Today's
Stories
December 2, 2010
Michael W. Hudson
The Borrower and the Billionaire
December 1, 2010
Gareth Porter Wikileaks Exposes Complicity of the Press
Paul Craig Roberts
Hillary's Blame Game
Russ Wellen
The Frontlines of Disarmament
Nikolas Kozloff
Wikileaks Comes to Latin America
Conn Hallinan
The Future of Kashmir
Sheldon Richman
Afghanistan: No Hurry to Leave
Rich Broderick
The Free Market Puts Ireland on a Starvation Diet ... Again
David Solnit
11 Years After the WTO Uprising
Farzana Versey
No Looking "Backwards"
Charles M. Young
Whole Lotta Lies
Charles R. Larson
Six Ways to Eliminate the Deficit
Website of the Day
John Lennon: Bull in Search of a China Shop
November 30, 2010
Ralph Nader
Missing the Mark on Deficits
Paul Craig Roberts
Fabricating Terror: the Portland "Bomb" Plot
Bill Quigley
Why Wikileaks is Good for Democracy
Jonathan Cook
Wikileaks and the New Global Order
Dean Baker
When the Bubble Burst
James McEnteer
Indian Givers: South Africa is More Than Black and White
Tom Engelhardt
The National Security State Cops a Feel
Sherwood Ross
Holder v. Assange
Gina Ulysse
Haiti's Fouled-Up Election
Bill Manson
The Long Run to the Bottom
Website of the Day
Act Now to Save the Galapagos!
November 29, 2010
Paul Craig Roberts
The Stench of US Economic Decay Grows Stronger
Israel Shamir
Assange in the Entrails of Empire
Mike Whitney
Hammering Ireland
Lawrence Davidson
Glenn Beck, Julian Assange and the Battle of Ideas
Winslow Wheeler /
Sanford Gottlieb Memo to Tea Party Senators: Cutting the Defense Budget
John Carroll, MD
The Road to Vote in Haiti
P. Sainath
Obama's Indian Outing
Carl Finamore
Pilot Protests Underscore Passenger Safety
David Macaray
Why Not Declare Class War and be Done With It
Dave Lindorff
The Yahoos are in Charge
Website of the Day
Mark Ruffalo Put on Terror Watch List for Screening Anti-Natural Gas Film
November 26 - 28, 2010
Alexander Cockburn
Run, Russ, Run
Winslow T. Wheeler
The Defense Budget and the Deficit: How the Plans Compare
Ramzy Baroud
Obama Surrenders Palestinian Rights
Harry Browne
Ireland and the House of Cards
Bill Quigley /
Nicole Phillips
Haiti's Sham Elections
Saul Landau
Bombing the Senses: Ads to the Brain
Brian Cloughley
Thanksgiving of the Drones
Fidel Castro
The Lights of Rebellion:
Evo Answers NATO
Francis Shor
Normalizing Blowback
Steve Heilig
How (Not) to Legalize Pot
Terrence Paupp
Obama's Fading Empire
Brenda Norrell
The Women of AIM: Watching for the Men in Shiny Shoes
Missy Beattie
The Greedy and the Needy
Linh Dinh
Power Grabs at the Airport
Christopher Brauchli
Gouged While Flying
Eric Walberg
Russia and NATO
Ellen Taylor
The Navy's Toxic Tentacles
Ron Jacobs
Zizek and the End Times
Bill Manson
Manufactured Hysteria and Relative Risks
Harvey Wasserman
Terror! Oil!! Opium!!!
Walter Brasch
Fairness and the Bristol Stomp
Michael Dickinson
World Strike Day 2012
Ingmar Lee
The Appalling BC Tar Sands Pipeline
Gwyneth Leech
Staying, Not Going:
Artists Loving New York City
David Ker Thomson
Asking For Whom the Bell Tolls
Charles R. Larson
Lynd Ward: America's First Graphic Novelist
Poets' Basement
Dennison, Chaet and Clark
Website of the Weekend
Don't Touch My Junk
November 25, 2010
Michael Hudson
A "Flat Tax" for the Rich?
Mike Whitney
Memo to Ireland: "Tell the EU and IMF to Shove It!"
Gareth Porter
Why Gen. Petraeus was Snookered by the "Taliban" Imposter
Sarah Anderson
Food Should Not be a Poker Chip
Karl Grossman
The Skin of Our Teeth: Avoiding Nuclear Destruction
David Ker Thomson
Canadian Thanksgiving: If We Didn't Have It, We'd Have to Invent It
Rajesh Makwana / Adam Parsons
Rethinking the Global Economy: the Case for Sharing
Charles R. Larson
Palintology 101 (Part One)
Website of the Day
"We didn't land on Plymouth Rock, Plymouth Rock landed on us"
November 24, 2010
Jeffrey St. Clair
BP's Inside Game
Paul Craig Roberts
TSA's Gestapo Empire
James Ridgeway Invasion of the Body Scanners: Is TSA Spreading Cancer?
Michael Scott
First a Hand on Your Crotch, Next a Boot in Your Face
Nick Dearden
The Climate Loan Crisis: Making Poor Countries Pay Twice
Russell Mokhiber
Private Insurance Induced Stress Disorder?
Daniel Moss
Tear Down the Dam; Restore the Commons
Farzana Versey
The Media as Middle Man
Yasin Gaber
The Marvels of Exile: Judith Butler on Edward Said
Dan Beaton
A Tale of Two Elections: Burma and Haiti
Website of the Day
Useless Gobshites!
November 23, 2010
Pam Martens
Ten Ideas to Starve the Wall Street Beast
Patrick Cockburn
The Dangers of Embedded Journalism
Ben Rosenfeld /
Lauren Regan
When the Constitution is No Obastacle for the FBI:
Legal Lessons From the Green Scare
Franklin C. Spinney
Another Free Ride for the Pentagon?
Dean Baker
Sinking Ireland
Ralph Nader
Obamabush: Semper Fi, Barack
Ray McGovern
Bush the Warmonger in His Own Words
George Wuerthner
Livestock and Predators: How to Stop the Killing
Don Monkerud
America's New Entertainment
Clare Bayard
Healing From Empire
Website of the Day
The American Galapagos
November 22, 2010
Michael Hudson
Why Paul Krugman Waves the Flag for Uncle Sam
James Abourezk
Honoring Helen Thomas
Paul Craig Roberts
Insouciant Americans
Sasan Fayazmanesh
When Sanctions Are Not Enough
Richard Forno
TSA and the New "Americanism"
Gary Leupp
Ignorance There ... and Here
Martha Rosenberg
Seven Ways Medical Conflicts of Interest are Disguised
Lawrence Davidson
Obama Plays the Fox
Patrick Bond
"Leave the Oil in the Soil!"
Michael Dickinson
Kiss My Ring: the Vatican Versus Jesus
Website of the Day
Globeistan
November 19 - 21, 2010
Alexander Cockburn
Time for a Real Mutiny
Jeffrey St. Clair
Let Them Eat Oil
Mike Whitney
Tying Bernanke's Hands
Joanne Mariner
The Banalization of Torture
Gareth Porter
The Fatal Flaw in the Iran Missile Docs
Karen Greenberg
Guilty Until Proven Guilty
Thomas Christie, Pierre Sprey, Franklin Spinney et al.
How to Cut the Defense Budget
Rannie Amiri
Way Beyond Chutzpah: Cantor Crosses the Line
Dr. Jim Morgan Haiti's New Normal: Dispatch from Cite Soleil
Lawrence Swaim
Israel's War Against the Dead
Ramzy Baroud
Education at Gunpoint
Ron Jacobs
No Alternative in Afghanistan?
Robert Alvarez
Shelving START
Russell Mokhiber
War is a Drug
P. Sainath
India's Great Drain Robbery
David Macaray
194 Years of Scabs
Carl Finamore
Hyatt's Dirty Safety Record
Brian Tierney
Hotel Workers Rising
Franklin Lamb
How the US and Israel Hope to Destroy Hezbollah
Gerald E. Scorse
The Truth About Capital Gains
Joshua Brollier
Natives Without a Nation
Missy Beattie
So Many Messages
Stewart J. Lawrence
Immigration Supporters Win Big Victory in California
Brenda Norrell
On the Border: Where Skin Color is the Dividing Line
Christopher Brauchli
Pot and the Deficit: the Hidden Cost of Prohibition
Carol Polsgrove
The Governor and the Power Plant
David Ker Thomson
Against Jane Jacobs
Dave Lindorff
No News is Not Good News
Jeff Deasy
Here Come the FrankenSalmon
Bill Manson
The Politics of Nice
Clifton Ross
Dancing With Dangl
Charles R. Larson Twain: the Last Word, One Hundred Years Later
Richard Estes
"Carlos:"
An Orientalist Masterpiece
David Yearsley
Schumann and the Warm Bath of Memory
Poets' Basement
Springate, Orloski and Cirino
Website of the Weekend
Buy Nothing
November 18, 2010
Diana Johnstone
NATO's True Role in US Grand Strategy
Mike Whitney
Ireland's Suicide Pact with the EU
Behzad Yaghmaian
Facing a Leaderless Globalization
Kenneth E. Hartman
Are They Really Opposed to the Death Penalty?
Norman Solomon
Wooing the Economic Royalists
Michael Winship
Don't Ask, Don't Care
Patrick Bond
Will Zimbabwe Regress Again?
Joel S. Hirschhorn
The Anti-Incumbent Movement Failed
Website of the Day
Free Speech on Trial
November 17, 2010
Vicente Navarro
The Hypocrisies of Mario Vargas Llosa
James Bovard
The Political Slaughterhouse
Jonathan Cook
Obama's Bribe
Dean Baker
Seoul Searching on Trade and Currency
Ralph Nader
Bush at Large
Nick Turse
Off-Base America
Sherry Wolf Alienation 101: the Online Learning Rip Off
Judith Scherr
Why Aristide's Party Won't Vote
Peter Certo
Defense Cuts Go Mainstream
Website of the Day
The Last Outsider Director: an Interview with Jean-Luc Godard
November 16, 2010
Pam Martens
How the Fed and the Treasury Stonewalled Mark Pittman to His Dying Breath
Richard Forno
TSA and America's Zero Risk Culture
Gareth Porter
The Unending Occupation of Iraq
Harry Browne
Bruce Springsteen's "Promise" and the Price You Pay
Peter Lee
QE2 as Self-Inflicted Wound
Alan Farago
How Much Gold Does George Bush Own?
Franklin Lamb
Is the American Public About to Toss Israel?
Frank Green
Conspiracy in Theory: Truthers Slog On
Sheldon Richman
Blood on His Hands
Thomas H. Naylor
Shattering the Myth of Vermont
Website of the Day
Peaceful Uprising
November 15, 2010
Michael Hudson
Obama's Greatest Betrayal
Steve Hendricks
More Torture, Please?
Paul Craig Roberts
Eyes Only on Burma
Harvey Wasserman
Accidents in Progress:
America's Eggshell Nukes
Lawrence Davidson
Palestine and the Fate of the UN
Clancy Sigal
The Long Disease of War
David Macaray
The War Over Food Stamps
Tom Engelhardt
The Stimulus Package in Kabul
Steven Fake
Liberating Thought
Website of the Day
Whatever ...
November 12 - 14, 2010
Alexander Cockburn
A Very Bitter Woman
Patrick Cockburn
Iraq's Stalemate Ends
Mike Whitney
Erin Go Broke
Ismael Hossein-Zadeh
The Militarization of the World: the Case of Iran
Dean Baker
The Perverse Priorities and Fatal Flaws of the Deficit Commission Report
Gareth Porter
Intel Failure in Yemen
William E. Alberts
Why Are the Feds Targeting Black Officials?
Bill Hatch
Jerry Brown's Parable of the Rocking Boat
Jonathan Cook
Re-Unifying the Palestinian Nation
Patrick Madden Mystifying the Crisis: Deadlock at the G20
Ramzy Baroud
Another Baghdad Massacre
Rannie Amiri
The Quest for Power in Iraq
James Zogby
Whither Obama's Middle East Agenda?
Ron Jacobs
Palestine, a Family's Story
Mark Weisbrot
Why It Could Get Even Worse for the Democrats
Tanya Golash-Boza
Targeting Jamaicans
Paul Wright
The Case Against Stacia A. Hylton
Steve Early
TDU in Chicago: Still Punching
Martha Rosenberg
Vioxx All Over Again?
Celia McAteer
London Calling: Student Militancy a Welcome Surprise
Larry Portis
Imperialist Architecture in Egypt
Michael Winship
Riding the Rails, Looking for Work
Brian McKenna
Anorexia and Capitalism
Gerald E. Scorse
Channeling Reagan on Tax Reform
Christopher Brauchli
Making Oklahoma Safe From Sharia Law
Roberto Rodriguez
Arizona: Where Fear is the Predicate
Dr. Susan Block
My Porn Star Girlfriend
J. T. Cassidy
Unlocking Imagination in Japan
Linh Dinh
Revolution Number 10
Farzana Versey
The Misinterpreters of Kashmir's Maladies
David Ker Thomson
The Elizabethan Era: Life in the Ice Age
Phil Rockstroh
Public Like a Frog
Charles R. Larson
Abused Women ... Still a Growth Industry
David Swanson
Tall Tillman Tales
Saul Landau
"Stone:" Walking Invisibly in the American Crowd
Kim Nicolini
An Intimate Look at How Things are Made in China
David Yearsley
The Esserzici Work-Out Book
Poets' Basement
Three by Lee Stern
Website of the Day
Bombs Away!
November 11, 2010
Peter Linebaugh
Laying Down of Arms
Paul Craig Roberts Licensed to Kill
Bill Quigley
Bush Pens True Crime Book
David Macaray Dissing the Boss: the NLRB Files a Landmark Complaint on Free Expression in the Workplace
Liaquat Ali Khan / Jasmine Abou-Kassem
Why the Oklahoma Shariah Law is Unconstitutional
Dedrick Muhammad
Race and Economics
Robert Bryce
Cars for the Elite: Obama's Electric Vehicle Fetish
Alan Farago
What, No Phone Books?
Website of the Day
London Calling
November 10, 2010
Allan Nairn
US-Backed Death Squad Files Surface in Indonesia
Dean Baker
Wall Street's TARP Gang Rides Again: Now They're Coming After Your Social Security!
Nicola Nasser
Waiting for Godot in Palestine
Missy Beattie
Running Scared:
My Colonoscopy Saga
Sergio Ferrari
Worrying Signs From Venezuela to Ecuador
Patrick Cockburn
Can Iraq's Leaders Do a Deal?
Dave Lindorff Mumia: New Lawyer, New Round
Sherwood Ross
How Affirmative Action Brought Willie Mays to the Giants
Joshua Frank
Sinking the Breakwater
Website of the Day
Stiglitz: "Throw the Bankers in Jail to Save the Economy"
November 9, 2010
Uri Avnery
Obama's Defeat
Mike Whitney
Bernanke's Dollar Policy
Jordan Flaherty
The Incarceration Capital of the US: the Crisis Inside New Orleans' Jails
Afshin Rattansi
Red Poppies
Annie Gell
Haiti's Unnatural Disasters
Dean Baker
The Fed's Second Shot
Dave Lindorff
BS From the BLS: Things are Much Worse Than They are Telling Us
Stewart J. Lawrence
The Nancy Monster That Refuses to Die
Walter Brasch
Love and Loss Among the Wild Horses
Website of the Day
Cut This: an Open Letter to the Tea Party
November 8, 2010
Paul Craig Roberts
Phantom Jobs
Thomas Healy
An Interview with Wendell Berry
David Swanson
A CIA Kidnapping in Milan
David Smith-Ferri
What Laila Sees
Ralph Nader
When Betrayed Voters Go to the Polls
Ray McGovern Torture Sans Regrets: Bush's Confessions
John Feffer
The Lies of Islamophobia
Christopher Ketcham
TV Toxicosis: What the Stewart / Colbert News Clowns Are Really Up To
Website of the Day
Sam Husseini Interrogates Rand Paul and Mike Pence
November 5 - 7, 2010
Alexander Cockburn
Now for the Good News
Vijay Prashad
Obama in India: a Tide of Turbans
Patrick Cockburn
If al-Qa'ida Really Want to Hit the West, They Can
Darwin Bond-Graham
Guess Who's Not Coming to Tea?
Mike Whitney
Dollar in the Dustbin
Linn Washington, Jr.
An Epidemic of Brutality: Oakland Filmmaker Feels Police Wrath
Rannie Amiri
STL = Sandbag the Lebanese
Ramzy Baroud
The Middle East's Stagnant "Change"
Larry Portis
Chou Sar? What Happened in Lebanon?
Gary Leupp
The Yemeni Toner Cartridge Bomb Story
William Loren Katz
Are Cruel Years Coming to a Neighborhood Near You?
Brian Cloughley
Spheres of Influence
Mark Weisbrot
The Fatal Mistake
Rubén M. Lo Vuolo, Daniel Raventós / Pablo Yanes
Basic Income in Times of Economic Crisis
Joseph Nevins
Ecological Privilege and the Frequent Flyer Activist
Neve Gordon
Thought Crimes
Alan Farago
The Bhopal Economy
Stewart J. Lawrence
Immigration Policy After the Midterm Elections
James R. King
The Other Side of Yemen
Ron Jacobs
How Ken Kesey Turned On America
Franklin Lamb
Israel Claims Victory in US Midterm Elections
James McEnteer
Beyond the Rational:
the Alamo Election
Richard Phelps
Guy Fawkes and the Pressure of a Terrorism Spotlight
Saul Landau
Where's the Sanity Clause?
David Ker Thomson The Long Argument
Evelyn Pringle
The Vaccination Profiteers
Joseph G. Ramsey Until Pigs Fly: the Morning After With Michael Moore
Stanley Heller
Up Yours, John Stewart
Missy Beattie
The Big Universe
Harvey Wasserman
Vermont's Great Green Election Day Victory
Billy Wharton
Where Did Everybody Go?
Shamus Cooke
Democrats Run to the Right
Linh Dinh
War Games: Guns and Balls
Windy Cooler
Rallying Through This
Charles R. Larson
Witnesses of Haiti's History: Edwidge Danticat's "Create Dangerously"
Phyllis Pollack
Keith Richards' Demon Life
David Yearsley
Bach and the Music of Time
Website of the Weekend
Smearing Jean-Luc Godard as an "Anti-Semite"
November 4, 2010
Doug Peacock
Desert Solitaire, Revisited
Andrew Cockburn
Why Summers Goes and Geithner Stays
Iain Boal
Crisis at Pacifica: the Two-Percent Putsch
Paul Craig Roberts
The Impotence of Elections
Chase Madar
Guantánamo: Exception or Rule?
Dave Lindorff
Take That You Smug Bastards!
Russell Mokhiber
Bought and Paid For
Laura Flanders
Lessons From Elizabeth Warren
Website of the Day
Moyers: the Howard Zinn Lecture
November 3, 2010
Alexander Cockburn
America the Clueless
Franklin C. Spinney
Democratic Debacle
Chris Floyd Dissatisfied Mind: Flickers of Hope in a Deadly Political Cycle
William Blum
Jon Stewart and the Left
Sheldon Richman
Provoking Yemeni Terrorism
Stephen Soldz
Fleecing Members, Colluding in Torture
Mark Weisbrot
Dilma's Victory in Brazil
Stewart J. Lawrence
Court Sends Mixed Signals on Arizona Immigration Law
Manuel Garcia, Jr. Election Night in Oakland
Norman Solomon
Now What?
Website of the Day
Save Our Social Security
November 2, 2010
Vincent Navarro
What's Happening in Europe?
Ishmael Reed
Brown Shirts, Black Shirts, T-Shirts
Uri Avnery
The Occupation and Political Corruption in Israel
Mark Driscoll
When the Pentagon "Kill Machines" Came to an Okinawan Paradise
Mike Whitney
Midterm Day of Reckoning: "Let the Landslide Begin"
Linh Dinh
Prone Pioneers: Punishing the Desperate for Being Desperate
David Macaray
Bring Back the Fifties! America's Most Misunderstood Decade
Randall Amster Wikilessons: War is a Joke, But It Isn't Funny
Betsy Ross
How the Banks Trumped Keynes
Yves Engler
A Sad Spectacle:
Canada and the Jewish National Fund
Website of the Day
Gulf Oil Toxic to Humans
November 1, 2010
Ted Honderich
The Farce of Fairness
Steven Higgs
Don't Act Don't Sell: Why Liberals Will Get What They Deserve on Election Day
John Ross
A Ding-Dong Year for Death in Mexico
Dean Baker
A Darkening Future: Why Growth Still Feels Like a Recession
Ralph Nader
When Corporations are the Government
Justin E. H. Smith
The People Without History
Marjorie Cohn
Hyping Fear
Scott Boehm
Juan Williams and Katrina
Brian Tierney
The Struggle of DC's Nurses
Trish Kahle
Jon Stewart, Are You Really That Sane?
Martha Rosenberg Bathrobe Erectus: Feting Hugh Hefner
Website of the Day
Scary New Wage Data
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December 2, 2010
In the Footsteps of the Bush Administration
If the US Wants Peace in North Korea, It Should Keep Its Word
By MIKE WHITNEY
On January 29, 2002, former President George W. Bush designated North Korea as one of three nations in the "axis of evil". Bush made it clear that these countries were enemies of the United States and that they would be targets of future US aggression. Shortly after Bush's State of the Union Address, the administration released its National Defense Strategy which claimed the right to preemptively attack countries it saw as threats to US hegemony. Naturally, North Korea took these developments seriously and prepared a strategy to defend itself against a US attack.
Less than a year after Bush's speech, North Korea withdrew from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). And, six years after that, on May 25, 2009, North Korea conducted a nuclear weapons test in a remote north-eastern area of the country which triggered a 4.7 magnitude earthquake. Experts now believe that North Korea has a stockpile of between 6 to 9 nuclear weapons.
North Korean leaders were forced to develop a nuclear arsenal to defend themselves against US aggression. It was a reasonable response to Bush's saber rattling.
On November 30, 2010, North Korea announced that it had opened its first uranium enrichment plant. According to the Christian Scientist Monitor: "For the first time, North Korea made its uranium enrichment program a matter of written record Tuesday with the proud claim in the country’s leading newspaper of a modern facility that is already operational....”
That revelation... marks another step toward North Korea’s emergence as a nuclear power. The North's “modern uranium enrichment plan’” was still under construction but was already “equipped with several thousand centrifuges,” according to the newspaper. In recent years Pyongyang has already exploded two nuclear devices with plutonium at their core." ("It's official: North Korea says 'modern' nuclear plant is operating", Christian Scientist Monitor)
So, the North has nukes and has thus spared itself a fate similar to Iraq's. No doubt, leaders in Tehran are looking on with envy.
Virtually all of the western media have condemned North Korea's recent shelling of Yeongpyeong which killed a number of innocent civilians. But the media leave out important details which help to explain why the North acted as it did. South Korea missionary, Gene Matthews breaks down the incident like this in The Progressive:
“North Korea has always felt threatened by joint military exercises of the U.S. and South Korea, and has always protested against them,” he says. “This time, North Korea stated that the exercises were taking place in North Korean territory and that if shots were fired during the exercise they would retaliate. Shots were fired (not at the North, it should be pointed out but out toward the ocean) and the North retaliated.” ("Keeping Perspective on North Korea", The Progressive)
So we can see that, however foolish, this was not an act of aggression on the part of the North, but defense. The US/South Korea military exercises are intentionally provocative. The North merely did what it felt it had to do to send a message that it will defend its borders. US citizens would expect nothing less if Russia and China were carrying out military maneuvers on the Canadian border or off the coast of San Diego.
Barack Obama is following in the footsteps of the early Bush administration. Bush eventually learned that hostility does not work with North Korea, so he backed down. After six years of belligerence, Bush caved in to nearly all of North Korea's demands and got nothing in return. The UN's nuclear watchdog agency, the IAEA, did not gain access to Kim Jong-il's nuclear stockpile or to its "Top-Secret" file on weapons programs. Nor were IAEA inspectors allowed to conduct surprise "go anywhere, see anything" inspections. None of Bush's main objectives was achieved, in fact, the ex-president even had North Korea removed from the State Department's list of "supporters of terrorism". All the while, the North continued to develop its long-range ballistic-missile delivery system, the Taepodong 2, which will eventually be able to strike cities in the US.
The Bush policy turned out to be a disaster and was viciously criticized by former supporters on the right. Here's what Claudia Rosett, of "The Rosett Report" (a favorite at the Weekly Standard and the American Enterprise Institute) said at the time:
"The lesson to date is that America, faced with nuclear blackmail, will bow down, dignify and fortify tyrants, fork over loot, and celebrate the process as a victory for diplomacy. Were North Korea to detonate a nuclear bomb over Los Angeles tomorrow, I start to wonder if Condi Rice and Chris Hill, would describe the cataclysm as "troubling" and then re-cast it as a candid and informative addendum to North Korea's promised declaration of its nuclear program."
And here's a blurp from neocon John Bolton:
"The only good news is that there is little opportunity for the Bush administration to make any further concessions in its waning days in office. But for many erstwhile administration supporters, this is a moment of genuine political poignancy. Nothing can erase the ineffable sadness of an American presidency, like this one, in total intellectual collapse."
Now Obama wants to resume hostilities with the North, while expecting a different outcome than Bush; tougher sanctions, more military exercises, more pressure from allies, and a stubborn refusal to conduct bilateral negotiations. It's madness. There's been no change in the approach at all. If anything, Obama has taken a harder line than Bush.
And what does the North want?
The North wants what it has always wanted. It wants the US to honor its obligations under the 1994 Agreed Framework. That's it. All Obama needs to do to end the current standoff, is to keep his end of the bargain. Here's how Jimmy Carter summed it up in a Washington Post op-ed (November 24, 2010):
"...in September 2005, an agreement … reaffirmed the basic premises of the 1994 accord. (The Agreed Framework) Its text included denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, a pledge of non-aggression by the United States and steps to evolve a permanent peace agreement to replace the U.S.-North Korean-Chinese cease-fire that has been in effect since July 1953. Unfortunately, no substantive progress has been made since 2005...
“This past July I was invited to return to Pyongyang to secure the release of an American, Aijalon Gomes, with the proviso that my visit would last long enough for substantive talks with top North Korean officials. They spelled out in detail their desire to develop a denuclearized Korean Peninsula and a permanent cease-fire, based on the 1994 agreements and the terms adopted by the six powers in September 2005....
“North Korean officials have given the same message to other recent American visitors and have permitted access by nuclear experts to an advanced facility for purifying uranium. The same officials had made it clear to me that this array of centrifuges would be ‘on the table’ for discussions with the United States, although uranium purification - a very slow process - was not covered in the 1994 agreements.
“Pyongyang has sent a consistent message that during direct talks with the United States, it is ready to conclude an agreement to end its nuclear programs, put them all under IAEA inspection and conclude a permanent peace treaty to replace the ‘temporary’ cease-fire of 1953. We should consider responding to this offer. The unfortunate alternative is for North Koreans to take whatever actions they consider necessary to defend themselves from what they claim to fear most: a military attack supported by the United States, along with efforts to change the political regime." ("North Korea's consistent message to the U.S.", President Jimmy Carter, Washington Post)
There it is in black and white. The US can end the conflict today by just keeping its word. Unfortunately, the United States never had any intention of meeting its obligations under the terms of the Agreed Framework or of resolving the nuclear issue on the Korean peninsula. From the very beginning, the US stalled on its promise to build 2 lightwater reactors to meet the North's electrical needs. None of the essential components--turbines or generators--were ever delivered. A foundation was built for one of the reactors, but nothing more.
The US also agreed to organize an international consortium to guarantee funding for the reactors, but never followed through. The US never made any effort to keep its end of the bargain. So, (reluctantly) the North withdrew from the NPT and build 9 nuclear weapons. Of course, none of this appears in US media where it might interrupt the daily flow of anti-North Korea propaganda.
Bottom line: The reason there is no peace in Korea is because Washington doesn't want peace. It's that simple.
Mike Whitney lives in Washington state. He can be reached at fergiewhitney@msn.com
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Bush and Botox World
with a Foreword by Gore Vidal
Click Here to Order!
Grand Theft Pentagon
How They Made a Killing on the War on Terrorism
Spell Albuquerque:
Memoir of a
"Difficult Student"
By Tennessee Reed
"Powerful and shocking ..
see this film"
-- Joseph Stiglitz on American Casino
The Occupation
by Patrick Cockburn
Humanitarian Imperialism
By Jean Bricmont
CITY BEAUTIFUL
By Tennessee Reed
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