and provokes with pleasure — anywhere they please.

Americans are now emerging from many quarters to resist the influence wielded on (and from within) our government by special interests. This special relationship often tops the list.

Many supporters of Israel have been deceived to believe that this relationship is in their best interest. The facts confirm otherwise. Like the nation itself, they too were “the mark” in this long-running fraud.

We have been seduced by those masterful at deceit to freely embrace the very forces that delegitimized us as a nation and collapsed our economy from within.

Which brings me back to the question: what about Building 7?

The biased view expressed in many textbooks has been an issue as way back as the 1950s — but in the 50s too few questioned what was being taught. The US never was the way it was portrayed in textbooks. Standard US Social Studies textbooks are based on mythology. Propaganda sells books. 

Remember those good old days in the 50s? The school day began with the reading of the Bible, the Lord’s Prayer, and the Pledge to the flag. Those were the days of pretty girls in poodle skirts and cute boys with buzz cuts. The really cool ones always carried their pack of Camels rolled up in the sleeve of their sparkling white T-shirts.

Everyone was happy back then — well, not exactly everyone. Lynching continued in the south but things like that were never discussed. Talk about lynching was never heard. Lynching continued through the 60s and still was not acknowledged by many.

Facts about lynching were not the only gaps in education in the old days. Most high school students were taught that the US never did anything wrong. Meanwhile, the CIA was in Guatemala killing the people there. Many who went to school during the 50s were so brainwashed that by the time graduation came, they were anxious to enlist in the military. Korea needed to be defeated in order to preserve our national honor. Symbols of patriotism were everywhere.

Are things any better in schools now? Are students taught about covert CIA actions, about how the US got its base at Diego Garcia, about the atrocities at No Gun Ri? When history textbooks are evaluated, one of the first words that should be checked in the index is No Gun Ri. Usually there is no mention of that US war crime.

Recently, it has been interesting watching and listening to the hate talk that has been directed toward people from other countries. If we label people “illegal”, it is socially acceptable to hate them. The term “illegal alien” is loaded with prejudice. No human being is illegal. Sometimes the law can be wrong. Remember, slavery was legal — that did not make it right. Why should the geographic location of a person’s mother at the time of his birth give any special privileges or penalties?

Are all men created equal? If that is to be a cherished national value, then the color of a person’s skin, his religion, and the location of his mother at the time of his birth are all irrelevant. Prejudice based on geography is no more acceptable than prejudice based on race, creed, ethnicity, or economic status.

In the 40s and 50s WW2 was a big topic. Most students were taught the official version of that war. They learned those lessons well, not only in the classroom. The Saturday matinee was the big event of the week. Any kid with 12 cents got in. Kids without the 12 cents usually were smart enough to figure out alternative methods of entry. The movies were often war films. Hating the Japanese was a patriotic duty. Facts about the hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians in Nagasaki and Hiroshima who were needlessly slaughtered by the atomic bombs were usually omitted in any classroom discussion. About the fire bombing of Dresden — well, that didn’t matter either. After all they were Germans.

Playing cowboys and Indians was a favorite pastime.  Kids were taught to hate Indians. No thought was ever given to the fact that Columbus could not have discovered a country that already had a native population. Logic would indicate that maybe the native people who were here first were the real discoverers. The European explorers, who were heroes in the textbooks, had blood on their hands. Students never learned about their criminal acts.

In the ’50s kids grew up hating Indians, the Japanese, Germans, and black people. Kids now grow up hating Muslims, and an assortment of other groups.  

The solution to the Texas textbook dilemma is easy. Just don’t buy the books.  This would save taxpayer money at a time when school budgets are in trouble.

There are plenty of historically accurate books that should be in classrooms. Rogue State and also Killing Hope are two superior reference books authored by William Blum. William Blum is a world-renowned historian, a former member of the US State Department, and recipient of Project Censored’s award for Exemplary Journalism.

Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States is considered to be the gold standard of US history books. No classroom is complete without it.