In-depth analysis of crisis on Korean Peninsula: U.S. threatens war

[ckaihatsu]

In-depth analysis of crisis on Korean Peninsula: U.S. threatens war (http://fightbacknews.us1.list-manage1.com/track/click?u=a29530af96a02fc55d345e735&id=c7f7126d65&e=d323598fe4)

People's impeachment of pro-U.S. Park government in the south

http://www.fightbacknews.org/sites/default/files/imagecache/article-lead-photo/KoreanoUS.jpg

By staff

Washington DC - On March 22, the U.S. military conducted the largest-ever military exercise with south Korea's armed forces, preparing for an invasion and military strike on the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK). These war games amassed 300,000 South Korean troops and 17,000 U.S. troops on the 38th parallel, which has formally divided Korea into 'north' and 'south' since 1945. U.S. stealth bombers and South Korean fighter jets simulated bombing Pyongyang, the capitol of the DPRK, along with other sites in anticipation of "a crisis situation" in the Korean Peninsula, according to U.S. Navy commanders.

This massive mobilization of the U.S. and south Korean war machines took place amid new threats of military aggression by the Trump administration. Speaking in Seoul, South Korea, on March 17, U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson rejected the possibility of peace negotiations with the DPRK over its nuclear weapons program. Speaking on "military conflict,” he told reporters and South Korean officials, "that option's on the table."

"The policy of strategic patience has ended," said Tillerson during a press conference. "We are exploring a new range of security and diplomatic measures." The unprecedented war games in the Korean peninsula last week make clear that these measures include outright war.

The U.S. called its joint military exercises with south Korea "purely defensive," supposedly in response to a missile test by the DPRK. But considering the U.S. outspends the DPRK on its military in a big way - Trump's proposed budget raises U.S. military spending to $603 billion versus the DPRK's $10 billion - this claim is another example of Trump's ‘alternative facts’ at work.

Mass movement in south Korea topples corrupt U.S.-backed president

Despite its enormous military presence, the U.S. agenda in the Korean Peninsula is not going well. On March 10, South Korea's Constitutional Court upheld the impeachment of President Park Geun-hye on corruption charges. Park is the daughter of former military dictator Park Chung-hee, who ruled the south of Korea from 1961 to 1979 when he was overthrown by a mass movement of workers, labor unions and students.

Park won the 2012 presidential election in the south backed by a coalition of U.S. interests and giant corporations like Samsung. Her government launched a massive assault on unions and the working class, which was met with massive strikes that shut down production and transportation for days. In October 2016, 7000 truckers in south Korea went on strike opposing Park's plans to deregulate the industry and bust unions. The truckers' strike exploded into a widespread worker revolt when Park declared the work stoppage illegal and sent riot police to break the union by force. Rail workers, teachers, factory workers and others also struck and added fuel to the fire.

As president, Park followed the foreign policy line of the U.S. She cut off economic ties with the DPRK, antagonized the People's Republic of China, and defended the continued presence of U.S. military bases in Korea, despite popular protests. Of particular importance was her support for the Thermal High-Area Altitude Defense (THAAD) missile system pushed by the U.S. THAAD's stated purpose is to defend against attacks by the DPRK, but critics agree it would not successfully shoot down intercontinental ballistic missiles if indeed they were fired. Its real purpose is conducting surveillance on China and advancing Washington's long-term plans for war.

Last year, Park's government came under intense fire over revelations of a web of corruption between her administration and major corporations like Samsung. Park's closest advisor - a Rasputin-like cult leader and childhood friend - traded political favors for big business in exchange for money. Massive protests by workers, unions and students forced the National Assembly to impeach Park on Dec. 9, 2016, which was upheld by the Constitutional Court on March 10.. Park and others now face criminal charges stemming from the corruption investigation.

Discredited by the impeachment and opposed by the militant Korean working class, Park's right-wing Saenuri Party stands to lose the upcoming presidential election. Moon Jae-in, the candidate for the liberal Democratic Party of Korea, has a comfortable lead in the polls. She promises re-engagement with the DPRK and has signaled deep skepticism towards the THAAD missile defense system, along with the overall role of the U.S. military in south Korea. Depending on the outcome, the May 9 presidential election could spell disaster for U.S. military plans in the Korean Peninsula.

The legacy of the Korean War

The U.S. media talks about 'north' and 'south' Korea as two separate countries. In reality, Korea is a single nation that was forcibly divided by the U.S. immediately after World War II. The DPRK, along with some progressive political parties, labor unions, and most working people living in the south, remain committed to an independent, reunified Korea to this day.

In World War II, Korea played a crucial rule in defeating the Japanese. An anti-colonial guerrilla army, led by communists like Kim Il Sung, overthrew Japan's bloodthirsty colonial system in 1945, but the U.S. moved in quickly to capture Japan's old empire for itself. U.S. military officers divided Korea in two along the 38th parallel and established a capitalist puppet government in the south made up of elites and former Japanese collaborators. Fearing the widespread popularity of the communists in the north and the left-wing people's committees in the south, the Truman administration launched a military campaign to violently crush the Korean revolution in 1950. Aided by the Soviet Union and socialist China, the Korean People’s Army (KPA) pushed the U.S led invasion back to the 38th parallel, which is now the southern border of the DPRK.

3 million Koreans died during the Korean War, 2 million from the north and a million in the south, according to University of Chicago professor Bruce Cumings. That means 1 in 10 Koreans, and 1 in 5 north Koreans - died as a direct result of the U.S./United Nations military action in Korea. In the three years of the Korean War, the U.S. dropped more bombs on this small East Asian nation than all sides dropped in Europe in six years of fighting during World War II. U.S. military personnel oversaw the execution of hundreds of thousands of suspected communist sympathizers by Syngman Rhee’s puppet government in the south.

Despite the destruction caused by the Korean War, the DPRK undertook an ambitious reconstruction effort that allowed them to enjoy a higher GDP and better standard of living than the U.S.-supported regime in the south, which consistently suffered from high unemployment and low wages brought on by Western sweatshops. It wasn’t until the 1980s and the eventual collapse of the DPRK’s largest trading partner, the Soviet Union, that the Republic of Korea would overtake the north in economic productivity.

Socialism in the DPRK

In the U.S. media, the overwhelming image of the DPRK is a totalitarian hellhole. This image didn't come out of nowhere, nor does it reflect the actual reality of life in the DPRK. It's an idea intentionally cultivated through Hollywood films like The Interview, Netflix exploitation documentaries, fake news stories - like the now-discredited claim that Kim Jong Un was forcing all Koreans to get his same haircut - and sensationalist 'defector' stories, most of which are paid and written by South Korean intelligence offices.

The propaganda image of Kim Jong Un as a crazy dictator fuels the U.S. drive for war against the DPRK. After all, the only way you could believe the ludicrous idea of a tiny impoverished country firing first on the world's biggest and most armed military power is if you believe the leader (1) is totally insane, and (2) doesn't care about human life. Ironically, these characteristics apply to the billionaires in the Trump administration, which is playing with fire and risking war in east Asia.

Here are the facts: DPR Korea is a socialist country, meaning the working class and its party - the Workers Party of Korea - hold state and economic power. Its achievements in the face of sanctions and devastating warfare even impressed officials in the U.S. A declassified CIA report, written behind closed doors in 1990, explicitly recognizes that the DPRK administers outstanding social services for children, guarantees totally free housing to citizens, provides a highly successful country-wide public preventative medical program, oversees a police force with an extremely low level of corruption and has achieved high life expectancy and low infant mortality rates.

The same CIA report points out that there are more college-educated women than men in the DPRK, and admits that the Workers Party of Korea legitimately committed to ‘radical change’ in Korean gender relations. The facts support their conclusion: women are permitted to serve in the military, state child-care programs allow women to have independent careers outside of the house and a significant number of high level political positions are occupied by women, including representation in the Supreme People’s Assembly.

The DPRK’s remarkable public health care system - which provides unconditional universal coverage for citizens - continues to perform tremendously well, even in the midst of crippling U.S. sanctions. In 2010 report to the United Nations on the north Korean health care system, Dr. Margaret Chan, the Director-General of the World Health Organization, called it “something which most other developing countries would envy.” She pointed out that the “DPRK has no lack of doctors and nurses,” and praised the system for its “very elaborate health infrastructure, starting from the central to the provincial to the district level.”

Learning from history: The DPRK's nuclear program in context

The DPRK has faced economic sanctions imposed by the U.S. since its inception and remains poor, having to dedicate a large amount of its resources to defend against the threat of invasion. Imperialist aggression against the DPRK continues to this day. More than 28,000 U.S. troops permanently stationed in South Korea and the overhanging threat of U.S. Navy freighters carrying nuclear missiles in the Korean Peninsula. War games, like these latest provocations by Trump, take place every year.

After the fall of the Soviet Union and most of the socialist bloc, the U.S. began targeting the remaining socialist and national democratic states for regime change. Colin Powell, serving as a general under George H.W. Bush, said in 1992 that he was "running out of demons" to justify military buildup, saying only "Kim Il Sung and Fidel Castro" were left. Facing economic hardships from the loss of its biggest trading partner and military ally (USSR), the DPRK began investing heavily in its national defense and launched a nuclear program - both for energy and military application.

Contrary to the hysterical claims in the U.S. media that the DPRK wants to "turn Los Angeles into a sea of fire" or "nuke Seoul," the aim of the Korean nuclear program is to reduce the country's spending on the military and use it for economic development. In 2016 at the 13th Presidium, the Supreme People’s Assembly explicitly outlined the reasons for its nuclear program: deterrence.

According to the Korean Central News Agency, military spending accounts for 15.9% of the DPRK's budget, compared with 47.5% for the economy and 36.6% for social services like childcare, health care, sports and education. The DPRK spends such a large amount of its budget on its military for defense purposes, but it would prefer to spend more on developing socialism and improving living standards.

Two years after invading Iraq and toppling Saddam Hussein's government, George W. Bush presented an ultimatum to both Libya and the DPRK: Shut down their nuclear programs, cooperate with the 'war on terror," or risk regime change. Muammar Gaddafi of Libya agreed and abandoned its program, eventually facing regime change anyway when the U.S./NATO toppled his government in 2011. Kim Jong Il, on the other hand, pressed forward and announced its first successful nuclear test in 2006 - deterring U.S. military regime change to this day. The WPK hopes that the deterrence created by a fully stocked nuclear weapons arsenal will keep the U.S. and Japan at bay, allowing them to spend fewer resources on the military as a whole.

U.S. hands off Korea

Workers in the U.S. have zero to gain from a war with the DPRK and China, or the continued occupation of south Korea by the U.S. military. In a war, working class people from the U.S. - not 'fortunate sons' like the Trump brothers - would be sent to die for the profits of Wall Street. Pentagon estimates in 2013 noted the U.S. spends over $7 billion annually to maintain its military presence in south Korea - all while claiming that providing universal healthcare to workers in the U.S. is "too expensive."

When we cut through the propaganda, workers in the U.S. have a lot more in common with the people of the DPRK and the workers in the south who toppled President Park than they do with Donald Trump or the 1% class of billionaires he represents. We should stand resolutely against a war against the DPRK or China, and demand a withdrawal of U.S. troops from the Korea’s south.

Read more News and Views from the Peoples Struggle at http://www.fightbacknews.org. You can write to us at [email protected]

[ckaihatsu]

http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/04/04/pers-a04.html


Trump threatens China with war on North Korea

4 April 2017

Ahead of his meeting this week with Chinese President Xi Jinping, President Trump issued a blunt, menacing warning to Beijing to force North Korea to abandon its nuclear and missile programs … or else. Speaking to the Financial Times, he declared: “If China is not going to solve North Korea, we will. That is all that I am telling you.”

Trump outlined the ultimatum that he intends to deliver to Xi: “China has great influence over North Korea. And China will either decide to help us with North Korea, or they won’t. And if they do that will be very good for China, and if they don’t it won’t be good for anyone.”

Trump’s threats have only one meaning: if the Chinese government is not prepared to economically cripple or oust the Pyongyang regime, the US is prepared to use every means at its disposal, including its massive military might, against North Korea. As US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson emphasised during his trip to Asia last month, all options, including war with North Korea, are on the table.

Whatever measures the US might initially take, Trump made absolutely clear that he was prepared to attack North Korea and could do so with no notice. “I am not the United States of the past where we tell you where we are going to hit in the Middle East,” he told the newspaper. “Where they say … ‘We will be attacking Mosul in four months.’ … Why are they talking? There is no reason to talk.”

Behind closed doors, the Trump administration has been preparing for a war with North Korea that will not only be catastrophic for the Korean people on the divided peninsula but could drag in other major powers, including China, Russia and Japan.

The White House has just completed a review of US policy towards North Korea ahead of Xi’s meeting with Trump. While the options reportedly include heavy sanctions not only against North Korea but also Chinese firms doing business with Pyongyang, the Trump administration would not stop there.

During his recent trip, Tillerson declared that the Obama administration’s policy of incrementally increased sanctions—dubbed “strategic patience”—had failed. He also ruled out any immediate negotiations with Pyongyang. All of the remaining options—cyber warfare, provocations and covert operations to destabilise the North Korean regime and military action of various forms—threaten to rapidly plunge the region into war.

The Financial Times asked Trump: “Do you think you can solve it [North Korea] without China’s help?” His utter recklessness is summed up in his one word reply: “Totally.” Asked the same question again, he responded: “I don’t have to say any more. Totally.”

The incalculable consequences of war on the Korean Peninsula were summed up by Obama’s defence secretary, Ashton Carter, who has long been a supporter of military strikes on North Korea. Speaking to ABC News on Sunday, Carter declared that he was not optimistic about pressuring China to take action against North Korea.

Carter insisted that the military option had to remain on the table then, with callous indifference to the human suffering involved, sketched what would happen in the wake of a US pre-emptive strike on North Korea. “It is quite possible that they [Pyongyang] would … launch an attempted invasion of South Korea. As I said, I’m confident of the outcome of that war, which would be the defeat of North Korea.

“But I need to caution you. This is a war that would have an intensity of violence associated with it that we haven’t seen since the last Korean War. Seoul is right there on the borders of the DMZ [border with North Korea], so even though the outcome is certain, it is a very destructive war,” Carter declared.

Carter knows of what he speaks. As assistant defence secretary in the Clinton administration, he was deeply involved in planning for the war with North Korea in 1994 that was called off at the last minute when the Pentagon conservatively estimated the likely outcome—300,000 to 500,000 South Korean and American military casualties, not counting the death toll in North Korea and civilian dead and injured.

The death toll in the Korean War between 1950 and 1953 ran into the millions. Casualties in a war today in which North Korea as well as the US have nuclear weapons and could use nuclear weapons would be far higher. US Defence Secretary James “Mad Dog” Mattis has already warned that any attempt by Pyongyang to use its nuclear weapons would be met with an “effective and overwhelming response”—that is, nuclear annihilation.

The Korean War was the only time that China and the United States directly fought a war. The strategic position of the Korean Peninsula in North East Asia has made it a focus for invasions and wars for more than a century—involving not only the United States and China, but also Japan and Russia. The danger is that a new war would rapidly drag in other military powers, including those armed with nuclear weapons.

The danger of world war arises not simply as a result of the erratic and reckless behaviour of Trump. Rather, his irrationality is a product of the profound crisis of American and global capitalism and the determination of the US ruling class for whom he speaks to exploit its current military dominance to arrest its historic decline—whatever the outcome. A quarter century of military provocations and invasions in the Middle East and Central Asia are now coalescing into a confrontation with major US rivals—above all, China and Russia.

The reaction of the North Korean regime to the growing threat of war is utterly reactionary. Its missile and nuclear tests play directly into Washington’s hands by providing a pretext for war. Moreover, Pyongyang’s nationalist bombast and bloodcurdling threats against the US, Japan and South Korea only heighten the danger of war and sow divisions in the international working class.

Unlike the criminal US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 or the more recent wars in the Middle East, the countdown to war against North Korea is not being made public. Nevertheless it is proceeding with a relentless logic. Workers around the globe cannot afford to wake up one morning to find that the US has bombed North Korea and the world stands on the brink of a nuclear war.

The only means for halting the drive to war is to put an end to its source—the bankrupt profit system and its division of the world into rival nation states—through the building of a unified anti-war movement of the working class based on socialist internationalism.

Peter Symonds

Copyright © 1998-2017 World Socialist Web Site - All rights reserved

[Ale Brider]

I agree with the conclusion that a war on the DPRK would be catastrophic, but the "Socialism in the DPRK" part is just miserably low-effort. Those paragraphs basically describe a decent Bismarckian state with all that welfare (which I'm skeptical of) dynastic rule, and powerless parliamentary or quasi-parliamentary institutions.

[ckaihatsu]

http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/04/05/pers-a05.html


World teeters on the brink of war

5 April 2017

US officials made a series of extraordinary and provocative statements directed against North Korea Tuesday, underscoring the growing danger of the eruption of a major war in the Pacific.

“The clock has now run out, and all options are on the table” in dealing with North Korea, one US official told reporters. After North Korea test-fired another ballistic missile into the Sea of Japan Tuesday evening, US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson issued an ominous and perfunctory statement, declaring, “The United States has spoken enough about North Korea. We have no further comment.”

The implications of these cryptic and threatening statements were further elucidated by retired General John “Jack” Keane, a top advisor to the Hillary Clinton campaign who declined an offer to be Trump’s Secretary of Defense in November.

“A preemptive strike against launch facilities, underground nuclear sites, artillery and rocket response forces and regime leadership targets may be the only option left on the table,” Keane told the Times of London on Tuesday. “We are rapidly and dangerously moving towards a military option.”

On Saturday, US President Donald Trump declared that he is prepared to go to war against North Korea “unilaterally.”

Former US Defense Secretary Ashton Carter, a supporter of US military escalation against China and North Korea, said over the weekend that a US military operation against North Korea would “have an intensity of violence associated with it that we haven’t seen since the last Korean War,” which killed nearly three million people.

Even as the White House threatens to initiate a major military conflict in the Pacific, the US media has been braying for a further escalation in Syria in response to what it claims to be a chemical weapons attack by the government of Bashar Al-Assad.

The United States, Britain and France proposed a United Nations Security Council resolution condemning the attack, which is set for a vote on Wednesday. Trump in a statement condemned the “heinous actions by the Bashar al-Assad regime,” which he blamed on the “weakness” of his predecessor, Barack Obama.

The US is in the process of funneling hundreds of additional troops into Iraq and Syria, all with no public discussion or debate. Last week, a Pentagon spokesman told the Los Angeles Times, “The coalition will not routinely announce or confirm information about the capabilities, force numbers, locations, or movement of forces in or out of Iraq and Syria.”

Trump reiterated this point in an interview with the Financial Times this weekend, saying, “I am not the United States of the past where we tell you where we are going to hit in the Middle East… why are they talking? There is no reason to talk.”

The raging conflict in Syria and the potential for a “preemptive strike” against North Korea are in fact proxy fights in the US’s conflict with its larger geopolitical adversaries: China and Russia, against whom the US is likewise directly ramping up its military posture.

Over the weekend, a further 1,350 troops from NATO’s Enhanced Forward Presence in Eastern Europe arrived in Orzysz in northeastern Poland. These troops, together with thousands of other NATO forces deployed in Poland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, have been deployed to counter “violent Russian agitation and Russian aggression,” according to Tillerson.

Within days, Trump is expected to further escalate tensions with Russia by announcing the US response to alleged Russian violations of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, which media outlets like the New York Times are clamoring should become the occasion for the escalation of US tensions with Russia.

On Friday, Trump also signed two executive orders furthering his administration’s trade war agenda against China, while making clear that his meeting this week with Chinese Premiere Xi Jinping will be “difficult.”

The administration has likewise escalated tensions with its NATO ally Germany, demanding Friday that NATO members increase their defense spending. That day, German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel accused the United States of engaging in “trade war” and called for the EU to launch a complaint against the US at the World Trade Organization.

While the US is at the center of global war preparations, the deepening crisis of the postwar order is fueling military tensions all over the globe.

Just days after the United Kingdom officially initiated its exit from the European Union under Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty, the UK and Spain have become embroiled in a dispute over the strategic territory of Gibraltar. Former Tory leader Michael Howard strongly implied Sunday that Britain would be prepared to go to war to defend its claim to the territory. British Rear Admiral Chris Parry added, “Spain should learn from history that it is never worth taking us on and that we could still singe the King of Spain’s beard.”

Meanwhile Japan is rapidly rearming itself, having this month launched its second helicopter carrier. Last week, the governing Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) issued a proposal for Japan to acquire “counterattack” weapons, such as aircraft carriers and long-range missiles, that are banned under its constitution.

At the same time India, according to press accounts, has been quietly revising its nuclear doctrine, with the New York Times carrying a report last week that the country “is considering allowing for preemptive nuclear strikes against Pakistan in the event of a war.”

As was the case a century ago with the outbreak of World War I, the whole world has been transformed into one great powder keg. Any one of these myriad conflicts and flashpoints risks setting off a chain of events that could lead to war between nuclear-armed powers, resulting in the deaths of hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people, within hours.

The immense danger of a new world war is an expression of the deepening crisis of the nation-state system, which is breaking down under the weight of a profound crisis of the entire capitalist order.

The world’s capitalist ruling classes have only one solution to this deepening and insoluble crisis: a new world war, with all the horrors that it entails. The international working class must oppose the drive to war with its own program: the abolition of the nation-state system and private ownership of production, and the reorganization of world economy into a worldwide socialist federation.

Andre Damon

Copyright © 1998-2017 World Socialist Web Site - All rights reserved

[ckaihatsu]

https://news.google.com/

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/us-navy-sends-strike-group-toward-korean-peninsula/2017/04/09/0c00909c-1cfd-11e7-8003-f55b4c1cfae2_story.html?utm_term=.b32de66fe9bd


World

U.S. Navy sends strike group toward Korean peninsula

https://img.washingtonpost.com/rf/image_1484w/2010-2019/WashingtonPost/2017/04/09/Foreign/Images/05898241-4300.jpg?uuid=xa8efB0DEee-Kjofsk1GcQ

The USS Carl Vinson last month participated in joint drills with the South Korean military. (Yonhap/EPA)

By Anna Fifield April 9 at 5:07 AM

SEOUL — A U.S. Navy strike group led by the USS Carl Vinson aircraft carrier was making its way towards the Korean peninsula Sunday “to maintain readiness” as Kim Jong Un’s regime in North Korea prepared to mark key anniversaries this coming week.

North Korea is expected to hold a huge military parade on April 15 to celebrate the 105th birthday of its founding president, Kim Il Sung, and to mark the 85th anniversary of the creation of the Korean People's Army on April 25 with similar fanfare.

Analysts expect the recent barrage of missiles to continue, and activities around its known nuclear test site have raised concerns North Korea may be preparing for a sixth nuclear test.

Over the weekend, North Korea said it was not afraid of military strikes like those the United States launched on Syria last week, saying it could defend itself with its “tremendous military muscle with a nuclear force.”

In this atmosphere, the Carl Vinson strike group, which includes a carrier air wing and two guided-missile destroyers, was ordered to travel to the “western Pacific.” When the group left Singapore on Saturday, it was bound for Australia before receiving the new orders.

[ Will North Korea fire a missile capable of hitting the U.S. mainland? Probably. ]

“The U.S. Pacific Command ordered the Carl Vinson Strike Group north as a prudent measure to maintain readiness and presence in the Western Pacific,” said Dave Benham, a spokesman for the Pacific Command.

“The number one threat in the region continues to the North Korea, due to its reckless, irresponsible and destabilizing program of missile tests and pursuit of a nuclear weapons capability,” he said, according to the AFP news agency.

The Vinson group last month participated in joint drills with the South Korean military to prepare for a sudden change on the peninsula — including the collapse of the North Korean regime or an invasion.

North Korea has been testing medium-range missiles over recent months, and Kim in January said North Korea had “entered the final stage of preparation for a test-launch of an intercontinental ballistic missile” capable of hitting the mainland United States. In response, President Trump tweeted: “It won’t happen!”

CONTENT FROM THE NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF REALTORS®
Today’s consumers are turning homebuying on its head
Technological and economic changes are transforming the world of real estate. Find out how.
During a 20-minute phone call Saturday, Trump told South Korea’s acting president, Hwang Kyo-ahn, that he had “in-depth discussions about North Korea's serious nuclear problems and how to respond to them” during his summit meeting with Xi Jinping last week, according to the South Korean leader’s office.

[ As North Korea’s arsenal grows, experts see heightened risk of ‘miscalculation’ ]

Trump’s vow to act alone if China didn’t rein in North Korea, combined with the American president’s sudden decision to launch airstrikes on Syria last week, have some analysts speculating that North Korea could be next.

Today's WorldView
What's most important from where the world meets Washington
Sign up
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said during a visit to Seoul last month that “all options are on the table,” including military options. American administrations have long ruled out even pinprick strikes on North Korean nuclear sites or missile targets because of the potential for catastrophic damage in South Korea.

The North has conventional artillery massed on its side of the demilitarized zone that bisects the Korean Peninsula, giving it the capacity to inflict serious damage on greater Seoul, a metropolitan area of 20 million people that lies just 30 miles south of the DMZ.

A statement from North Korea’s foreign ministry, published Sunday, said that the attack on Syria was “absolutely unpardonable as it was an undisguised act of aggression against a sovereign state.”

North Korea will not be “frightened” by the U.S. strike on Syria, according to a statement published by the state-run Korean Central News Agency.The strikes showed why North Korea needed nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them, the statement said. “We will bolster up in every way our capability for self-defence to cope with the U.S. evermore reckless moves for a war and defend ourselves with our own force,” it said.

Read more:

Here’s how a North Korean soldier got inches from Rex Tillerson

North Korea’s leader is a lot of things — but irrational is not one of them

Defying skeptics, Kim Jong Un marks five years at the helm of North Korea

Today’s coverage from Post correspondents around the world

Like Washington Post World on Facebook and stay updated on foreign news

137 Comments
Share on FacebookShare
Share on TwitterTweet
Share via Email

Anna Fifield is The Post’s bureau chief in Tokyo, focusing on Japan and the Koreas. She previously reported for the Financial Times from Washington DC, Seoul, Sydney, London and from across the Middle East. Follow @annafifield

© 1996-2017 The Washington Post

[ckaihatsu]

http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/04/10/kore-a10.html


US aircraft carrier deployed in direct threat to North Korea

By Peter Symonds

10 April 2017

Just days after launching its criminal cruise missile attack on Syria, the Trump administration has provocatively authorised the US aircraft carrier Carl Vinson, together with its full strike group of guided missile destroyers and a cruiser, to waters off the Korean Peninsula. The move is a direct military threat to North Korea, which was at the top of the agenda in talks last weekend between the US and Chinese presidents.

An unnamed US official told the Financial Times that the deployment was designed to be a “show of force.” The carrier strike group had taken part in joint US-South Korean war games but was heading south for port calls in Australia before being ordered to turn north from Singapore. The Navy Times noted that “announcing carrier movements in advance is rare, and generally done to send a clear message.”

US Pacific Command spokesman Dave Benham declared the decision was “a prudent measure to maintain readiness and presence in the Western Pacific,” then castigated North Korea in blunt terms. “The number one threat in the region continues to be North Korea,” he said, “due to its reckless, irresponsible and destabilising program of missile tests and pursuit of a nuclear weapons capacity.”

The Navy Times boasted that “the strike group brings with it a ton of firepower, including the strike- and air-combat capacities of the Hornets [fighter aircraft], early warning radars, electronic-warfare capabilities and more than 300 missile tubes on the carrier’s escorts.”

The dispatch of the Carl Vinson is a deliberate escalation of tensions on the Korean Peninsula following the Trump administration’s completion of a lengthy review of US strategy toward North Korea. NBC revealed last Friday that three military options were under active consideration: the return of US nuclear weapons to the Korean Peninsula, “decapitation” attacks to kill the North Korean leadership and covert operations inside North Korea to sabotage nuclear, military and industrial targets.

Speaking on “Fox News” on Sunday, President Donald Trump’s national security adviser, General H. R. McMaster, justified the deployment of the Carl Vinson as “prudent,” adding: “This is a rogue regime that is now a nuclear-capable regime. The president has asked [us] to be prepared to give him a full range of options to remove that threat to the American people and to our allies and partners in the region.”

Citing US officials, the Navy Times reported that “the Pentagon and US Pacific Command have been sharpening plans for military strikes on the North as an option should the administration want to pursue that action.”

All these highly provocative “options” threaten to trigger a devastating war on the Korean Peninsula that could kill millions. The Navy Times suggested that “an all-out regional conflict” would bring “the US and its allies head-to-head with not only North Korea, but perhaps with China”—that is, a conflict between the world’s two largest economies, both nuclear-armed.

Trump undoubtedly exploited the threat of military action against North Korea to pressure Chinese President Xi Jinping to take tougher action against the Pyongyang regime. Speaking after talks between Trump and Xi last weekend, US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson told CBS’s “Face the Nation” yesterday that Xi “clearly understands ... that the situation has intensified and has reached a certain level of threat that action has to be taken.”

Tillerson ruled out any talks with North Korea at present, saying only that “we can work together with the Chinese to change the conditions in the minds of the DPRK [North Korean] leadership.” But if Beijing fails to bully Pyongyang into accepting Washington’s demands, Tillerson left no doubt that the US would take aggressive measures against North Korea. Trump bluntly told the Financial Times last week: “If China is not going to solve North Korea, we will.”

In an interview yesterday with ABC’s “This Week,” Tillerson was asked whether North Korea’s development of an intercontinental ballistic missile would constitute “a red line.” He answered ominously: “If we judge that they have perfected that type of delivery system, then that becomes a very serious stage of their further development.”

Drawing a link with last week’s attack on Syria, Tillerson said: “The message that any nation can take is if you violate international norms, if you violate international agreements, if you fail to live up to commitments, if you become a threat to others, at some point, a response is likely to be undertaken.”

The North Korean regime denounced the US missile strikes on Syria as “an unforgiveable act of aggression,” adding that “the US has been picking only on countries without nuclear weapons.” A spokesman declared: “The reality of today shows that we must stand against power with power and it proves a million times over that our decision to strengthen our nuclear deterrence has been the right one.”

In reality, Pyongyang’s limited nuclear arsenal has only provided US imperialism with a pretext for a massive build-up of its military forces in Asia, which are not primarily directed against North Korea, but China. Trump is continuing and expanding the Obama administration’s “pivot to Asia” in a bid to ensure the continued US dominance of the Asia Pacific region.

While North Korea is not the same as Syria, the US will not hesitate to use military force against Pyongyang to further its strategic ambitions. US Defence Secretary James Mattis has already warned North Korea that any attempt to use its nuclear weapons will be met with an “effective and overwhelming response.” The Carl Vinson strike group alone has the capacity to carry and deliver enough nuclear weapons to obliterate North Korea’s industrial and military capabilities.

Moreover, no one should conclude that the strikes on Syria will preclude a US attack on North Korea. Damascus and Pyongyang are just the proxy targets for a far broader strategy of subordinating Russia and China—and thus the Eurasian landmass—to the hegemony of US imperialism. The bitter infighting within the American political, military and intelligence establishment over tactics—whether to confront Moscow or Beijing first—does not rule out attacks on both Syria and North Korea, with devastating consequences for humanity.

Copyright © 1998-2017 World Socialist Web Site - All rights reserved

[ckaihatsu]

http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/04/11/nkor-a11.html


China fears US military attack on North Korea

By Peter Symonds

11 April 2017

Amid mounting tensions on the Korean Peninsula, the Chinese state-owned Global Times has warned of the rising danger of US attacks on North Korea in the wake of the Trump administration’s cruise missile strikes on Syria. An editorial entitled “After Syria strikes, will North Korea be next?” appeared in the wake of the Pentagon’s redirection of the aircraft carrier strike group led by the USS Carl Vinson to waters off the Korean Peninsula.

“Emboldened by its success in Syria,” the newspaper stated, “Washington will probably become more impatient with Pyongyang’s provocations. Destroying North Korea’s nuclear facilities with air raids is not considered an absurd idea by the Trump team any more, but is a serious option that is frequently talked about.”

The Trump administration has finalised a full review of US strategy toward North Korea. According to an NBC report last Friday, the options now under active consideration include returning US nuclear weapons to the Korean Peninsula, “decapitation raids” to kill North Korean leaders and covert military action to sabotage North Korean nuclear and military installations.

Trump’s national security adviser H.R. McMaster told Fox News on Sunday the US president had asked to be given “a full range of options” to remove the threat posed by North Korea. McMaster declared it “prudent” to redirect the Carl Vinson amid speculation that North Korea could stage a missile or nuclear test to coincide with this week’s birthday of the country’s late founding leader, Kim Il-sung.

The Global Times editorial, reflecting fears in the Chinese leadership, warned that any US strike on North Korea was “unlikely to be limited to nuclear facilities and related military infrastructure” and could provoke devastating retaliation on US ally, South Korea. “Thus, a military strike on the North will very likely evolve into large-scale bloody war on the Peninsula.”

According to an unconfirmed report by the South Korean Chosun news agency, the Chinese military has moved 150,000 troops to the border with North Korea to prepare for “unforeseen circumstances.” The units reportedly include medical and support units to train for an influx of North Korean refugees. The report was denied by the Chinese Foreign Affairs Ministry, and the US Defence Department told the Daily Caller there was “no evidence” of significant troop movements along the Chinese-North Korean border.

Nevertheless, the Chinese government is nervous about the prospect of US military action against North Korea triggering an all-out war in its backyard. In talks between Chinese President Xi Jinping and President Donald Trump last weekend, North Korea was high on the agenda. Trump effectively delivered an ultimatum to Xi to force Pyongyang to accept US demands or face the prospect of US strikes on North Korea. The fact that Trump authorised the US strikes on Syria in the midst of his meetings with Xi underscored the threat.

Beijing is caught in a dilemma. On the one hand, it has opposed North Korean missile and nuclear tests, which provide the US with a pretext for its military build-up in North East Asia. On the other, it does not want a collapse of the Pyongyang regime that could lead to a pro-US ally on its doorstep. China continues to call for negotiations, which the Trump administration has rejected unless its demands are met.

In comments to the Global Times, Lu Chao, from the Liaoning Academy of Social Sciences, said: “The US needs to take many things into consideration if it plans to launch a military attack on North Korea, especially whether its allies Japan and South Korea will fully cooperate and how Russia and China will respond. Otherwise, it will lead to unbearable consequences.”

The prospect of a US military attack on North Korea is also prompting concern in capitals around the world. Speaking on Radio 4’s “Today” program, the ex-chief of British intelligence M-I6 branch John Sawyers warned: “If you are looking for a world crisis which could bring about the dangers of a clash between great powers, then North Korea is a bigger concern than Syria.

“The move by the Americans to strengthen their forces in the Korean Peninsula, the demonstration to President Xi in Florida that the US was willing to use force against another state,” he said. “I think this is all part of a calculation that North Korea has to be treated very seriously, a very high priority and ultimately needs a joint US-Chinese approach to deal with this unless we are to avoid a further conflict on the peninsula.”

Sawyers added: “I think what the Chinese are beginning to understand is that if this can’t be solved peaceably through negotiations, through pressure, then there is a serious risk that the US will have only one option left, which is the military option.”

Beijing’s ability to apply pressure to Pyongyang, short of imposing crippling sanctions such as the cut off of oil supplies, is limited. China has already agreed to UN resolutions that impose heavy economic sanctions on North Korea and announced in February that it was suspending coal imports from its neighbour. China is by far North Korea’s largest trading partner and Chinese sanctions on North Korea have already provoked a sharp deterioration of relations between the two countries.

Whether the Trump administration will wait for China to bully North Korea into submission is unknown. The White House has already held discussions with its closest allies—Japan, South Korea and Australia—about the situation on the Korean Peninsula. The presence of the USS Carl Vinson and its strike group in adjacent waters is just the most obvious indication that the US military is being primed for an attack.

The Daily Telegraph in Sydney reported today that “Australia and its allies have been put on standby for the possibility of the United States shooting down test rockets launched by North Korea.” Citing intelligence sources, it suggested that such a test might occur on April 15, Kim Il-sung’s birthday, or sooner.

The Australian newspaper said the US “is understood to have notified Australia that it is fully prepared to shoot down these rockets. The Australian-United States joint facility at Pine Gap monitors North Korean missile launches, and is on standby.” The Pine Gap spy base in central Australia provides intelligence and targeting information to the US war machine for a broad sweep of the globe from the Middle East to North East Asia.

Copyright © 1998-2017 World Socialist Web Site - All rights reserved

[ckaihatsu]

http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/04/14/kore-a14.html


US media reports Trump preparing “preemptive strike” on North Korea

By James Cogan

14 April 2017

NBC News in the United States led its evening news on April 13 with an “exclusive” report that the Trump administration is prepared to carry out a “preemptive strike with conventional weapons” if it believes North Korea is about to conduct another nuclear weapons test.

NBC cited “multiple senior US intelligence officials” as the source of its report.

The US media is featuring satellite images that allegedly show the North Korean regime is in the advanced stages of preparing for a nuclear test at the Punggye-ri site, close to the country’s border with both China and Russia. The North Korean regime is this weekend celebrating the birthday of its founding dictator Kim Il-sung with major events. Such occasions have been marked in the past by long-range missile tests or the detonation of a nuclear device.

The dropping yesterday of a Massive Ordnance Air Blast (MOAB) weapon on an alleged cave network in Afghanistan was not only intended to test the effectiveness of the bomb, but to demonstrate that the US military does not need to use nuclear weapons to attack underground bunker complexes.

Trump stated Thursday after the dropping of the MOAB: “I don’t know if this sends a message to North Korea. It doesn’t make any difference if it does or not.” North Korea, he declared, “is a problem—the problem will be taken care of.”

The US military has positioned all the forces it would need to conduct a massive military strike on North Korea and then wage the full-scale war that such an action would almost certainly trigger.

Hundreds of thousands of South Korean troops, and some 30,000 Americans, are in a state of high readiness, using the annual Foal Eagle military exercises as the cover for their preparations. Among the American units in South Korea is the elite assassination squad that killed Osama bin Laden in 2011. “Decapitation” raids to assassinate North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un and other senior regime figures are an official part of US military planning.

Naval destroyers and an unknown number of nuclear submarines are hovering off the Korean coast, armed with the same Tomahawk cruise missiles used to attack a Syrian airbase one week ago. The aircraft carrier Carl Vinson and its strike group have been dispatched to join them. Dozens of US strike aircraft are based at airfields in Japan and South Korea, while B-1 strategic bombers are operating from Guam, where the Obama administration deployed them last year. A squadron of 12 F-22 “Stealth” fighters was quietly moved in February to northern Australia, from where they could deploy rapidly to the peninsula.

As well as South Korea, other US allies have joined the war preparations. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s government has reportedly ordered several destroyers to join the Carl Vinson battle group. Tokyo is using the pretext of “collective self-defense,” a concept that Abe pushed through the Japanese parliament in 2015 to overcome the country’s post-World War II constitutional prohibition of aggressive military operations.

The key US-Australian satellite and communications interception base at Pine Gap, in central Australia, has reportedly been instructed to focus its attention on North Korea, identifying and drawing up the target lists for potential US strikes. At least one Australian warship was dispatched at the beginning of April for ostensibly routine operations in Asia.

In the event North Korea seeks to retaliate to a US attack by firing nuclear-armed missiles at South Korea, Japan, Guam or elsewhere, the US is relying on the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system that was installed in South Korea last month to shoot them down. Even if the North does not, or cannot, retaliate with nuclear weapons, Seoul, the South Korean capital with a population of over 10 million, is within range of an estimated 10,000 North Korean artillery pieces.

After 25 years of continuous war and intrigue by US imperialism, the events of the past week unquestionably mark a qualitative new stage. Even as Washington dramatically ratchets up tensions with Russia and threatens further attacks in Syria, it is actively plotting actions in North East Asia that could result in a direct clash with China. From the time of the 1950–53 Korean War, Beijing has viewed the Stalinist state in the North as an essential buffer between its own borders and the US forces in the South.

The Chinese regime understands that the real motive behind the US war drive against North Korea is the American ruling elite’s determination to prevent China from becoming a rival strategic and economic centre of power in Asia.

China’s response to the prospect of a US attack on North Korea is one of the most unpredictable aspects of the situation.

Editorials and comments in state-owned publications such as the Global Times and People’s Daily indicate that Chinese President Xi Jinping and the Chinese military are, at the least, considering their own intervention into North Korea. A Global Times editorial on April 10 bluntly stated that, under certain conditions, the “People’s Liberation Army (PLA) will launch attacks to DPRK [North Korean] nuclear facilities on its own.”

On April 13 another Global Times editorial advised North Korea to abandon its nuclear weapons program. It stated: “Even if the United States does not launch military strikes on the DPRK, the long-term sanctions are not something that the DPRK can withstand. The DPRK might already become the most isolated country in the world and is almost ‘fully blockaded.’ No modern countries can survive in this way.” China, it declared, could provide all the protection North Korea needed.

Beijing has intensified economic pressure on Pyongyang, cancelling all purchases of North Korean coal—one of the country’s few exports and sources of foreign currency. North Korean ships were turned away this week from Chinese ports.

While the Chinese government has dismissed as “fabrications” the reports that some 150,000 Chinese troops are massing on the North Korean border, such claims continue to filter out.

What is certain is that the lives of tens of millions of people are at risk because of the ruthless and ever more reckless attempts by American imperialism to maintain its waning global dominance.

Copyright © 1998-2017 World Socialist Web Site - All rights reserved

[ckaihatsu]

Minneapolis slams escalation of war on Afghanistan, demands “Hands off Korea” (http://fightbacknews.us1.list-manage.com/track/click?u=a29530af96a02fc55d345e735&id=b13ce8cd52&e=d323598fe4)

http://www.fightbacknews.org/sites/default/files/imagecache/article-lead-photo/April14antiwar.jpg

By staff

Minneapolis. MN - With only 24 hour’s notice, Minneapolis peace groups organized an emergency response protest against the use a massive U.S. bomb in Afghanistan.

Over 60 people joined the protest held on Friday, April 14. Several people just walking by or waiting for their bus stopped and joined the protest. People in cars, trucks and buses passing by waved and honked in support of the anti-war message.

On Thursday, April 13, it was reported that the Trump administration and the Pentagon unleashed the most powerful U.S. bomb – the 20,000 pound GBU-43, referred to as the ‘mother of all bombs.’ The weapon was used in Afghanistan.

Twin Cities anti-war groups saw this as a major escalation of the U.S. wars and consulted quickly to call an emergency protest against this latest U.S. military move.

Organizers also raised the alarm about the growing danger of a new U.S. war in Korea. News reports had indicated that the Trump administration had plans for an imminent attack on Korea.

The protest was in the West Bank neighborhood of Minneapolis. The neighborhood has many Somali immigrant families.

Participants held signs and banners to make an urgent anti-war statement in the face or what one organizers called "a terrifying event."

Meredith Aby-Keirstead, of the Anti-War Committee told the crowd, “We need to build a movement to stop Trump. Today's protest isn't just about saying no to the use of this new mega bomb in Afghanistan. We are pushing back and demanding that it never be used again. We are concerned that the Trump administration is planning on using this weapon against North Korea. We cannot let Trump think that he is having foreign policy 'wins' in Syria, Iraq and Yemen because this will embolden him to attack North Korea and endangers Iran."

The bomb, officially called the Massive Ordinance Air Blast (MOAB), was used against Islamic State targets in Nangarhar province, Afghanistan. The MOAB has a blast radius of one mile.

The MOAB is said to be the largest non-nuclear weapon in the U.S. arsenal. The chance of civilian casualties is high.

The protest was called by the Minnesota Peace Action Coalition (MPAC).

A statement issued by organizers says in part, "This latest U.S. military escalation by the Trump administration follows the escalating attacks in Yemen, missile attacks on Syria last week, sending thousands of additional U.S. troops to Iraq, Syria and Kuwait, and an increase in the number of civilian deaths in Iraq and Syria from U.S. bombings."

The statement also points out that "The U.S. has also sent a Naval Strike Force to Korea."

There is speculation that the use of this weapon in Afghanistan is also intended as a threat to North Korea.

The April 14 protest was organized under the call of, "Enough of the endless wars! Enough of escalation after escalation! No new wars – hands off Korea!"

Chants included "Out of Afghanistan, out of Iraq, hands off Korea and don't come back."

The protest was endorsed by Anti-War Committee, Mayday Books, St. Joan of Arc Peacemakers, St. Paul Eastside Neighbors for Peace, Twin Cities Peace Campaign, Veterans for Peace and Women Against Military Madness.

"People should be alarmed by this latest escalation, people must speak out against these endless wars," said one protest organizer.
Read more News and Views from the Peoples Struggle at http://www.fightbacknews.org. You can write to us at [email protected]

[ckaihatsu]

http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/04/18/pers-a18.html


Washington pushes world to brink of nuclear war

18 April 2017

The repeated statements by US Vice President Mike Pence and other Trump administration officials Monday that the “era of strategic patience” with North Korea is over and “all options are on the table” have laid bare the mounting threat that Washington will provoke a war on the Korean peninsula involving the use of nuclear weapons and the deaths of millions.

“Just in the past two weeks, the world witnessed the strength and resolve of our new president in actions taken in Syria and Afghanistan,” Pence declared during a provocative visit to South Korea that brought him to the demilitarized zone (DMZ) on the North Korean border. “North Korea would do well not to test his resolve or the strength of the armed forces of the United States in this region,” Pence said.

This boasting about the reckless acts of military aggression—first, the cruise missile attack on Syria on August 7 and then, a week later, the use in Afghanistan of the Massive Ordnance Air Blast (MOAB) bomb, the most destructive weapon unleashed anywhere since the US incineration of Hiroshima and Nagasaki—cannot be read by the government of North Korea as anything other than an ultimatum to accept US demands or expect to be on the receiving end of far greater violence.

With the naval strike group led by the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson set to take up a position off the Korean peninsula, the means of inflicting such violence are being put into place. The global implications of this buildup were underscored Monday with the report that both Russia and China have dispatched spy ships to trail the Vinson battle group. For these two nuclear-armed countries, Washington’s launching of a war against North Korea poses an existential threat.

The drive toward a military confrontation in Asia that could lead to a nuclear third world war has unfolded largely behind the backs of the people of the United States and the entire world. Neither the politicians of the two big business parties in the US nor the corporate-controlled media have so much as hinted to the public the horrific consequences of even a “limited” nuclear exchange on the Korean peninsula, nor the likelihood that such a catastrophe would draw all of the major nuclear powers into a global conflagration.

The recklessness of the path being pursued by Washington is staggering. Why the “era of strategic patience” has ended is not explained, nor are the conclusions drawn from this declaration even challenged. There are a whole number of states that now have nuclear weapons. North Korea’s pursuit of such arms does not represent a credible threat to the US.

“All options are on the table” can only mean that Washington is prepared to launch an unprovoked first strike against North Korea. Yet, within the media, there is barely a mention that such a course involves the threat of nuclear war. Nor is there the slightest suggestion that the US Congress should convene to vote on whether to authorize an attack that could produce casualties in the millions. The accepted wisdom is that Donald Trump doesn’t have to tell anyone what military action he will take until after the attack is executed. The only hint Trump gave of his intentions was at a Monday Easter egg-rolling event on the White House lawn, where he declared that North Korea has “gotta behave.”

The real character of the policy being pursued by Washington was indicated by John Bolton, the Bush administration’s ambassador to the United Nations, who told Fox News that the “way to end North Korea’s nuclear weapons program is to end North Korea,” i.e., topple the government and militarily smash the country.

The real and growing danger posed by Washington’s reckless policy is beginning to be registered, if only in the mildest form.

The New York Times, which had previously celebrated the Trump administration’s turn toward stepped-up militarism against Syria and Russia, proclaiming its feeling of “emotional satisfaction and justice done” over the cruise missile strike of April 7, has become somewhat nervous that things are spinning out of control.

The newspaper, which increasingly functions as the house organ of the CIA, expressed concern Monday that Trump’s “intemperate talk is adding to regional tensions, unnerving allies and likely reinforcing North Korea’s longstanding fear that it could one day be attacked by America—the very reason North Korea invested in a nuclear arsenal in the first place.” It warned that the US president’s bellicose threats served to “box him into some kind of showdown” and paved the way for a “devastating miscalculation.”

Gideon Rachman, the chief foreign affairs columnist of the Financial Times, wrote in a piece posted Monday that if North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un “concludes that the US is indeed poised to attack his regime, he will be tempted to attack first. His incentive to move fast will only have been increased by stories in the media that the US’s war plans involve an early attempt to kill the North Korean leadership.” In fact, the same US Special Operations unit that carried out the 2011 assassination of Osama bin-Laden has been reported carrying out exercises in South Korea.

While Trump’s intimidation and threats could produce a capitulation by Pyongyang, Rachman continues, “... It is more likely that North Korea will not back down--and that the Trump strategy will therefore fail. In that case, the US president is faced with a dilemma. Does Mr. Trump’s ‘very powerful armada’ steam away from the Korean peninsula with its mission unaccomplished?”

To ask the question is to answer it. Neither Trump nor the cabal of active duty and retired generals who are setting his foreign policy are inclined to back down from the brink of war without having achieved the objectives over which such a war would be fought, i.e., the complete capitulation and disarmament of North Korea.

After 25 years of waging continuous war against largely unarmed oppressed countries and killing millions, while suffering relatively few consequences, US imperialism is now being driven by its own internal crisis and contradictions to an entirely different level of military confrontation.

More and more the situation resembles that which prevailed in the late 1930s on the eve of the Second World War. If Adolph Hitler had possessed a Twitter account, it is hard to imagine how he would have used it much differently from the way the US president is using his own.

“Our military is building and is rapidly becoming stronger than ever before. Frankly, we have no choice!” Trump tweeted Sunday.

Three days earlier: “I have great confidence that China will properly deal with North Korea. If they are unable to do so, the US, with its allies, will! USA.”

Trump’s rhetoric echoes that employed by Hitler in the run-up to Germany’s march into Czechoslovakia and Poland. The Nazi leader proclaimed of the Czechoslovak “problem” that it “must be solved.” Then it was the Polish “problem” that “must be solved.” He deliberately created crises as pretexts for military action.

Trump employs similar rhetoric, describing an entire nation, North Korea, as a “problem,” and then warning menacingly that “it will be taken care of.” Why this problem is now so urgent, no one explains, and, as far as the media is concerned, virtually no one asks.

What could Pyongyang possibly do to satisfy Washington? It would have to renounce its nuclear program and open itself up to an inspections regime, going down the same road traveled by Iraq’s Saddam Hussein and Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi, ending in their nations’ destruction and their own violent deaths.

The assumption that China can be pressured into imposing Washington’s diktat in relation to North Korea is without foundation. China was compelled to go to war in 1950 when US troops reached the Yalu River, sacrificing hundreds of thousands to drive the American army back. Now Washington wants China to intervene to hand the US and South Korea what they were unable to achieve half a century ago through war. If Beijing were to accede to these demands, it would have immense strategic implications for China as well as major internal political consequences.

There are already indications that tensions between Beijing and Washington are escalating on the Korean peninsula after Seoul’s announcement that it intends to move ahead rapidly with the installation of the US Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system, or THAAD, which the US claims is designed to defend against North Korean missiles, but which China recognizes as a means of assuring the US a nuclear first-strike capability.

Twice in the 20th century, the crisis of world capitalism drove capitalist heads of state and their general staffs to seek a way out through war, leading to the deaths of tens of millions. Today, similar pressures are unleashing a drive toward a nuclear confrontation that could lead to the destruction of life on the planet.

Everything that is being done by the US government involves astonishing levels of risk, including that of a nuclear war. Whether it happens in the immediate confrontation with North Korea cannot be predicted, but that this is the course Washington is prepared to pursue all over the world is undeniable.

No one can afford the illusion that today’s capitalist governments, unlike those of 1914 and 1939, will not risk war because of the threat of nuclear annihilation. If anything, they are far more reckless than their predecessors. Confronted with deepening economic and social crises for which they have no progressive solution, they are even more prone to dragging humanity to the brink of destruction.

The present crisis is characterized by a terrible chasm between the scale of the danger of war and the absence of any organized movement against it. There is no way to stop the drive toward war outside of the politically conscious intervention of the working class within the United States and internationally.

The Socialist Equality Party and the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI) are fighting for a new international anti-war, anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist movement of the working class based on socialist policies. The fight for the development of this movement includes the organization of demonstrations at workplaces, universities and in working class neighborhoods against war.

The ICFI on April 30 will hold its annual International May Day Online Rally, which will have as its central aim the fight to mobilize the working class against imperialist war. We call on all of our readers and supporters to participate in and build this rally among the widest possible layers of workers and youth.

Bill Van Auken

Copyright © 1998-2017 World Socialist Web Site - All rights reserved

[ckaihatsu]

Doro-Chiba (Japanese railway union) statement to KCTU on rising militarism, Trump, crisis of capitalism in Asia


Sisters and Brothers, Comrades,

As we commemorate the 50th anniversary of Dr. King’s Beyond Vietnam speech, and as we are celebrating May Day soon — the International day for workers — we have received a timely correspondence. This is a statement issued by Doro-Chiba (a Japanese national railway union) to the KCTU (Korean Confederation of Trade Unions) dealing with the political situation in the Fear East, Trump’s imperialist adventures and growing militarism of the Abe government. The PDF of their statement is attached.

-Larry Duncan


Doro Chiba message to KCTU.pdf
157K


Doro-Chiba’s Message to the KCTU (Korean Confederation of Trade Unions)

We are absolutely against war!

Let us stop war by the power of international solidarity before it starts!

April 8, 2017

International Labor Solidarity Committee of National Railway Motive Power Union
of Chiba (Doro-Chiba) [Japan]

We sincerely send a solidarity message to our friends from the KCTU. You have swept Park Geun-hye out of office and got her arrested. Soon after that, you declared, “Now we enter the key stage of our struggle.” And you continue fighting to abolish irregular employment, dissolve chaebols (conglomerates) and stop labor reform.

“Nothing will change by a change in administration” — you got it out loud and clear. You are trying to reveal in the election campaign that every neoliberal policy has been completely bankrupt, and lead the coming massive general strike in June into a big stage to change the society. We pay a tremendous amount of respect to your union again. We also have a mind to fight thoroughly against the common enemy here in Japan.

The Division and Privatization of Japan National Railways, which was the starting point of neoliberalism in Japan, has now become completely bankrupt. Under the slogan “Select and Concentrate”, the Abe administration and Japan Railways (JR) are attempting to survive by ripping up rail tracks to ruthlessly cut down rural areas as they compare it to “terminal care”.

In the midst of such an ongoing situation, a huge number of workers, who are forced to work at extremely low wages impossible to support themselves and moreover disconnected from all social ties including labor unions, are now raising their angry voices like earth rumbling. We are determined to put the struggle of 1,047 dismissed national railway workers in the center of these workers’ deep simmering anger and lead the struggle against the government.

The Trump government ordered a cruise missile strike against Syria, which had allegedly used chemical weapons, reminiscent of Bush’s case for war — “Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction.” Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe immediately expressed support for “the determination of the US Government.”

It is a tremendous escalation of the already devastating US war in the Middle East. Above all, it was also a de facto declaration of war in the Korean Peninsula. We cannot tolerate such outrageous crimes committed by the US that had exhausted all the “solutions” to an inherently insoluble problem — the current great depression stemming from excess capital/excess productive forces.

We strengthen international solidarity with the KCTU and residents in Seongju County who have been blocking transportation of geological survey equipments for installation of the THAAD system there. Let’s fight together with US workers to stop the war before it starts!

The Abe government has recently gone so far as to force the hoisting of the national flag and singing the national anthem — symbols of aggressive war — even in nursery schools and colleges, and to recommend teaching the Imperial Rescript on Education, issued in 1890 and used until the end of WWII, which urges people to be willing to die for the Emperor.

After Park Geun-hye, Abe shall be overthrown. We fight hand in hand with you.

[ckaihatsu]

News Updates from CLG
24 April 2017
http://www.legitgov.org/
All links are here:
http://www.legitgov.org/#breaking_news

'Ready to fight and win': US marines deployed to Australia amid N. Korean 'nuclear threat' (https://www.rt.com/news/385172-us-marines-darwin-pyongyang/) | 18 April 2017 | US Marines have begun to touch down in Darwin, in Australia's tropical north, as the first of some 1,250 "stand ready to fight" against North Korea amid warnings that Pyongyang's nuclear weapons program is a "serious threat" to Canberra. The deployment will see the largest US aircraft contingent to Australia in peacetime history, Reuters reports, adding that the 25-year annual deployment program was launched by former US President Barack Obama back in 2011 as part of America's 'pivot' to Asia. During the six-month deployment, US Marines will conduct exercises with Australian troops and will also visit Chinese forces. [Too bad there's no 'pivot' to America, to fill a pothole or repair a bridge.]

[ckaihatsu]

Tell Trump to Stop Threatening North Korea. (http://salsa.wiredforchange.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=FwxpkdMocAPRyLXlVD0dl7D0WJDWKW3r)

https://salsa.wiredforchange.com/o/6503/images/koreaEMAIL.jpg (http://salsa.wiredforchange.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=ye5U4BnyBfe5DrJzdv%2FFlMezLfcge4kW)

GRAPHIC: Sign here button (http://salsa.wiredforchange.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=3Zv8virnK%2BuJbRN09aIE48ezLfcge4kW)

Share this action on Facebook (http://salsa.wiredforchange.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=Xw9MJn3qjt0j8uYKKf4ZJ8ezLfcge4kW)
Share this action on Twitter (http://salsa.wiredforchange.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=WQg5Qj4dYSIp83QykKIVVcezLfcge4kW)


Donald Trump claims he has no choice but to threaten North Korea with war -- a war that would prove disastrous for multiple countries, if not the entire world.

In reality, from all appearances, Trump has no clue as to the choices available or the history at work.

Click here to help educate him -- or at least the U.S. media and some of those around him. (http://salsa.wiredforchange.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=YSke5o%2F0fgWo%2FmCE3LMbdsezLfcge4kW)

The fact that North Korea is a horrific dictatorship does not change the reality that threatening to attack that nuclear-armed country is an extremely reckless policy that gravely risks setting off a cataclysmic catastrophe.

North Korea has repeatedly offered to abandon its nuclear weapons program if the United States and South Korea would stop flying over North Korea practicing to bomb it as well as engaging in other explicitly threatening military exercises nearby.

North Korea has shown interest in developing a peace treaty with the South to finally end the Korean War.

North Korea adhered to an agreement to halt its nuclear weapons program right up until George W. Bush labeled it a member of an axis of evil and viciously attacked one of the other designated members, Iraq.

A lot of such information is unfamiliar to Americans. The "Background" links below provide a bit of that information.

Let's remind Trump and the U.S. media of this context, and of the options it opens up. (http://salsa.wiredforchange.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=ofL08AUg30tfNEQxg90S7sezLfcge4kW)

When Trump says he's sending ships to North Korea, people in North Korea with historical knowledge will remember the devastating bombing inflicted on the country by the United States nearly 70 years ago. The U.S. bombed dams, bridges, and villages. It dropped huge quantities of napalm. It dropped insects and feathers infected with anthrax, cholera, encephalitis, and bubonic plague.

The United States has never relinquished wartime command of the South Korean military, and it has been building big new bases in South Korea opposed by serious popular protests. The U.S. is building what it calls a missile defense system in South Korea that North Korea and China consider offensive and part of an offensive first-strike policy. The people of South Korea have been protesting it in huge numbers.

Click here to tell Trump some of the damaging policies that he has the option of halting. (http://salsa.wiredforchange.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=NzmZ5jXlkJL2%2BStQ6qQQ1MezLfcge4kW)

Legally, when North Korea tests missiles it breaks no laws. The United States tests missiles all the time. But when the United States threatens war it commits a grave violation of the law as well as risks getting us all killed.

Let's chart a different course before it is too late. (http://salsa.wiredforchange.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=Jg2vvMK%2F7ERwfCu8kJg%2FQcezLfcge4kW)

After signing the petition, please use the tools on the next webpage to share it with your friends.

This work is only possible with your financial support. Please chip in $3 now. (http://salsa.wiredforchange.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=VKY8i4Z8Zw%2BT35Xsie2axLD0WJDWKW3r)

-- The RootsAction.org Team

P.S. RootsAction is an independent online force endorsed by Jim Hightower, Barbara Ehrenreich, Cornel West, Daniel Ellsberg, Glenn Greenwald, Naomi Klein, Bill Fletcher Jr., Laura Flanders, former U.S. Senator James Abourezk, Frances Fox Piven, Lila Garrett, Phil Donahue, Sonali Kolhatkar, and many others.

Background:
> Bruce Cumings, The Nation, "Korean War Games"
> Dave Chaddock: "This Must Be the Place: How the U.S. Waged Germ Warfare in the Korean War and Denied It Ever Since"
> John DeLury, The Washington Post: "Instead of threatening North Korea, Trump should try this"



www.RootsAction.org (http://salsa.wiredforchange.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=eGT8ajv7y3VEUb%2FrEorzv8ezLfcge4kW)

Donate button Facebook button Twitter button

Unsubscribe

empowered by Salsa

[ckaihatsu]

Urgent! Stop the Threat of War with N Korea!


CODEPINK


http://d3n8a8pro7vhmx.cloudfront.net/codepink/mailings/1583/attachments/original/IMG_4570.JPG?1493220462

Dear Chris --

Tensions between the Trump administration and the North Korean government have reached a boiling point. In an ominous move, the White House has convened an emergency meeting today, April 26, with 100 Senators where Trump may ramp up the confrontation to new heights.

We are outside the White House right now calling for peace and we need you to immediately call your two Senators! Tell them there’s no military solution to the North Korean Crisis! Demand diplomacy! Capitol switchboard: (202) 224-3121

We must avoid, at all costs, a direct military confrontation with North Korea. Any military action by the United States, even limited, could instantly kill millions on the Korean peninsula and threaten nuclear and regional war that could draw in Japan, China and Russia. Every president before Trump considered a pre-emptive strike, but they were quickly sobered by the reality that a military option would trigger a counter-reaction from Pyongyang. Presidents Obama, Bush, and Clinton Administrations could not justify military action that would instantly kill millions of South Koreans and endanger the 28,500 U.S. soldiers and 230,000 U.S. citizens residing there.

Call your two Senators now! Tell them there’s no military solution to the North Korean Crisis! Demand diplomacy! Capitol switchboard: (202) 224-3121

CODEPINK has been working for the past two years with Women Cross DMZ, an international women’s group that collaborates with women from both North and South Korea to come up with diplomatic solutions to the crisis. Women Cross DMZ calls for a freeze of North Korea’s nuclear and long-range ballistic missile program in exchange for a U.S. security guarantee that would include suspending U.S.-South Korea military exercises; a binding peace treaty to replace the 1953 Armistice Agreement; and support for citizen diplomacy with liaison offices in Washington DC and Pyongyang to reunite families and heal the legacies of the Korean War.

Add your name to the open letter to the Trump administration from Women Cross DMZ! (http://www.codepink.org/north_korea?e=247b6f0c69174ee7dfa25e341c4eedfe&utm_source=codepink&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=korea&n=2)

As Christine Ahn, the international coordinator of Women Cross DMZ, said, “President Trump must avoid at all costs a direct military confrontation with North Korea, which has a long history of engaging in brinksmanship. The United States has been successful in defusing past crises by working in partnership with our allies in the region. Today, China calls for restraint, and South Korea is urging a diplomatic solution. President Trump could demonstrate his art of deal making by advancing what will and has only ever worked: diplomacy and engagement.”

Share the image at the top of this email on Facebook (http://www.codepink.org/r?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2Fcodepinkalert %2Fphotos%2Fa.192092444694.126286.192052299694%2F1 0155284145284695%2F%3Ftype%3D3%26theater&e=247b6f0c69174ee7dfa25e341c4eedfe&utm_source=codepink&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=korea&n=3) and Twitter (http://www.codepink.org/r?u=https%3A%2F%2Ftwitter.com%2Fcodepink%2Fstatus% 2F857242736151461888&e=247b6f0c69174ee7dfa25e341c4eedfe&utm_source=codepink&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=korea&n=4)!

In peace,

Anne, Ariel, Jodie, Mariana, Mark, Medea, Nancy, Paki, Paula, Taylor, and Tighe

P.S. Join us this Saturday in DC (http://www.codepink.org/climate_march_in_dc_2017?e=247b6f0c69174ee7dfa25e3 41c4eedfe&utm_source=codepink&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=korea&n=5), LA (http://www.codepink.org/people_s_climate_march_in_los_angeles_2017_2017?e= 247b6f0c69174ee7dfa25e341c4eedfe&utm_source=codepink&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=korea&n=6), or Oakland, CA (http://www.codepink.org/people_s_climate_march_in_oakland_2017?e=247b6f0c6 9174ee7dfa25e341c4eedfe&utm_source=codepink&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=korea&n=7) for the People's Climate March and on May 14th in New York City on Mother's Day (http://www.codepink.org/mothersday_nyc_2017?e=247b6f0c69174ee7dfa25e341c4e edfe&utm_source=codepink&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=korea&n=8) to call for an end to war! DISARM, DISARM!


Donate Now (http://www.codepink.org/donate_to_codepink?e=247b6f0c69174ee7dfa25e341c4ee dfe&utm_source=codepink&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=korea&n=9)


CODEPINK
This email was sent to [email protected]
To stop receiving emails, click here.
Created with NationBuilder

Unsubscribe

[ckaihatsu]

http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/04/27/nkor-a27.html


White House briefing signals escalating war preparations against North Korea

By Mike Head

27 April 2017

The unprecedented bussing of the entire Senate to the White House to be briefed by military and intelligence officials on possible military action against North Korea was one of a number of events yesterday pointing to planning for a potentially catastrophic war.

As the WSWS noted in yesterday’s Perspective, the Trump administration’s summoning of the senators was not an exercise in congressional oversight but the opposite: the political representatives of the ruling class received their marching orders, and talking points, from the military brass.

Speaking to journalists after the meeting, participants denied that any specific military line of attack was discussed. By every indication, however, the executive and its military-intelligence officials informed the senators they would be told after the event, if and when the administration launched a military assault.

There were no reports of any protest against being summoned by the White House in this manner, let alone any boycott of the gathering. Rather, the response was one of bipartisan backing for the escalating war planning, laced with calls for tougher action against China, supposedly to pressure Beijing to compel Pyongyang to abandon its missile and nuclear programs.

As scheduled, the Senate was briefed at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building next to the White House by Defense Secretary James Mattis, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Joseph Dunford, Director of National Intelligence Daniel Coats and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence reportedly greeted the senators on arrival and then left.

Before the meeting, Mattis, Coats and Tillerson issued a joint statement that pronounced Pyongyang’s pursuit of nuclear weapons “an urgent national security threat and top foreign policy priority.” They declared: “Past efforts have failed to halt North Korea’s unlawful weapons programs and nuclear and ballistic missile tests.”

The statement claimed Trump’s approach aimed to pursue “diplomatic measures” with allies and partners to “convince the regime to de-escalate,” but concluded on a threatening note: “However, we remain prepared to defend ourselves and our allies.”

Various comments by senators after the briefing ranged from support for US military action against North Korea to pushing for a harder stance against China. There was no dissent from the incessant propaganda aimed at whipping up fears of a future North Korean nuclear attack.

Senator Ted Cruz told Fox News: “It is of course the hope that military action does not prove necessary, but if there is a clear and imminent threat to the United States, our military needs to be prepared to act.” John McCain, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said one should not rule out a preemptive strike.

One unnamed Republican senator complained they were given “very few details about what has changed.” He said the basic gist of the briefing was: “We’ve reached a point where things are getting pretty dire and getting to the point where we’ve got to get more aggressive.”

Some senators, notably Democrats, called for harsher sanctions against China. Democratic Senator Ed Markey said he had not seen evidence that China was doing enough. Chris Coons, a Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, exemplified the underlying bipartisanship. He said Trump was developing a “diplomatic strategy that strikes me as clear-eyed and well proportioned to the threat.”

Earlier in the day, US Pacific Command chief Admiral Harry Harris, who would lead any attack on the Korean Peninsula, gave an indication of the Pentagon’s message. Testifying before the House Armed Services Committee, he asserted that denuclearisation by North Korea—the goal outlined publicly by the White House—is no longer a realistic option.

Harris said he had no confidence that North Korea would refrain from “something precipitous” should it succeed in miniaturising a nuclear weapon to mount on a ballistic missile. He said the US had “a lot of preemptive options,” but declined to provide specifics.

The admiral advocated greater shows of military force, including overflying the Korean Peninsula with nuclear-capable B-1 and B-52 bombers. This would be on top of the current visits and exercises by two US destroyers, the guided-missile submarine USS Michigan and the USS Carl Vinson aircraft carrier strike.

Harris acknowledged that possible reprisals stemming from a strike against North Korea would place at risk the lives of millions of Koreans and Japanese, as well as the 28,500 US troops in South Korea. But he argued this danger was outweighed by the prospect of “a lot more Koreans and Japanese and Americans dying if North Korea achieves its nuclear aims.”

In another indication of war planning, Harris urged Congress to add ballistic-missile interceptors to installations in Alaska and California, and to “study” placing interceptors in Hawaii while immediately bolstering defensive radars there.

Harris took aim at China, saying it had substantial leverage against North Korea. He labeled as “preposterous” China’s alleged pressure on South Korean companies to stall the placement of a US Terminal High-Altitude Area Defence (THAAD) anti-ballistic missile battery in South Korea.

The US claims the THAAD facility is a purely defensive weapon to intercept incoming missiles. In reality, its radar capacity is designed to probe deep into China and the system’s underlying purpose is to block any attempt by North Korea or China to respond to a US first-strike nuclear attack.

Defying protests by China, as well as hundreds of local residents, US personnel yesterday began to install the THAAD equipment at a former golf course in Seongju. It was an earlier-than-expected move, effectively preempting South Korea’s presidential election on May 9.

Television footage showed military trailers carrying large units, including what appeared to be launch canisters, on to the site. Protesters hurled water bottles at the vehicles, despite the efforts of thousands of police to block them.

Baek-Gwang-soon, 73, who has lived in Seongju all her life, told the Guardian she was “speechless with anger.” She explained: “This is a quiet place, where we welcome outsiders with open arms. Now it’s being ruined by the arrival of American weapons that have turned us into a North Korean target.”

The THAAD deployment provoked further alarm bells in Beijing. Yesterday’s editorial in the state-run Global Times declared: “It is infuriating that the US and South Korea have stabbed China in the back at a critical time when China and the US are cooperating to prevent North Korea from carrying out a new nuclear or missile test.”

At the same time an Op-Ed in the People’s Daily, the official organ of the ruling Chinese Communist Party, continued to plead for an accommodation with Washington. Citing this month’s meeting between Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping, the commentary held out the hope that such “high-level dialogues” should “help dispel the old idea that the two sides are destined for war.”

In reality, yesterday’s developments demonstrate an escalating confrontation, driven by Washington’s determination to assert unchallenged hegemony over the Asia-Pacific region, at China’s expense.

Copyright © 1998-2017 World Socialist Web Site - All rights reserved

[ckaihatsu]

http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/04/27/mills-a27.html


Climate scientist Michael Mills describes the devastation of a thermonuclear detonation

People get “melted into burning pools of fat.”

By Bryan Dyne

27 April 2017

Nearly three years ago, the World Socialist Web Site published a Perspective that posed the question “Are you ready for nuclear war?” At that time, the United States government was accusing the Kremlin, without any evidence, of shooting down Malaysian Airlines Flight MH17. As a result of these provocations, tensions between the United States and Russia rose to heights unseen since the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962.

Tensions globally are even greater today. By directing the naval strike group led by the USS Carl Vinson aircraft carrier and the USS Michigan nuclear submarine to the Sea of Japan, the Trump administration has escalated the already acute confrontation on the Korean Peninsula. Through these actions, Washington is provoking a conflict that could draw in nuclear-armed China and Russia, both of which have borders with North Korea.

Such a war threatens the nearly 76 million people who live in North and South Korea. It also has a high potential of involving the 127 million people who live in Japan, which would be in the direct line of fire of any war with North Korea. What goes unmentioned by government officials of the US and its allies—much less the corporate media—are these millions of people who are likely to die in a war between the US and North Korea, particularly if nuclear weapons are used.

The devastation of a nuclear war on the Korean Peninsula would not be a regional affair, but a direct threat to the entire ecosystem of Earth. As part of our continuing discussion with scientists and experts on the threats posed by nuclear war, the World Socialist Web Site spoke with climate scientist Michael Mills, who has studied the climatic effects of nuclear detonations for nearly a decade. As part of his work at the National Center for Atmospheric Research and on the Atmospheric Chemistry Observations and Modeling team, he has looked at how nuclear weapons can create firestorms, turning whole cities and their inhabitants into nothing more than ash, soot and debris.

* * *

Bryan Dyne: What would happen to a city in a nuclear exchange between the US and North Korea?

Michael Mills: Our work is based on the idea that if a nuclear bomb exploded over a large modern city, the explosion would cause fires that would ignite over the entire area, eventually becoming what is known as a firestorm. This means that the fires have become so hot that the city itself becomes fuel for the fire, which releases much more energy than the nuclear weapon itself. This is what happened during the incendiary bombings of Hamburg, Dresden and Tokyo and the atomic bombing of Hiroshima during World War II.

Essentially, if a city is ignited on this scale, the fires produce millions of tons of black smoke, also called soot, from the burning buildings and other materials. Heat from the fires causes the soot-filled air to rise, and the soot absorbs sunlight, further heating the air so that it rises into the stratosphere, 10 to 30 miles above the earth’s surface. These particles are so high that they don’t get rained out, since there is no weather in the stratosphere. So it can take decades for the soot to settle back down to the surface.

The main effect from all this soot being trapped in the stratosphere is that it continuously absorbs sunlight. In our models, which are based off of the detonation of 100 small nuclear weapons by India and Pakistan, global temperatures become the coldest they’ve been in the past 1,000 years. In a big exchange between major powers, you basically get ice age temperatures.

The second problem is that heating up the stratosphere destroys up to 50 percent the ozone layer by producing changes in the chemical reaction rates that produce ozone. While this happens in Antarctica, that is a seasonal effect that occurs in the Antarctic spring and early summer. The loss of ozone from stratospheric heating is constant and worldwide. As a result, crops and ecosystems face not only freezing temperatures, but also intense ultraviolet light from the Sun as a result of a diminished ozone layer.

This research is not something that I’ve ever been funded to study. I’ve been able to pursue this in my spare time because I work on models of atmospheric chemistry and climate and it seemed like a very important issue to me.

I usually work on the climatic effects of particles from volcanoes, which are liquid droplets that tend to scatter light rather than absorbing it. They have a similar cooling effect in that after a volcanic eruption, these droplets are ejected into the stratosphere and reflect sunlight away from earth. But the black absorbing smoke particles are much more effective at the same thing. They have a bigger effect on the Sun’s radiation than the volcanic particles.

BD: What’s the significance of using a model of a nuclear war between India and Pakistan?

MM: The initial motivation for our recent studies is that we wanted to revisit the nuclear war studies that were done in the 1980s, using the vastly more sophisticated climate models that had been developed since. So Alan Robock looked at impacts of a war between the US and Russia using a NASA climate model.

But we also wanted to look at the increasing number of new nuclear powers and their expanding arsenals. The India-Pakistan scenario served to show that even relatively small nuclear weapons can have a global effect. In 2007, when I was working on this with Brian Toon, each country had only about 50 Hiroshima-sized weapons each, the smallest nuclear weapons in existence. Even an exchange with these weapons, which are much smaller than those used by the US, Russia, Britain or France, can still cause global planetary environmental damage from the smoke that’s released.

Brian Toon was trying to get the people in the military interested in paying attention to this issue. The United States has a current arsenal of about 1,700 nuclear weapons. It’s difficult to justify having so many because even if you used them and no enemy retaliated, you would suffer from the global effects.

BD: In that vein, is there such a thing as a ‘limited nuclear war’?

MM: We obviously had a ‘limited nuclear war’ in World War II when the US used its entire stockpile of nuclear weapons, which was two. Given the number of weapons that now exist, however, once you start using them you quickly reach a point where you are producing so much damage to millions of people. And then there are the smoke effects, which damage the whole planet. I think people in charge of making military decisions need to be well aware that the idea of a ‘limited nuclear war’ is a very dangerous concept.

BD: Could you go a bit more into the science of how the cities are turned into smoke?

MM: The firestorm was something that the Allies intentionally devised in World War II in raids against Hamburg, Dresden and Tokyo, with many, many incendiary bombs designed to ignite fires close to one another. When you have fires all over a city, they tend to join together and intensify, creating temperatures so hot that even asphalt and concrete become fuel. That’s where the black smoke comes from.

As we saw with Hiroshima, when you detonate a nuclear weapon in the air above a city, it has the same effect of igniting fires all over the city.

The heat from the fires then acts like a thunderstorm, lifting air up very quickly. This means that air has to come in from below to replace it. So from all directions, air gets sucked in, adding more oxygen to the fire. Moreover, the air is so fast that it carries with it debris, animals and even people.

To quote from the book Fire and Ice by David Fisher:

“On July 27, 1943 nearly a thousand British bombers dropped over two thousand tons of bombs on Hamburg, most of them incendiaries, turning that city into a burning, melting quagmire of horror. The temperature reached one thousand degrees in the center of town, igniting the world's first firestorm. The superheated air rose so fast it sucked in outside air in the form of hurricane-strength winds, which force-fed the fire still further and blew helpless people like leaves into the burning center of destruction where they actually melted into pools of burning fat. On the outskirts of the storm other people were stuck in molten asphalt, suffocating and igniting. More than 40,000 people died that night. In the early spring of 1945 the American Twentieth Air Force topped the RAF's record by burning Tokyo, starting a conflagration that totaled sixteen square miles of intensely populated city, killing more than 80,000 people.”

BD: Are the fires something that can be started by radioactive fallout or is it just the initial explosion of the bomb?

MM: There are two kinds of ways of dropping a nuclear bomb over a city: there is an airburst, where it explodes high, and there is a ground burst, when it explodes when it hits the ground. Airbursts are most effective at creating firestorms, igniting cities. And it’s much more widespread damage than a ground burst. Ground bursts are what create fallout, which is when it sends up material from the ground that is radioactive, which can spread in the wind. There would be more fallout from a ground burst, and more fire from an airburst.

BD: What would the world look like after a nuclear exchange between the US and China?

MM: In that case, you're talking about two powers with very large stockpiles of nuclear weapons. You could get a tremendous amount of smoke if you started dropping bombs in cities across the US and China. That’s the sort of thing that Alan Robock modeled in a US/Russia war.

It’s what we call a true nuclear winter, in the sense that in some places in the interior of continents, for example in Ukraine, the temperatures remain below freezing all year long, so you can't grow crops at all under those conditions. Similar things happen in the center of the US and China. On all continents, basically. You have global average temperatures that get basically as cold, for a year or so, as what we had in the last ice age.

BD: What would happen after the first year?

MM: When we modeled an India/Pakistan war in 2014, we found that when you include interactive components in your model, such as the effects of the full ocean, expanding sea ice, that the changes to climate are more prolonged. This is largely thanks to the ocean’s ability to store lots of heat. Although global temperatures cool more slowly when one considers the ocean, the lower temperatures are more prolonged.

After 24 years of our simulation, temperatures were still below normal, whereas in other studies that didn’t include the full impact of the oceans, they showed that the temperatures had recovered in ten years. And this is a small nuclear war.

It’s really hard to say how much destruction something like this would cause, how many species would be wiped out and if ours would be among them or not. What I’ve studied shows that even a small event could cascade. We’ve seen food shortages in the past few decades that have been intensified by societal reactions. There was a global rice crisis in 2008 after India and Vietnam stopped exporting rice, for example, leading to a severe shortage in the Philippines and food riots in Haiti. Certainly food shortages have been tied to uprisings in the Arab Spring. So all sorts of things could happen that are destabilizing.

But with a large war, it’s somewhat unknowable, but also so horrific it doesn’t matter exactly how damaging it is.

Copyright © 1998-2017 World Socialist Web Site - All rights reserved

[TomLeftist]

ckaihatsu: Great article, and unfortunately, since the great majority of the 320 million robots, the 320 million drones, the 320 million slaves of the USA are so egocentrical, narcissists, ultra-selfish and think that they can control real-reality with their own body and minds, the great majority of adult US citizens think and really believe it in their own stupid brains. That they don't need any US government at all, any political news at all, any international politics news at all, any help coming from politicians, any help coming from leftist parties. That they really think that they can grow in wealth, become rich and physically fit like Kim Kardashian and Tom Cruise (by working hard at a Mcdonalds in the morning and working very hard at a Wal Mart in the afternoon. (This is the super-stupid super-lone-ranger "do it your self" thinking of the majority of brainwashed robots of USA.

Having said all this, this ultra-stupid ultra-Ayn Rand Robinson Crusoe way of living of Americans is really responsible for The Democratic Party and The Republican Party winning all elections, and probably winning the elections of 2020, 2024, 2028, 2032. Because the great majority of US citizens (by their schozophrenic, social phobic, neurotic, paranoid narcissistic mysanthropist philosophy of life). Have enabled and will continue to inable the power of Trhe Democratic Party and The Republican Party for many decades to come.

If a team of leftist US soldiers do not overthrow the US government thru a coup de etat, we will be doomed. Because we cannot rely on the masses of USA. The majority of the masses of people of USA are crazy, mentally disabled, mentally failed and are a total mess. They are totally disabled to support a communisty revolution in USA




In-depth analysis of crisis on Korean Peninsula: U.S. threatens war (http://fightbacknews.us1.list-manage1.com/track/click?u=a29530af96a02fc55d345e735&id=c7f7126d65&e=d323598fe4)

People's impeachment of pro-U.S. Park government in the south

http://www.fightbacknews.org/sites/default/files/imagecache/article-lead-photo/KoreanoUS.jpg

By staff

Washington DC - On March 22, the U.S. military conducted the largest-ever military exercise with south Korea's armed forces, preparing for an invasion and military strike on the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK). These war games amassed 300,000 South Korean troops and 17,000 U.S. troops on the 38th parallel, which has formally divided Korea into 'north' and 'south' since 1945. U.S. stealth bombers and South Korean fighter jets simulated bombing Pyongyang, the capitol of the DPRK, along with other sites in anticipation of "a crisis situation" in the Korean Peninsula, according to U.S. Navy commanders.

This massive mobilization of the U.S. and south Korean war machines took place amid new threats of military aggression by the Trump administration. Speaking in Seoul, South Korea, on March 17, U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson rejected the possibility of peace negotiations with the DPRK over its nuclear weapons program. Speaking on "military conflict,” he told reporters and South Korean officials, "that option's on the table."

"The policy of strategic patience has ended," said Tillerson during a press conference. "We are exploring a new range of security and diplomatic measures." The unprecedented war games in the Korean peninsula last week make clear that these measures include outright war.

The U.S. called its joint military exercises with south Korea "purely defensive," supposedly in response to a missile test by the DPRK. But considering the U.S. outspends the DPRK on its military in a big way - Trump's proposed budget raises U.S. military spending to $603 billion versus the DPRK's $10 billion - this claim is another example of Trump's ‘alternative facts’ at work.

Mass movement in south Korea topples corrupt U.S.-backed president

Despite its enormous military presence, the U.S. agenda in the Korean Peninsula is not going well. On March 10, South Korea's Constitutional Court upheld the impeachment of President Park Geun-hye on corruption charges. Park is the daughter of former military dictator Park Chung-hee, who ruled the south of Korea from 1961 to 1979 when he was overthrown by a mass movement of workers, labor unions and students.

Park won the 2012 presidential election in the south backed by a coalition of U.S. interests and giant corporations like Samsung. Her government launched a massive assault on unions and the working class, which was met with massive strikes that shut down production and transportation for days. In October 2016, 7000 truckers in south Korea went on strike opposing Park's plans to deregulate the industry and bust unions. The truckers' strike exploded into a widespread worker revolt when Park declared the work stoppage illegal and sent riot police to break the union by force. Rail workers, teachers, factory workers and others also struck and added fuel to the fire.

As president, Park followed the foreign policy line of the U.S. She cut off economic ties with the DPRK, antagonized the People's Republic of China, and defended the continued presence of U.S. military bases in Korea, despite popular protests. Of particular importance was her support for the Thermal High-Area Altitude Defense (THAAD) missile system pushed by the U.S. THAAD's stated purpose is to defend against attacks by the DPRK, but critics agree it would not successfully shoot down intercontinental ballistic missiles if indeed they were fired. Its real purpose is conducting surveillance on China and advancing Washington's long-term plans for war.

Last year, Park's government came under intense fire over revelations of a web of corruption between her administration and major corporations like Samsung. Park's closest advisor - a Rasputin-like cult leader and childhood friend - traded political favors for big business in exchange for money. Massive protests by workers, unions and students forced the National Assembly to impeach Park on Dec. 9, 2016, which was upheld by the Constitutional Court on March 10.. Park and others now face criminal charges stemming from the corruption investigation.

Discredited by the impeachment and opposed by the militant Korean working class, Park's right-wing Saenuri Party stands to lose the upcoming presidential election. Moon Jae-in, the candidate for the liberal Democratic Party of Korea, has a comfortable lead in the polls. She promises re-engagement with the DPRK and has signaled deep skepticism towards the THAAD missile defense system, along with the overall role of the U.S. military in south Korea. Depending on the outcome, the May 9 presidential election could spell disaster for U.S. military plans in the Korean Peninsula.

The legacy of the Korean War

The U.S. media talks about 'north' and 'south' Korea as two separate countries. In reality, Korea is a single nation that was forcibly divided by the U.S. immediately after World War II. The DPRK, along with some progressive political parties, labor unions, and most working people living in the south, remain committed to an independent, reunified Korea to this day.

In World War II, Korea played a crucial rule in defeating the Japanese. An anti-colonial guerrilla army, led by communists like Kim Il Sung, overthrew Japan's bloodthirsty colonial system in 1945, but the U.S. moved in quickly to capture Japan's old empire for itself. U.S. military officers divided Korea in two along the 38th parallel and established a capitalist puppet government in the south made up of elites and former Japanese collaborators. Fearing the widespread popularity of the communists in the north and the left-wing people's committees in the south, the Truman administration launched a military campaign to violently crush the Korean revolution in 1950. Aided by the Soviet Union and socialist China, the Korean People’s Army (KPA) pushed the U.S led invasion back to the 38th parallel, which is now the southern border of the DPRK.

3 million Koreans died during the Korean War, 2 million from the north and a million in the south, according to University of Chicago professor Bruce Cumings. That means 1 in 10 Koreans, and 1 in 5 north Koreans - died as a direct result of the U.S./United Nations military action in Korea. In the three years of the Korean War, the U.S. dropped more bombs on this small East Asian nation than all sides dropped in Europe in six years of fighting during World War II. U.S. military personnel oversaw the execution of hundreds of thousands of suspected communist sympathizers by Syngman Rhee’s puppet government in the south.

Despite the destruction caused by the Korean War, the DPRK undertook an ambitious reconstruction effort that allowed them to enjoy a higher GDP and better standard of living than the U.S.-supported regime in the south, which consistently suffered from high unemployment and low wages brought on by Western sweatshops. It wasn’t until the 1980s and the eventual collapse of the DPRK’s largest trading partner, the Soviet Union, that the Republic of Korea would overtake the north in economic productivity.

Socialism in the DPRK

In the U.S. media, the overwhelming image of the DPRK is a totalitarian hellhole. This image didn't come out of nowhere, nor does it reflect the actual reality of life in the DPRK. It's an idea intentionally cultivated through Hollywood films like The Interview, Netflix exploitation documentaries, fake news stories - like the now-discredited claim that Kim Jong Un was forcing all Koreans to get his same haircut - and sensationalist 'defector' stories, most of which are paid and written by South Korean intelligence offices.

The propaganda image of Kim Jong Un as a crazy dictator fuels the U.S. drive for war against the DPRK. After all, the only way you could believe the ludicrous idea of a tiny impoverished country firing first on the world's biggest and most armed military power is if you believe the leader (1) is totally insane, and (2) doesn't care about human life. Ironically, these characteristics apply to the billionaires in the Trump administration, which is playing with fire and risking war in east Asia.

Here are the facts: DPR Korea is a socialist country, meaning the working class and its party - the Workers Party of Korea - hold state and economic power. Its achievements in the face of sanctions and devastating warfare even impressed officials in the U.S. A declassified CIA report, written behind closed doors in 1990, explicitly recognizes that the DPRK administers outstanding social services for children, guarantees totally free housing to citizens, provides a highly successful country-wide public preventative medical program, oversees a police force with an extremely low level of corruption and has achieved high life expectancy and low infant mortality rates.

The same CIA report points out that there are more college-educated women than men in the DPRK, and admits that the Workers Party of Korea legitimately committed to ‘radical change’ in Korean gender relations. The facts support their conclusion: women are permitted to serve in the military, state child-care programs allow women to have independent careers outside of the house and a significant number of high level political positions are occupied by women, including representation in the Supreme People’s Assembly.

The DPRK’s remarkable public health care system - which provides unconditional universal coverage for citizens - continues to perform tremendously well, even in the midst of crippling U.S. sanctions. In 2010 report to the United Nations on the north Korean health care system, Dr. Margaret Chan, the Director-General of the World Health Organization, called it “something which most other developing countries would envy.” She pointed out that the “DPRK has no lack of doctors and nurses,” and praised the system for its “very elaborate health infrastructure, starting from the central to the provincial to the district level.”

Learning from history: The DPRK's nuclear program in context

The DPRK has faced economic sanctions imposed by the U.S. since its inception and remains poor, having to dedicate a large amount of its resources to defend against the threat of invasion. Imperialist aggression against the DPRK continues to this day. More than 28,000 U.S. troops permanently stationed in South Korea and the overhanging threat of U.S. Navy freighters carrying nuclear missiles in the Korean Peninsula. War games, like these latest provocations by Trump, take place every year.

After the fall of the Soviet Union and most of the socialist bloc, the U.S. began targeting the remaining socialist and national democratic states for regime change. Colin Powell, serving as a general under George H.W. Bush, said in 1992 that he was "running out of demons" to justify military buildup, saying only "Kim Il Sung and Fidel Castro" were left. Facing economic hardships from the loss of its biggest trading partner and military ally (USSR), the DPRK began investing heavily in its national defense and launched a nuclear program - both for energy and military application.

Contrary to the hysterical claims in the U.S. media that the DPRK wants to "turn Los Angeles into a sea of fire" or "nuke Seoul," the aim of the Korean nuclear program is to reduce the country's spending on the military and use it for economic development. In 2016 at the 13th Presidium, the Supreme People’s Assembly explicitly outlined the reasons for its nuclear program: deterrence.

According to the Korean Central News Agency, military spending accounts for 15.9% of the DPRK's budget, compared with 47.5% for the economy and 36.6% for social services like childcare, health care, sports and education. The DPRK spends such a large amount of its budget on its military for defense purposes, but it would prefer to spend more on developing socialism and improving living standards.

Two years after invading Iraq and toppling Saddam Hussein's government, George W. Bush presented an ultimatum to both Libya and the DPRK: Shut down their nuclear programs, cooperate with the 'war on terror," or risk regime change. Muammar Gaddafi of Libya agreed and abandoned its program, eventually facing regime change anyway when the U.S./NATO toppled his government in 2011. Kim Jong Il, on the other hand, pressed forward and announced its first successful nuclear test in 2006 - deterring U.S. military regime change to this day. The WPK hopes that the deterrence created by a fully stocked nuclear weapons arsenal will keep the U.S. and Japan at bay, allowing them to spend fewer resources on the military as a whole.

U.S. hands off Korea

Workers in the U.S. have zero to gain from a war with the DPRK and China, or the continued occupation of south Korea by the U.S. military. In a war, working class people from the U.S. - not 'fortunate sons' like the Trump brothers - would be sent to die for the profits of Wall Street. Pentagon estimates in 2013 noted the U.S. spends over $7 billion annually to maintain its military presence in south Korea - all while claiming that providing universal healthcare to workers in the U.S. is "too expensive."

When we cut through the propaganda, workers in the U.S. have a lot more in common with the people of the DPRK and the workers in the south who toppled President Park than they do with Donald Trump or the 1% class of billionaires he represents. We should stand resolutely against a war against the DPRK or China, and demand a withdrawal of U.S. troops from the Korea’s south.

Read more News and Views from the Peoples Struggle at http://www.fightbacknews.org. You can write to us at [email protected]

[ckaihatsu]

ckaihatsu: Great article, and unfortunately, since the great majority of the 320 million robots, the 320 million drones, the 320 million slaves of the USA are so egocentrical, narcissists, ultra-selfish and think that they can control real-reality with their own body and minds, the great majority of adult US citizens think and really believe it in their own stupid brains. That they don't need any US government at all, any political news at all, any international politics news at all, any help coming from politicians, any help coming from leftist parties. That they really think that they can grow in wealth, become rich and physically fit like Kim Kardashian and Tom Cruise (by working hard at a Mcdonalds in the morning and working very hard at a Wal Mart in the afternoon. (This is the super-stupid super-lone-ranger "do it your self" thinking of the majority of brainwashed robots of USA.

Having said all this, this ultra-stupid ultra-Ayn Rand Robinson Crusoe way of living of Americans is really responsible for The Democratic Party and The Republican Party winning all elections, and probably winning the elections of 2020, 2024, 2028, 2032. Because the great majority of US citizens (by their schozophrenic, social phobic, neurotic, paranoid narcissistic mysanthropist philosophy of life). Have enabled and will continue to inable the power of Trhe Democratic Party and The Republican Party for many decades to come.

If a team of leftist US soldiers do not overthrow the US government thru a coup de etat, we will be doomed. Because we cannot rely on the masses of USA. The majority of the masses of people of USA are crazy, mentally disabled, mentally failed and are a total mess. They are totally disabled to support a communisty revolution in USA


Well, TL, it seems that you're expecting everything about a revolution to be nice-and-tidy, and for everyone to be perfectly informed and politicized in advance.

While we would *like* everyone's concept of 'political' to be more like our own, the reason people don't usually read Lenin and other revolutionary works is probably because it seems so outside of everyday regular experience. But once world events happen to 'collapse the ceiling' (my wording) of the superstructure *then* people will be open and actively looking for rationales that explain such crises in the system, as well as ways *out* of such a shit-show, like this nuclear showdown.

[ckaihatsu]

[EmergencyResponseforUSAttackonIranorSyria] New M19 leaflet: U.S. Hands Off Korea, Syria


U.S., HANDS OFF KOREA!

The U.S. government has been making many threats against the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK--North Korea). Given the already tense situation on the Korean Peninsula -- the result of U.S. refusal to negotiate a peace treaty and normalize relations with the DPRK for nearly 65 years -- this latest U.S. aggression could set the stage for a world war, possibly a nuclear war. We must oppose it.

The U.S. escalation of threats is based on the pretext of the “horror” and “threat” of DPRK's April 5 missile test and talk of the possibility of another nuclear test by the DPRK. This is a hypocritical stand by the U.S. since the U.S. has enough nuclear weapons to destroy the world, and just launched a Minuteman 3 intercontinental ballistic missile on April 26 as a test of the weapon system that is part of the U.S. nuclear force.

The U.S. threats and cover-up by the corporate media try to obscure that the DPRK has been forced to defend its sovereignty against ceaseless aggression since the U.S. was defeated in the Korean War in 1953, and stopped from taking over the north. Today, there are 90 U.S. land and sea bases in south Korea with 30,000 U.S. troops armed with the latest weapons.

In recent months, the U.S. has conducted the Key Resolve/Foal Eagle war exercises in and around Korea with practice for invasion and regime change in the DPRK. The “war games” have featured use of U.S. bombers, fighters and ships capable of delivering nuclear weapons. These were the largest of the U.S.’ annual “war games” in 40 years and an expression of the aggressive U.S.-Japan-south Korea military alliance.

Now, the Trump administration is considering openly placing nuclear weapons in south Korea once again, based on the irrational claim that it is the DPRK that poses a threat and requires a nuclear deterrent. It has even floated the possibility of permitting Japan to develop nuclear weapons.

The Korean people have consistently opposed U.S. aggression and the presence of U.S. troops and bases on Korean soil. Most recently they have been in motion for months to oppose the installation of the terminal high altitude area defense missile defense (THAAD) system in south Korea that poses a danger to the region, and is also opposed by China and Russia.

The U.S. has refused the DPRK's many calls to sign a peace treaty and sabotaged all efforts by China to broker a political solution to denuclearize the Korean peninsula via the "Six Party Talks" involving the U.S., China, the DPRK, south Korea, Japan and Russia. This shows who is for peace and who is for war.

The U.S. imperialists have never given up their ambition to take over all of the strategically located Korean Peninsula, a beachhead from which they could then hope to conquer all of Asia.

This dangerous situation calls for us all to speak out against this latest act of U.S. aggression against the DPRK and to demand that the Trump administration and Democrats and Republicans back off and sign a peace treaty now. U.S., Hands Off Korea!


U.S. HANDS OFF SYRIA!

The U.S. bombing of Syria on April 6 must be opposed as a criminal act:

a. Syria has never attacked the U.S. The U.S., under international law, including the UN Charter, which the U.S. has signed, has no right to attack Syria.

b. The U.S. bombed for no legitimate reason. The Trump Administration claims the government of Syria used poison gas against civilians. They have presented NO evidence to prove this. Let’s remember that the government and corporate media spread Big Lies before, such as claiming there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

The evidence that is available about the source of the gas attack in Syria on April 4 is that the U.S.-backed rebels in Syria had poison chemicals in a storage building. (yahoo.com/news/russia-argue-u-n-syria-rebels-blame-gas-115906393.html).

There is evidence U.S. backed rebels used poison gas previously in Syria, such as in the notorious attack in 2013 (dailymail.co.uk/ news/article-2320223/UN-accuses-Syrian-rebels-carrying-sarin-gas-attacks-blamed-Assads-troops.html).

We should be clear that the U.S. missile strike on Syria on April 6 was not the act of a lone criminal named Trump. Democrats and other Republicans have enthusiastically applauded the U.S. bombing. Among them is Hillary Clinton, who has long advocated bombing airfields in Syria. Bernie Sanders is not condemning the attack; instead he is raising concerns about whether it is the best step to gain domination over Syria.

One big problem the U.S. has in Syria is that the Syrian government has regained many key towns from the U.S.-backed rebels, and peace talks for a peaceful political solution were moving forward. This has been a blow to the U.S. plans for regime change and its desire to dominate Syria because of its important position in the Middle East, and to undercut the influence of Russia and Iran in the region.

The U.S. ruling class decided years ago that it would attack Syria in an all-around way and not allow the Syrian people to exercise their right to self-determination. (See, for example, counterpunch.org/2015/09/17/the-dirty-politics-behind-the-syrian-conflict/). And so, under Obama and the Democrats, the U.S. underhandedly attacked Syria using proxies to overthrow its democratically-elected government. The U.S. government has admitted it funded, supplied, and trained “rebels” including el Qaeda offshoots. Under Obama, the U.S. began to put U.S. boots on the ground. In recent weeks the U.S. has inserted more than a thousand additional U.S. troops.

The U.S. ruling class is so desperate it is willing to risk provoking a war with Russia, which has answered the call of the Syrian government for assistance.

But, we the people do not have to stand for any wars for U.S. empire, spreading misery and creating millions of refugees. We have a responsibility to stand up against these crimes being committed in our name, and do this with mass demonstrations and by interfering in ruling class plans (such as youth refusing to join the military).

At the same time we need to work for a future in which we have a genuinely democratic government of, for, and by the people—an anti-war government, a government of peace and justice.

Let us take even more time from our busy lives to make sure we have discussion with our friends and neighbors and all people of conscience about all these issues facing us, especially the escalating crimes of the Trump regime. No wars for U.S. Empire! Fight for an anti-war government in the U.S., a truly democratic peace and justice government!

This leaflet is from the

March 19th Anti-War Coalition
[email protected]

4.28.17

[ckaihatsu]

War threat: Zengakuren (All Japan Federation of Students' Autonomous Bodies) message to Korean students


Dear friends around the world,

Please find attached Zengakuren (All Japan Federation of Students' Autonomous Bodies) message to Korean students and Doro-Chiba message to KCTU (Korean Confederation of Trade Unions).

The Trump government's cruise missile strike against Syria is a tremendous escalation of the already devastating US war in the Middle East. Above all, it is a de facto declaration of war in the Korean Peninsula. And therefore it means a declaration of intent to break down KCTU who has swept Park Geun-hye out of office and continues the fight to change the society. Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe immediately expressed support for “the determination of the US Government”.

We thoroughly impeach such outrageous crimes committed by the US and Japanese governments.
Let's stop war by the power of international solidarity before it starts and causes unimaginable disaster.

In solidarity,

International Labor Solidarity Committee of Doro-Chiba
General Secretary
H. Yamamoto




FROM Zengakuren International Department:
[email protected]







2 attachments
Zengakuren message to Korean students.docx
6K
Doro-Chiba message to KCTU.pdf
157K

[ckaihatsu]

Passed May 15: Resolution to End Rising Military Tensions on the Korean Peninsula, passed by Alameda (CA) Labor Council


[This resolution was adopted unanimously by the Alameda Labor Council delegates last night]

RESOLUTION TO END RISING MILITARY TENSIONS ON THE KOREAN PENINSULA

WHEREAS the U.S. Government has now sent Navy forces, including an aircraft carrier and a nuclear submarine, to the Korean Peninsula, making bellicose threats and greatly increasing tensions in that region; and

WHEREAS both the U.S. and North Korean governments are openly speaking of using nuclear weapons if open hostilities commence; and

WHEREAS the use of nuclear weapons will immediately threaten the lives of tens of thousands living in the Korean Peninsula and Japan — the latter already the victim of nuclear horrors in 1945 - and the outbreak of open hostilities in the Korean Peninsula region will result in many fatalities and injuries of U.S. military personnel there; and

WHEREAS the first-use of nuclear weapons by any nation is the ultimate war crime and the United States should state clearly its commitment against first-use, and should fulfill its treaty obligation to pursue nuclear disarmament rather than investing another $1 trillion over the next ten years to “modernize” its nuclear arsenal and delivery systems; and

WHEREAS the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions has been helping block the transport of geological survey equipment for installing the THAAD missile system in South Korea which could provoke a confrontation with China; and

WHEREAS the unstable political situation on the Korean Peninsula is a direct byproduct of the Korean War, which was never formally ended and instead only a cessation of hostilities, an armistice, was established; and

WHEREAS the motivation for seeking nuclear weapons stems from the continuing threat to the sovereignty and stability of the North Korean government which is developing nuclear weapons as a deterrence; and

WHEREAS a peace treaty that formally ends the Korean War would dramatically reduce tensions on the Korean Peninsula, would set the stage for the withdrawal of the 28,500 U.S. troops now stationed in South Korea, and would establish the conditions for negotiating the denuclearization of the entire Korean Peninsula.

THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED THAT the Alameda Labor Council stands in solidarity with the working people of Japan and Korea (North and South) to oppose any steps by the U.S. government to threaten or plan the use of nuclear weapons against North Korea, or anywhere else; and

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the Alameda Labor Council calls upon our government to seek lasting peace, security and political stability on the Korean Peninsula by negotiating a peace treaty that formally ends the Korean War, guarantees the territorial integrity and sovereignty of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, and denuclearizes the entire Korean Peninsula; and

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that Alameda Labor Council calls upon the U.S. government to declare that it will forsake the first use of nuclear arms and will fulfill its treaty obligations to eliminate all nuclear weapons rather than spending another trillion dollars to "modernize" our nuclear arsenal and delivery systems; and

BE IT FINALLY RESOLVED that a copy of this resolution be sent to the U.S. State Department, the North and South Korean Missions to the United Nations, our Congressional delegation, and to the California AFL-CIO, with a request for concurrence and submission to the October AFL-CIO Convention in St. Louis.

Submitted by Michael Eisenscher, Delegate, Peralta Federation of Teacher, AFT Local 1603 for consideration by ALC delegates at it May 15 meeting. ADOPTED UNANIMOUSLY-May 15, 2017



ALC RESOLUTION TO END RISING MILITARY TENSIONS IN THE KOREAN PENINSULA.pdf
567K

[ckaihatsu]

http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/05/25/nkor-m25.html


Prominent analyst predicts “imminent” US war on North Korea

By James Cogan

25 May 2017

George Friedman, the head of Geopolitical Futures and former chairman of the intelligence and strategic forecasting website Stratfor, has declared, in speeches and articles this week, that a US-led attack on North Korea is “imminent.” Friedman’s assessment is that the sheer scale of the American mobilisation on and near the Korean peninsula is at the point of “crossing a threshold, from threats to military action.”

Stratfor, established by Friedman in 1996, came to prominence with its assessment of the international geopolitical implications of the US invasions and occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq. Its remit is to provide business elites with rigorous and sober analyses of world developments, in order to assist them in planning their longer-term investments and strategies.

Stratfor analysts, Friedman included, are believed to have close ties with American intelligence agencies and the upper echelons of the military. Their critiques generally ignore mainstream propaganda, such as “fighting terrorism,” and focus instead on the true imperialist motives for US intrigues and interventions—control over strategic territory, oil and resources, and access to markets.

Friedman retired as Stratfor chairman in 2015 and established Geopolitical Futures, which provides similar services to corporations. He made his remarks on North Korea to the “Strategic Investment Conference 2017”—an annual gathering of business figures that took place this year in Florida.

Friedman substantiated his view of the “imminence” of a US attack, by drawing attention to several recent developments.

* With the dispatch of the aircraft carrier Ronald Reagan from its base in Japan, the US Navy now has two aircraft carrier battlegroups operating in the waters adjacent to the Korean Peninsula. Among what President Donald Trump labelled the US “armada,” are guided-missile destroyers and Ohio-class nuclear submarines, which could launch hundreds of cruise missiles to initiate an attack on the North. Friedman pointed to the prospect that at least two of the aircraft carriers currently based on the US West Coast could also be deployed.

* The US Air Force has deployed a number of its new “fifth generation” F-35 Joint Strike Fighters to South Korea, which are touted as being able to circumvent North Korean air defence systems.

* Some 100 US F-16 strike fighters are conducting daily exercises over South Korea, alongside the South’s own array of hundreds of F-16s, F-15s and older F-5 fighters. Friedman noted that similar daily rehearsals preceded the massive US air onslaught on Iraq in January 1991.

* Friedman also drew attention to a public announcement that “civil defence briefings” will be taking place on May 31 in Guam—where the US Air Force bases a number of B-2, B-1 and B-52 bombers, as well as a squadron of F-22 Stealth Fighters. The purpose of the briefings is to prepare the civilian population’s response, should North Korea prove capable of attacking Guam with long-range missiles.

He bluntly declared: “If we’re not going to war, we are doing a very good imitation of it.”

Echoing other military and strategic analysts, Friedman postulated that any attack would be massive in scale and most likely “undeclared”—that is, there would be no formal declaration of war on North Korea by the US Congress. The North Korean military, he stated, had “a stunning mass” of artillery within range of South Korea’s capital Seoul and the 25 million civilians in its metropolitan area. The objective of the first stage of an undeclared war, he opined, would be to “neutralise the artillery”—that is, slaughter tens of thousands of North Korean conscript soldiers before they could launch retaliation attacks.

An onslaught of cruise missiles, carpet bombing by B-2s, B-1s and B-52s, and attacks by wave after wave of strike fighters against the North Korean forces massed near the border, would be accompanied by efforts to destroy command-and-control centres. According to the operation plans of the US and South Korean militaries, a key objective of the first hours of a war would be to kill the North’s political leadership, including its figurehead, Kim Jong-un.

Friedman’s remarks are particularly significant in that he dismissed any conception that such a war would be the product of the irrationality of Donald Trump, or simply an attempt to divert attention from the raging political crisis engulfing his administration in Washington. Trump, Friedman made clear, was simply following operational plans for war that were drawn up during the Bush administration and developed further under Obama. An attack on North Korea, he emphasised, had been “American strategy for several decades.”

Friedman did not explore, in his speech, the real target of this “strategy.” It is, in the final analysis, China. North Korea has historically served as a strategic buffer for China against the US and its key regional ally, Japan. The destruction of the current North Korean regime, and the occupation of the North by US-backed South Korean forces, would objectively weaken the Beijing’s position.

Friedman indicated he strongly believes that a war will be launched soon. “We didn’t deploy the number of aircraft, warn the population on Guam, we didn’t deploy carriers, as a gesture,” he said. “We intend to use them, I think.”

Half-jokingly, Friedman concluded that the order to attack was unlikely to be given while the president was away from the United States. Trump is due to return to Washington on May 27.

Copyright © 1998-2017 World Socialist Web Site - All rights reserved

[ckaihatsu]

http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/05/29/nkor-m29.html


North Korea tests missile as US deploys third aircraft carrier

By James Cogan

29 May 2017

South Korea reported at 5.39 a.m. today that North Korea fired what is believed to have been a short-range ballistic missile some 450 kilometres toward Japan. Japanese authorities claimed that the projectile came down in the sea within Japan’s exclusive economic zone.

Japanese chief cabinet secretary Yoshide Suga told news agencies that Tokyo “cannot tolerate repeated provocations.”

The newly formed South Korean government of President Moon Jae-in held an emergency meeting of the national security council within hours. Its military Joint Chiefs of Staff issued a press release declaring that its forces are “maintaining full preparedness” for the possibility of war.

North Korea’s missile launch was preceded by a test on May 28 of an anti-aircraft system, which was reportedly watched in person by its leader Kim Jong-un. On May 21, his regime tested a suspected medium-range missile, which also came down in the Sea of Japan.

The North Korean actions follow a series of diplomatic and military steps by the Trump administration, backed by allies regionally and internationally, that can only have heightened fears within the Pyongyang regime of the possibility of an all-out US-led attack.

At an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council on May 23, the US, Britain and France denounced North Korea and demanded increased economic sanctions to force it into abandoning its nuclear and missile programs.

In a press conference on May 26 after bilateral talks with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, before the Group of Seven (G7) summit in Italy, Trump asserted that North Korea was “a big problem. It’s a world problem and it will be solved.” In a threatening tone, he repeated: “At some point, it will be solved. You can bet on that.”

The G7 as a whole—which consists of Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Canada, as well as the US and Japan—endorsed this menacing rhetoric. Its communiqué on May 27 declared North Korea was a “threat to world peace” and demanded that Pyongyang “immediately and fully comply with all relevant United Nations Security Council Resolutions and abandon all nuclear and ballistic missile programs in a complete, verifiable and irreversible manner.”

The US military has made several threatening announcements alongside the diplomatic demands for Pyongyang’s total capitulation to the dictates of US imperialism.

On May 26, the Pentagon announced it will carry out a missile defence test this Tuesday, simulating the intercept and destruction of an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) fired at the US by North Korea. Such a test has not been carried out since mid-2014.

The same day, US Pacific Command (PACOM) revealed that the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz and its battle group will leave port on the American west coast on June 1 bound for the Sea of Japan. The Nimitz will operate in the western Pacific for six months and is being deployed ostensibly to replace the USS Carl Vinson battle group which is currently operating in waters off the Korean Peninsula. The Japan-based USS Ronald Reagan has also put to sea.

When the Nimitz arrives around mid-June, the US Navy will therefore have three aircraft carrier battle groups in the region, capable of unleashing devastating firepower from aircraft, missile-guided destroyers and ballistic missile submarines—not to mention submarines armed with nuclear missiles.

In South Korea, the US and South Korean air forces are continuing daily exercises involving dozens of jet fighters and ground-attack aircraft.

The most ominous statements over recent days, however, have been made by retired US military leaders and by Defense Secretary General James Mattis.

On May 23, four former PACOM commanders—Admiral Dennis C. Blair , Admiral Timothy J. Keating , Admiral Samuel Locklear and Admiral Joseph W. Prueher—were the panel of a National Committee on US-China Relations meeting in New York.

Discussing whether the purported threat posed by North Korea could be dealt with militarily, Keating stated: “There are a wide range of options… all of them are classified so we can’t go into them here, but you should know that there are a wide range of options available to the president and secretary of defense, resident in the planning warrens of Pacific Command.”

Locklear added: “Just because it’s tragic [war on North Korea] doesn’t mean he [Trump] won’t do it…. I think this is the mistake Kim Jong-un needs really to think about... That regime needs to be very careful, and the partners in the region who need to help manage expectations in North Korea and the outcome, need to be aware how fast this thing has changed over time. And it could be tragic.”

A range of strategic analysts predict that casualties in a second Korean War could run into the hundreds of thousands just in 24 hours.

In an interview on May 28 with CBS News, Mattis made chilling remarks. “A conflict in North Korea,” he stated, “would be probably the worst kind of fighting in most people’s lifetime.” He highlighted the North Korean artillery that is positioned within range of the South Korean capital Seoul, whose greater metropolitan area has a population some 25 million.

The bottom line,” he said, “is it would be a catastrophic war if this turns into combat, if we’re not able to resolve this situation through diplomatic means.”

Mattis was asked by NBC’s John Dickerson: “What is the line in North Korea? That if the regime crosses that line, in your view, the US should take action?”

The defense secretary replied: “I’d prefer not to answer that question, John. The president needs political manoeuvre on this issue. We do not draw red lines unless we intend to carry them out. We’ve made very clear that we’re willing to work with China and we believe China has tried to be helpful in this regard.”

A pretext is being carefully scripted in Washington to justify a devastating pre-emptive war on North Korea. The scenario that will be outlined to the American people and the world is that the Chinese government proved incapable of reining in a rogue regime in Pyongyang and action had to be taken because North Korea was on the verge of acquiring the capacity to launch nuclear attacks on the continental United States.

A second Korean War, however, as Admiral Keating indicated last week, has been under continuous planning, update and review by US Pacific Command for decades. Its immediate aim would be the overthrow of the Pyongyang regime and occupation of the North with US-backed South Korean forces. The objective has always been to drastically alter the balance of forces in North East Asia, by eliminating North Korea as a buffer between China and the US and its allies.

The greatest danger in the situation is that a decision will be taken by US imperialism to once again try and use war to push back against the strategic challenges it faces in Europe, the Middle East and Asia, and to divert from its immense internal political, economic and social crises.

The author also recommends:

Prominent analyst predicts “imminent” US war on North Korea

[25 May 2017]

Copyright © 1998-2017 World Socialist Web Site - All rights reserved

[ckaihatsu]

Americans have forgotten what we did to North Korea (http://click.actionnetwork.org/mpss/c/6wA/ni0YAA/t.27r/5bTfumqcQTKdAeHNcaK81A/h17/ZcQUeioteD4kF6Kj0Iabgd1rbDwuvckpQTeRaVawvXPD32-2BGIT0GIa35VFdUlnJfT119PJs-2FSSoh9rxziNDgWhj-2BW2d41Qodr2bbOhKKqwPGXNuQ7TTrdf7gKnBfmZI5GBHjFaf0 5IEhrq6sYLJxFNnNKAVGt6ZNtTZkzuQOI8APha8cVXK0I-2BF1nNAI6XU5R8oSaJDfL6Fuqyr6r-2ByctioCBPSAzAs-2BRSX248wbuH0m07P0jkdWhxGvflDyRbwuKEJyJGuHGWS2Tn6s 0Z6u9SuzGChwGa-2FepWtuqsPQYywOkBcNn3zFfjUMExz674ajru5zQ5avjrmdzZ5 2Gikz-2FlyJrHvW0DIcLPeAm3z0vZ5xjHhjwVBMw06BvxHBYNAQ0zfMz U695ceRKu76Jgv6xqbZdhiwVjSKoqLxn1q3hID5-2BLi3OoQq4zwYcX73DdFBrm1zB7mjhGV8FLZUpDnKTRxbUWuJH vr2uXiLdZKOeUjEO2Dsh8so12tzx-2B-2FtJChB1tvBPywl6YQ2cExtQof79ji3T8xEkXLTdM9q2ygkM-2Bw-3D)

https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/a86dER1Sfn5o39Q551n9VnaSsD8=/0x62:4992x3390/1200x800/filters:focal(0x62:4992x3390)/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/46887240/GettyImages-129360499.0.0.jpg

Regarding North Korea, Max Fisher tells us, "Yes, much of its anti-Americanism is cynically manufactured as a propaganda tool, and yes, it is often based on lies. But no, it is not all lies. The US did in fact do something terrible, even evil to North Korea, and while that act does not explain, much less forgive, North Korea's many abuses since, it is not totally irrelevant either. That act was this: In the early 1950s, during the Korean War, the US dropped more bombs on North Korea than it had dropped in the entire Pacific theater during World War II. This carpet bombing, which included 32,000 tons of napalm, often deliberately targeted civilian as well as military targets, devastating the country far beyond what was necessary to fight the war. Whole cities were destroyed, with many thousands of innocent civilians killed and many more left homeless and hungry." Quoting journalist Blaine Harden, this bombing was "perhaps the most forgotten part of a forgotten war," even though it was almost certainly "a major war crime." Yet it shows that North Korea's hatred of America "is not all manufactured," Harden wrote. "It is rooted in a fact-based narrative, one that North Korea obsessively remembers and the United States blithely forgets." [More (http://click.actionnetwork.org/mpss/c/6wA/ni0YAA/t.27r/5bTfumqcQTKdAeHNcaK81A/h18/ZcQUeioteD4kF6Kj0Iabgd1rbDwuvckpQTeRaVawvXPD32-2BGIT0GIa35VFdUlnJfT119PJs-2FSSoh9rxziNDgWhj-2BW2d41Qodr2bbOhKKqwPGXNuQ7TTrdf7gKnBfmZI5qm0O-2Fg6nsBo1-2F-2FbXfebTOlEX4mAjBjUT-2BN0UpWq39HVJhsAT2OAUqRcp5yJ-2BEd7J2zXSQ8ZdPHzMFEVc3J5meEFwehVeFhZQNyKmWvEKMw7I KpuLAqZqv5Tx6dNp7NjdGZZWLAvk40U1OPy0Qk2l1qwX2f6ayM 14nBcyFYGRoE-2BEuHW6l10eDtI0Eii9Iz1zc9J18f2v0skWcqWYAKa2-2FRwbCQDo-2FgDVi6QBrNNkiGriLXENHWWOZZExrIAhmBcAU0rMBhiM-2FYI8Sxnndpp4CLO2c9E8YjbBJe-2FcNtqqgD5AEnDtY0YT34f78RtkrSieOcys29rRTwB9iqi7eou buHfJIAbkov-2BcfWeT3NhvqJkjlhS7QZGdZdBKK5oYdRQpKaOeuhKTHIVaTc6 U99Gn8OlBFYihJqbJ3BeStyoXGKE-3D)] Also see: North Korea's Justifiable Anger (http://click.actionnetwork.org/mpss/c/6wA/ni0YAA/t.27r/5bTfumqcQTKdAeHNcaK81A/h19/ZcQUeioteD4kF6Kj0Iabgd1rbDwuvckpQTeRaVawvXOW6whld-2BmwrS35U8nAUtS0AafCQxNmHzLDkJSSYD46Ob8dtssobZIirr NqDLBEE7ZXXE9GWGMQ2oJA9PDflnuUh9tDHHkfKXvi2IJqjX7j zpyUGpIfW-2FMpxvXJ-2BPGTd-2BHlTo-2BuocnNMun8v7EadmVDB-2F794HLvMA3V6na-2FlDtIqXv2UJ362xQtYXPDQ7P6afY-2Fyg0PkuW0XjwuBxJPJhv1DYC9Llf3znZYcwLP0-2BV7zK1fWV24QgkNwix3gw-2FYDhPzD26poAi5fpxI4Pp1Kmq-2BxBtZ5TN0VdRDKlBprwmuC9KakhMRGkEU076OCZJTedcWtTVm z9Ooowri0t4EMwLnDm1t6WmTg2T0KKPy3-2BBjT2utVZ9NcXXFZ5-2BAQuVqpHmMV6TtEnembUw6ylNA5IBMF3q7by1eGGY5WWjm1bG Y2EYUdl5VnSD-2BQsRoSiz-2FSh-2BW-2FrnZDikGJWg6-2FZRlOa7b4hMIWhq5jreCyALdSjuZ5g-3D-3D)

USLAW RESOLUTION TO END RISING MILITARY TENSIONS ON THE KOREAN PENINSULA (http://click.actionnetwork.org/mpss/c/6wA/ni0YAA/t.27r/5bTfumqcQTKdAeHNcaK81A/h21/ZcQUeioteD4kF6Kj0Iabgd1rbDwuvckpQTeRaVawvXM16vJPDA 5ctI2qgnfe8KbcLxhEDqvIMwN4wRyzQFGPAJEldwe3Xwv7ZNFf GeffK7o-2BU2jnEQDXbh29E51CfihHCCwCG-2B1usn6KiTUc5csUU2MMeBkRcqO3RwbVwA7QGL7r1vq7ojKiGf mZKqEv2cg9wj2YqJsxDLgEdB6ahmCpXHDoU8xqT3DOEuxtvh2t AtZ03Wd-2FLzVjdWDQ1g6YcrZfxl9KQc-2B-2FyLClFQgoCf5ydIlfut7EDCLWv1dQ-2Fy-2FHREF7S2GbSZAZPsxBoSYOnVwB3RBcDhHKi-2FGCwrZROiL1wDII5k9y51n2Bl0xwCd2XOEg97xkK-2BNDDpkBaDDZdFnMT9xYJLH12rH-2FW2YLsUm18efIQ77vFZ-2FtzmlhCuyFGZLup7qcClOgtry3-2B-2BHy7Em-2Fn3SG72ZpBOBUoBiJa7fXHHJP5xQ49Mc8FXZo8m6U-2BhOwW5TgMgWk5gsgETcpxM9Cl3YyDn7fdmKot0G-2FqY8BAiAwvqZoQCW5-2BudHR24CEhSMXQ58XzY-2BHQCZe-2BLkNwQr)


Your contribution will be greatly appreciated.

Donate (http://click.actionnetwork.org/mpss/c/6wA/ni0YAA/t.27r/5bTfumqcQTKdAeHNcaK81A/h34/WQ-2BlIwq7W2eCmkkcwbDiBSD9p4T6xn7Ql1kXw4yNstd5rKk1g5N jqGm8iXWobioI7EgYsisGwpKiGBTwN66yIBRkoL735YrwekUUV NxLU4gpDg-2FykbcWjLrBVvejbbK2Z2kH21I18cflqhOulZxDZHBfQi9Y9S-2B9pLjz9KbA5RkthUcGgCwLMT3tqKlkfVACF3Fw8hT6f-2B5OxEayzKnKwb-2BjtYvDEuwvUKRzcCaY8MhFtwIYiv0MYV92-2B8Eap8HFejfbz1gp-2Bu3r0f3-2BSJsd8MRtRH4rz20Ob-2BqZCjgtfBLaKeKS6718xaEqrFgLR15U4u1-2FxHfOPLYU2Lu50kJr-2FFYhuG4QnR1KMcTgJAZoLtF2iHNdf95HOT1nMvLiBRlMpARAJ AEsRJFLUx2KMHoIf8HYU0pMtGJU9DasJfbXG-2FaCp-2BwprMV-2BmbLT7-2B9V4N50vgU0t2yp5oqUVc9qgWE52jcYcG2vNbpsCBwvjeIGfD 0wIZxMcUGcPeOMyCcxOaUx)


This is a low-volume email list operated by US Labor Against the War (http://click.actionnetwork.org/mpss/c/6wA/ni0YAA/t.27r/5bTfumqcQTKdAeHNcaK81A/h35/ZcQUeioteD4kF6Kj0IabgSykMhxVId6NZMGTcqd7mETgvNBjoN PjMxJIkyqwRju-2BVVxOFPg3Yt0hqeVeF-2BGGBlBPBpMLfsUr9jPzfJChsHj2Y98SUciwnYruqmb5b2mf7W 70iASw8ovmA1AvQjyWBqISYJPFcCgcTl6B9-2F4SmghCJoCZ-2FW0ZbxIaE9SFL3JgxQ61zTiL-2F4OpyJah2dELjcuhwS-2FCq2N5cLaF71aLfmTrhmSZLgzCh7elfWhTYZPuCGP4mnIXT2-2B5kxKbIBC1lnmXwsc4c3Sq2CcoMwuhrpVqxk6jfKG4pyvuYct YpC384Cf-2FhHLlxk3oXyqXE5JXkIK4acR8nQ9TZJJoGaHaRnowzEISji2N J27YrFwHrOj3WVd1W2vx5rEhA5qCbu-2BuAyRJy-2F-2BFtF4-2BN2JgnZOmkdRRKh0diLf5sQ8ZUoxRCbMP5zkNFwF0ps5eEh1J xI1g-2Bg-3D-3D)

1030 15th St, NW #153 | Washington DC 20005 | 202-521-5265 | Contact USLAW (http://click.actionnetwork.org/mpss/c/6wA/ni0YAA/t.27r/5bTfumqcQTKdAeHNcaK81A/h36/ZcQUeioteD4kF6Kj0IabgfHZ3h4LSZyNTMWUfhHLuaztoOqzEh TvEIXPiQb5XIpo5OzvOsv9BQGOMWha6z1FUHkZPIpdcfWB9cDy s48unJN2mKubMBEjQ1qVd-2FQ1BYhoYeyYj4wJZk0o-2B7nxf2TsOvNgnhceY8WwJq3KgZvn2Xisx1X09rSEGp6cqNeWx 9Lw2zQ21DsB7wfTd3boNXmZBSP22KTdyC78JLv0Nuz1mEyUXf9 R9j8uRV1ui3KjJ3BVQcBBL-2F6mY6-2BbkZpFKE98zEke4lZEN8CXX-2F9MIvY4gNNm-2FgXt-2BzoX9edwzVLQF1kwl3clwhss6nEZDNeFYHIegLyY97rH6Z2Iv HHQc01C4A3-2Be3X-2FRse1BjXYpjBc7uzeLhiVLEg5cRq-2FqIGZBRgARRGRdZjBA-2FSJPM-2B1K6-2FA2pNnwQAjFCm6NNZVSAieVvMvvlc0uwSc-2FzqHUbGHTEzS2BC0L322DZc2ZZaetIaHWlw-3D)

Sent via ActionNetwork.org (http://click.actionnetwork.org/mpss/c/6wA/ni0YAA/t.27r/5bTfumqcQTKdAeHNcaK81A/h37/55uI0ZjpoLA9-2FYhqE-2F4Eitwb7nFGaBM-2BttuyqSTdMS4-3D). To update your email address or to stop receiving emails from U.S. Labor Against the War (USLAW), please click here.

[ckaihatsu]

Turning the U.S. away from war on North Korea


https://can2-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/data/000/098/344/original/northkoreaEMAIL.png (http://click.actionnetwork.org/mpss/c/2AA/ni0YAA/t.285/y0pKCaSoTLCInu4-KWKQ3A/h0/5VsrcCLxr-2FW1Wxb0-2BJX-2BNjHcApn2YznfSJL7X2c9vErm0-2FLRTZUtyH-2Fq1X7qwWv8Qr5h-2BwbgLNtsC0rMjngEjMqBdrGXoHgokoBUp341gF9cxPtUadPaG aXJXkU-2FNWD9naPOCqWtgVlNfjTM9faU-2FrgnGWd9nJq7-2BDfRcvGDNDgjXTuegniL5yQ3Zv2w4IKee6l-2ByYZ94IAsf-2F6bwb5bt2jUKfOsANj9TZVLC8vxUD3vUO5EHQCogh3y3HMQgP QsFvbzDqy3f-2Fc-2F6ewbr2is8xb4xSwJDLiP-2BnzNmMs0AVIMPwHZhfvwDe-2F8M7Zz9zqDK7FkhWPqqskzgl0-2FfVBD7pcAnur4bWKAWVn6fIWQxm3vrG-2BqBh-2FieszIRLbNAMuK)


Support Diplomacy – Not War – With North Korea.


Tensions are rising on the Korean peninsula, and we’re inching closer to all out war, or worse, a nuclear catastrophe.

Click here to sign a petition to the new president of South Korea. (http://click.actionnetwork.org/mpss/c/2AA/ni0YAA/t.285/y0pKCaSoTLCInu4-KWKQ3A/h1/5VsrcCLxr-2FW1Wxb0-2BJX-2BNjHcApn2YznfSJL7X2c9vErm0-2FLRTZUtyH-2Fq1X7qwWv8Qr5h-2BwbgLNtsC0rMjngEjIwDkoj5D2SgRzEzT5Y7LRZw5eypcpMsd x4cIALm5cHuB2wwgu3ktYGqXZRYuPuNVKsQLZ780yOAMN2kVgD AVgquu4oq3CzPXSq2FsaDHQKbWFw1AUw8kCDaKw-2FSphJpK50EOEV7UIDAw282HCFSJ77HnKQ5MCsU5JZCn2qv7QF pOOg7lgsph-2Fo9UV7YV6YcdPD702iy-2F85NRhx8w0Pgq5p7pFQiqjChDTda0OvtGTDGBEu1DIe48d83R XjApphxey-2BDomjNVup1OpgUPsXdo8KqxIlPTK60ypTEMno4yrz3)

In recent weeks, the erratic, reckless Trump Administration has ratcheted up tensions and threatened what Trump called a “major, major conflict.” Trump has sent aircraft carriers, nuclear submarines, and a host of other military forces towards North Korea. North Korea has launched ballistic missile tests.

Thankfully, despite the deafening drums of war, there is at last a voice for peace. South Koreans just elected a new, progressive president, Moon Jae-in, who campaigned on a pledge to halt hostility and engage in diplomacy. Moon has already suspended deployment of a U.S. missile system.

Later this month, Moon is traveling to Washington to meet Trump.

Add your name to let President Moon know that the U.S. public supports his efforts for a peaceful resolution to the crisis with North Korea. (http://click.actionnetwork.org/mpss/c/2AA/ni0YAA/t.285/y0pKCaSoTLCInu4-KWKQ3A/h2/5VsrcCLxr-2FW1Wxb0-2BJX-2BNjHcApn2YznfSJL7X2c9vErm0-2FLRTZUtyH-2Fq1X7qwWv8Qr5h-2BwbgLNtsC0rMjngEjEaxC7Q-2FJwzeRE7SmOV5jNznCN-2FYEBRrdhD11h63o0GEOlGe7xgY2W-2Fur6Zq2lU00GgwMrVKU5cQ3jSSuXs20D4-2FBzbODm6qLo1DTEMRsOcUgqE2daiaqhAQR1uYBd9Z-2BuwmH5zweD0K5IGiq-2F0Ii5A4AVx4Y4a5fX6uZPbbhulJE9-2BtoKsDifKFJC-2FmzvRTHbYy8VreEjve372St2PGZFSvmNXyO4S-2FDqzQrNBX3APpr9L-2BoKpb3nUrzp8e2MnZGY8awdM0NMnjBHwq0B0iyyTrb6gMWL-2BmWue2LfiDcK-2FW)

Partner organizations on this petition are: Arms Control Association, Daily Kos, Global Zero, Just Foreign Policy, Peace Action, RootsAction.org, WAND, Watchdog.net, Win Without War, World Beyond War.

Please also share on Facebook (http://click.actionnetwork.org/mpss/c/2AA/ni0YAA/t.285/y0pKCaSoTLCInu4-KWKQ3A/h3/HE2UYZIDTZxfLuJ8qHDFiDm7vYuLTAkQPOYHBYIS-2B-2ByZwLmiooRlAsH71WoQXTW2M-2Bc0EAaoNfbswPYwYEVVUmmILsclCRZnaKV4qXuSGJgiG3boll 5k6sczxDg8Te2q2I0iNxHdiVPfR1SD-2FUfkTnOd2tdj-2F4aV8T3LSL1RK8ioqMVt7R7-2FwQwbzCZqHGO9oatIWTivkVYG0vt4nrn9WVX-2B4cGldwEVZL4vCtsXz5voNPIknRQ22yC9Xx-2B1KHhsPuMW2CNB-2F6mKzGivnC41YDpizTBACuckwTDuVkf-2FDh-2FK7AB5wDTQTLa42vLLe2JNFKSZa9TpMrRsNU6s5zYfgF7XrBP dx1rQpYEaKT0be539biGjOmXTulAoacjcqll8hrvxy8pO5SVO5 FhAedalMfrz15RE3uZxTheCMhcnIFK1DoK3iKrbZxGhzj-2FjU7oiHD8nBxI6CpbIpUqdgxmnqA-3D-3D), and Twitter (http://click.actionnetwork.org/mpss/c/2AA/ni0YAA/t.285/y0pKCaSoTLCInu4-KWKQ3A/h4/VE2atosPJwyp5yA4oN-2FSarhXqgNbS4A9aLZmUt6s-2Bli1NemUp0cKfxHTG8C3KVPCejrnzezUUWye7p0ZKoVTqqAu1 CS1lxXZO4jwW21ZrFzzsuUNLsTF5xV9mq5O6Ms6d5RCHef1tK4 87d-2Bnra6BfaZcKUMLynTWITWE1Pf3gzMCJxrQRWJx-2Bj6BslKHexa14CWCVpisk4JzdyqLE6EsNK-2FPogqaoXt1FOsPMR7SlaDikBO96Mh0MAdErEfcvbtPeMZbc2y Fq8UoH-2Bx-2BgmGyIiUJV29XIO7VHBrqaCU2-2FwS2VF4ipMNYjH7M1GqiebIyAW-2BRS5Sr4GMbGwksEyCrFS-2FvFlNkwBIjorVXzZwMg6US-2BdUnKbqMZXzs3Ybt5jom).




Action Network
Sent via Action Network, a free online toolset anyone can use to organize. Click here to sign up (http://click.actionnetwork.org/mpss/c/2AA/ni0YAA/t.285/y0pKCaSoTLCInu4-KWKQ3A/h6/WQ-2BlIwq7W2eCmkkcwbDiBeswRxTeJTvTCywcJ22h-2BqMbAhpXdLM1Mwvq3x3MINrm) and get started building an email list and creating online actions today.

Action Network is an open platform that empowers individuals and groups to organize for progressive causes. We encourage responsible activism, and do not support using the platform to take unlawful or other improper action. We do not control or endorse the conduct of users and make no representations of any kind about them.

You can unsubscribe or update your email address by changing your subscription preferences here.

[ckaihatsu]

via justforeignpolicy.org (http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/)

South Koreans have elected a new president, Moon Jae-in, who campaigned on a pledge to engage in talks with North Korea to freeze and reverse its nuclear program and pursue diplomacy to finally put an end to the Korean conflict. That's a positive development, right? But many in Washington and their allies in big media don't think so. More international tension means more profits for politically influential arms contractors, more fear, more distraction from meeting human needs, at home and abroad.
Later this month, President Moon is traveling to Washington to meet President Trump. Dominant voices in Washington will pressure the South Korean president to toe the pro-escalation line. We're teaming up with a big coalition of groups on a joint petition to generate counter-pressure to keep space open for diplomacy.
Add your name to let President Moon know we support his efforts for a peaceful resolution to the nuclear crisis with North Korea. (https://petitions.signforgood.com/NorthKoreaDiplomacy/?code=JFP)


More... (http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/act/alert-north-korea-diplomacy)

[ckaihatsu]

via wsws.org (http://www.wsws.org)

Moon Jae-in, far from seeking to curb Washington’s threats, has fallen into line with the steady build-up toward confrontation with North Korea.

More... (http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/06/30/kore-j30.html)

[ckaihatsu]

via wsws.org (http://www.wsws.org)

With his election out of the way, President Moon sought to reassure Washington that he remained committed to the military alliance.

More... (http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/07/03/kore-j03.html)

[ckaihatsu]

via wsws.org (http://www.wsws.org)

Trump is adopting a more confrontational stance toward China in an effort to pressure Beijing to force North Korea to bow to US demands.

More... (http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/07/04/usch-j04.html)

[ckaihatsu]

via fightbacknews.org (http://www.fightbacknews.org/)

Washington DC - According to media sources in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), the DPRK Academy of Defense Science reports that a successful test of an inter-continental ballistic missile, called the Hwasong-14, was carried out July 4.
The report states that the rocket was launched from the northwest part of the DPRK, making a “39-minute flight along its pre-set trajectory before accurately hitting the target waters in the open sea in the East Sea of Korea.”
Chairman of the Workers Party of Korea Kim Jong Un was present at the test site, and observed the launch.
The report concludes, “The DPRK will fundamentally put an end to the U.S. nuclear war threat and blackmail and reliably defend the peace and stability of the Korean peninsula and the region.”


More... (http://www.fightbacknews.org/2017/7/4/dprk-builds-defense-capacity-tests-icbm)

[ckaihatsu]

via wsws.org (http://www.wsws.org)

Washington, not Pyongyang, is primarily responsible for creating the explosive situation on the Korean Peninsula.

More... (http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/07/05/kore-j05.html)

[ckaihatsu]

via fightbacknews.org (http://www.fightbacknews.org/)

Washington DC - According to media sources in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), the DPRK Academy of Defense Science reports that a successful test of an inter-continental ballistic missile, called the Hwasong-14, was carried out July 4.
The report states that the rocket was launched from the northwest part of the DPRK, making a “39-minute flight along its pre-set trajectory before accurately hitting the target waters in the open sea in the East Sea of Korea.”
Chairman of the Workers Party of Korea Kim Jong Un was present at the test site, and observed the launch.
The report concludes, “The DPRK will fundamentally put an end to the U.S. nuclear war threat and blackmail and reliably defend the peace and stability of the Korean peninsula and the region.”


More... (https://www.fightbacknews.org/2017/7/4/dprk-builds-defense-capacity-tests-icbm)

[ckaihatsu]

via wsws.org (http://www.wsws.org)

Canberra’s statement closely echoed Washington’s assertions that North Korea now constitutes a threat to the entire world.

More... (http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/07/06/aust-j06.html)

[ckaihatsu]

via wsws.org (http://www.wsws.org)

The Trump administration is returning to the bellicose anti-China stance that characterised his campaign in the presidential election.

More... (http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/07/06/pers-j06.html)

[ckaihatsu]

via fightbacknews.org (http://www.fightbacknews.org/)

Washington, D.C. - The Trump administration has issued a series of threats against the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK,) following a July 4 test launch of an intercontinental ballistic missile that greatly enhances the DPRK’s defense capacity.
On July 5, the U.S. conducted military drills with south Korean military forces that would simulate an attempt to kill the DPRK leadership, often referred to as “decapitation exercises.”
According to Pentagon spokesperson Captain Jeff Davis, “The exercise utilized the Eighth U.S. Army’s Tactical Missile System and south Korean Hyunmoo II missiles.”
“This is a system that can be rapidly deployed and engaged; [it] provides deep-strike precision capability and enables the [south] Korea-U.S. alliance to engage a full array of time-critical targets under all weather conditions,” he added
Speaking in Poland, July 6, President Trump said he was weighting some “severe things” following the launch, and a number of U.S. officials have stated the U.S. is considering military action.
The DPRK newspaper Minju Joson stated July 6, “the successful test-launch is an event of world historic significance in fundamentally terminating the U.S. threat and blackmail for a nuclear war and reliably guaranteeing the peace and security in the Korean peninsula and the region.”


More... (http://www.fightbacknews.org/2017/7/6/more-us-threats-and-military-drills-directed-against-dprk)

[ckaihatsu]

via fightbacknews.org (http://www.fightbacknews.org/)

Washington DC - On July 7, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) Ministry of Foreign Affairs released an important statement on the successful test launch of an intercontinental ballistic missile and the response of the Trump administration.
The statement follows:
“On July 4, the DPRK successfully carried out the test-fire of inter-continental ballistic rocket Hwasong-14 which stands for the final gate to completing the state nuclear force.
The success in the test-fire of Hwasong-14 at just one go is a brilliant victory achieved by the army and people of the DPRK in their more than half-a-century-long anti-imperialist, anti-U.S. showdown and a heroic deed that provided a reliable guarantee of peace and stability of the Korean peninsula and the region.
However, the U.S. is condemning the DPRK's test-fire as a "global threat" and is scheming to increase the international sanctions and pressure on the country to the top notch.
The DPRK makes it clear once again that its development of inter-continental ballistic rocket is an option taken to defend itself by completely terminating the hostile policy and nuclear war threat of the U.S. which have lasted for decades over the century.
There are several nuclear weapons states in the world today, but the U.S. is the one and only country that makes it its daily business to impose constant nuclear threat upon the DPRK.
The issue of the DPRK's nukes and ballistic rocket is an issue confined to the DPRK and the U.S., and the test-fire of the inter-continental ballistic rocket conducted by the DPRK this time is a "gift package" addressed to none other than the U.S.
No other ICBM states had been more transparent than the DPRK in the development and test-fire of inter-continental ballistic rocket.
The DPRK officially announced that it would commence the development of inter-continental ballistic rocket as it was the inevitable choice for the country to cope with ever-increasing nuclear threat from the U.S. and opened to public the entire process of combustion test and static firing test of the engine and the actual test-fire of the rocket, and even sensitive information such as tactical and technical data and specifications.
That is because the DPRK's inter-continental ballistic rocket is an unquestionable nuclear war deterrent which is fundamentally different from the military equipment for aggressive war developed in strict confidence by the U.S. with the wild ambition to dominate the world by means of surprise attack on other nations.
Nevertheless, the U.S. is branding the DPRK's legitimate and righteous measure for self-defense as a "global threat" and calling for "global action" against it. This is an explicit illustration of Trump's "America First Policy" that seeks its own interests by sacrificing others.
The mugger's mentality that tries to engage the entire world in opposing a sovereign state for the reason that the state incurred its displeasure will never find acceptance among any sensible people and independent countries.
The complete success in the test-fire of inter-continental ballistic rocket Hwasong-14 significantly enhanced the efficiency of the DPRK's nuclear force as a war deterrent, thereby more reliably ensuring peace and security in and around the Korean peninsula.
Now that the DPRK's capability to strike the very heart of the U.S. at any given time has been physically proved, the U.S. would find it more difficult to dare attack the DPRK.”


More... (https://www.fightbacknews.org/2017/7/7/dprk-ministry-foreign-affairs-issues-statement-icbm-launch)

[ckaihatsu]

via fightbacknews.org (http://www.fightbacknews.org/)

Washington, D.C. - The Trump administration has issued a series of threats against the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK,) following a July 4 test launch of an intercontinental ballistic missile that greatly enhances the DPRK’s defense capacity.
On July 5, the U.S. conducted military drills with south Korean military forces that would simulate an attempt to kill the DPRK leadership, often referred to as “decapitation exercises.”
According to Pentagon spokesperson Captain Jeff Davis, “The exercise utilized the Eighth U.S. Army’s Tactical Missile System and south Korean Hyunmoo II missiles.”
“This is a system that can be rapidly deployed and engaged; [it] provides deep-strike precision capability and enables the [south] Korea-U.S. alliance to engage a full array of time-critical targets under all weather conditions,” he added
Speaking in Poland, July 6, President Trump said he was weighting some “severe things” following the launch, and a number of U.S. officials have stated the U.S. is considering military action.
The DPRK newspaper Minju Joson stated July 6, “the successful test-launch is an event of world historic significance in fundamentally terminating the U.S. threat and blackmail for a nuclear war and reliably guaranteeing the peace and security in the Korean peninsula and the region.”


More... (https://www.fightbacknews.org/2017/7/6/more-us-threats-and-military-drills-directed-against-dprk)

[ckaihatsu]

via wsws.org (http://www.wsws.org)

The Abe government is brushing aside Article 9 of the constitution that “renounces war” and declares that military forces will “never be maintained.”

More... (http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/07/08/japa-j08.html)

[TomLeftist]

Two B-1B Bombers Hold Live-Fire Drills Over Korean Peninsula, Show Off US "Attack Capabilities"


Link for this article: http://www.zerohedge.com/print/599397


By Tyler Durden
Created 07/08/2017 - 09:46


The US sent two B-1B Lancer strategic bombers from Guam's Andersen Air Force Base base to the Korean Peninsula, to practice “attack capabilities [4]” with South Korean jet fighters and hold live-fire drills [5]on Saturday, Yonhap News reported, the latest show of force by the US military after North Korea’s first-ever ICBM test launch on July 4. The pair of US bombers flew conducted a simulated destruction of an enemy ballistic missile launcher and underground facilities, the South's air force said, sending a strong hint to its northern neighbor. The joint exercise included US F-16 fighters jets as well as fighter planes from the South Korean and Japanese air forces, and came a day after Trump said in Warsaw on Thursday that he was considering “some pretty severe things” in response to North Korea’s latest actions.


Friday’s flyover followed a joint missile-defense drill by the US and South Korean armies on Korea’s east coast Wednesday, and as the US Pacific Air Forces said in a statement late on Friday, the 10-hour flight drill was conducted “in response to a series of increasingly escalatory actions by North Korea." The US message was clear enough: "North Korea’s actions are a threat to our allies, partners and homeland,” Gen. Terrence O’ Shaughnessy, Pacific Air Forces commander, said in a statement. “Let me be clear, if called upon we are trained, equipped and ready to unleash the full lethal capability of our allied air forces." Some more details on the drill from the WSJ and Reuters during the drill, two B-1B bombers flew from Andersen Air Force Base in Guam to the Korean Peninsula where the bombers conducted the live-fire exercise at a range in South Korea's eastern Gangwon province, dropping weapons in a simulated attack on a missile launcher. They were joined by South Korean and U.S. F-16 jet fighters during the mission: South Korean and U.S. fighter jets conducted precision strike drills aimed at attacking enemy targets hidden underground.


South Korea's Yonhap news agency said the bombers then flew west, hugging the heavily fortified Demilitarised Zone (DMZ) border between the two Koreas, before leaving South Korean airspace. The B-1Bs then flew with Japanese F-2 jet fighters over the East China Sea before returning to Guam. This was not the first time the US sent a very clear message to te Kim regime: the Pentagon has been making shows of force in recent months in response to perceived increases in tension on the Korean Peninsula. Twice in May, the U.S. sent B-1B bombers on flyovers near the Korean Peninsula. Each came shortly after a North Korean missile test. So far these have proben to not be very effective at deterring North Korea.


Also in April, the US said it was sending the USS Carl Vinson carrier strike group to the western Pacific to underscore Washington’s commitment to the region. In that case, the announcement instead raised questions about U.S. credibility after it came to light that the aircraft carrier was thousands of miles away. On Thursday, U.S. Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis told reporters in an impromptu briefing at the Pentagon that “we are leading with diplomatic and economic efforts” although he said the launch was a “very serious escalation” and warned the North that any effort to start a war “would lead to severe consequences.” Confirming that the US military is just waiting for a green light, in its statement following Friday’s air force exercise, the U.S. said that it “maintains flexible bomber and jet fighter capabilities” in the region and could “quickly respond to any regional threat.”


The U.S. bombers and South Korean fighters “are just two of many lethal military options at our disposal,” said Lt. Gen. Thomas Bergeson, deputy commander of the U.S. military in South Korea. “This mission clearly demonstrates the U.S.-ROK alliance remains prepared to use the full range of capabilities to defend and to preserve the security of the Korean Peninsula and region,” Lt. Gen. Bergeson added, using the acronym for South Korea’s formal name, the Republic of Korea. Separately Reuters reports [8]that in a move that is sure to anger China and Russia, the US also plans to carry out "a new test of its THAAD missile defense system against an intermediate-range ballistic missile in the coming days" as tensions with North Korea climb.


The test, which was reportedly planned months ago, will be the first of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) to defend against a simulated attack by an intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBM), one of the officials said. The THAAD interceptors will be fired from Alaska. The United States has THAAD interceptors in Guam that are meant to help guard against a missile attack from a country such as North Korea. Asked by Reuters, the U.S. Missile Defense Agency (MDA) confirmed that it aimed to carry out a THAAD flight test "in early July." Chris Johnson, an MDA spokesman, said the THAAD weapon system at the Pacific Spaceport Complex Alaska in Kodiak, Alaska, would "detect, track and engage a target with a THAAD interceptor."


Earlier this month Moscow and Beijing, in a joint statement, called on Washington to immediately halt deployment of THAAD in South Korea. The statement, not incorrectly, said Washington was using North Korea as a pretext to expand its military infrastructure in Asia and risked upsetting the strategic balance of power in the region. Meanwhile, in North Korea, KCNA news gency reported that Kim Jong Un visited a mausoleum honouring state founder Kim Il Sun on Saturday, the anniversary of his grandfather's death. He was joined by military officials who contributed to the success of the ICBM test, the news agency said. It was unclear if he was planning any further ICBM launches in the immediate future.




.

[ckaihatsu]

Award-winning Koreanologist from the University of Chicago discusses the U.S.'s influence over the narrative of the Korean War, and the misconceptions many people still hold.


More... (http://fivebooks.com/interview/bruce-cumings-on-the-korean-war)

[ckaihatsu]

via wsws.org (http://www.wsws.org)

The military exercise involving US B1-B bombers just before the G20 summit, was aimed at pressuring all countries, especially China, to take tough action against North Korea.

More... (http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/07/10/nkor-j10.html)

[ckaihatsu]

via investigaction.net (http://www.investigaction.net/en/)

Climate catastrophe and the threat of war, make the future very dark, indeed.   In the center of Barcelona, sits the majestic church, still unfinished, designed by Antoni Gaudi (1852-1926). […]

More... (http://www.investigaction.net/en/trump-with-a-vicious-temperament-seems-eager-to-hasten-the-doomsday-clock/)

[ckaihatsu]

via wsws.org (http://www.wsws.org)

The Trump administration is preparing secondary sanctions against Chinese companies and individuals even as it demands Beijing’s support for far tougher UN bans on North Korea.

More... (http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/07/13/nkor-j13.html)

[ckaihatsu]

via wsws.org (http://www.wsws.org)

Seoul’s offer is likely to aggravate differences with Washington, which were largely papered over during the summit between the leaders of the two countries last month.

More... (http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/07/18/skor-j18.html)

[ckaihatsu]

News Updates from CLG
13 July 2017
http://www.legitgov.org/
All links are here:
http://www.legitgov.org/#breaking_news

North Korea warns of nuclear war after US bombers carry out 'provocative' live-fire drills | 09 July 2017 | North Korean state media has condemned a US bombing drill on the Korean peninsula, warning that the move could spark a nuclear war. An editorial published in state newspaper Rodong Sinmun Sunday accused the US of "military provocations" which are raising the threat of nuclear conflict to an extreme level. "The Korean peninsula is the largest gunpowder area in the world with the highest risk of nuclear war, and is the largest hot spot in the world where there is always a risk of nuclear war. [The US] is surely spreading into a new world war," the piece reads.

[ckaihatsu]

via wsws.org (http://www.wsws.org)

A former White House advisor said the meeting had “all the signs—no joint statement, or press conference, no outcomes—of serious and sustained tensions rapidly emerging due to deep differences.”

More... (http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/07/22/usch-j22.html)

[ckaihatsu]

via wsws.org (http://www.wsws.org)

Seoul has reassured Washington that its proposal is not meant to undermine the larger demand for the complete denuclearization of North Korea.

More... (http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/07/24/skor-j24.html)

[ckaihatsu]

via wsws.org (http://www.wsws.org)

The situation is rendered even more volatile and dangerous by the besieged character of the Trump presidency.

More... (http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/07/28/nkor-j28.html)

[ckaihatsu]

via wsws.org (http://www.wsws.org)

Yesterday’s launch of a long-range missile will only heighten the clamour in Washington for action, including military strikes and regime-change operations.

More... (http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/07/29/nkor-j29.html)

[ckaihatsu]

via wsws.org (http://www.wsws.org)

Trump’s tweets are another sign that the White House is actively considering far more aggressive methods, including military strikes against North Korea.

More... (http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/07/31/nkor-j31.html)

[ckaihatsu]

via wsws.org (http://www.wsws.org)

Beijing’s determination not to be bullied into tougher action against North Korea sets the stage for an escalating US confrontation not only with Pyongyang, but also China.

More... (http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/08/02/usch-o02.html)

[ckaihatsu]

David Whitehouse explains how and why the North Korean regime developed its nuclear weapons program as a direct response to the policies of the U.S. government.


More... (https://socialistworker.org/2017/07/31/north-korea-faces-the-fury-of-us-empire)

[ckaihatsu]

via fightbacknews.org (http://www.fightbacknews.org/)

Fight Back News Service is circulating the following August 3 statement from the Information Bureau of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP).
Duterte has become a tool for US foreign aggression when he denounced North Korea for developing its nuclear weapons capability. He is echoing the line of the US imperialists demanding North Korea to stop testing its intercontinental ballistic missiles and satellite-launching rockets to deny it the capability to defend itself and deter US military aggression.
It is Duterte who looks like a clown when he, with his limited vocabulary of cuss words, called North Korea’s Kim Jong Un a “fool” for ardently defending their country’s sovereignty against the US imperialists. For all his bluster, Duterte, the strongman that he is, has no such balls, having revealed himself a pseudo-patriot who has now fully embraced his fellow buffoon Trump.
After having killed thousands of Filipinos in his wars of mass murder and destruction, Duterte has no right to condemn Kim Jong Un a “maniac”. Unlike Kim’s government which has provided all out support to scientific and technological development to modernize North Korean society, the Philippine government under Duterte has condemned the country to a state of non-industrial and agrarian backwardness.
The Party joins the North Korean people in condemning US threats of invasion against their country. American naval warships have been surrounding North Korea challenging its territorial waters. A few days ago, the US flew B-1B bombers over the Korean peninsula.
The US government, which controls 6,970 warheads, second only to Russia’s 7,300. has no right to tell the North Korean, which has less than 15 warheads, to stop developing nuclear weapons.
The Party fully supports the right of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) to develop its weapons system, including nuclear weapons, ICBMs and anti-drone technology, as a deterrent against US military aggression. The DPRK’s nuclear weapons and capability at striking back is its only assurance against suffering the same fate as Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan and other countries which became victims of US aggression and transformed into a US colonial wasteland.


More... (https://www.fightbacknews.org/2017/8/6/cpp-duterte-now-us-foreign-aggression-tool-condemning-north-korea)

[ckaihatsu]

via wsws.org (http://www.wsws.org)

The US-sponsored sanctions, which will hit North Korea hard, will compound the tense confrontation on the Korean Peninsula that threatens to descend into war.

More... (http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/08/07/nkor-a07.html)

[ckaihatsu]

via wsws.org (http://www.wsws.org)

While Tillerson is hinting at negotiations, the drum beat for military strikes against North Korea continues in the US media and political establishment.

More... (http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/08/08/nkor-a08.html)

[ckaihatsu]

The United States lobbied hardest against this treaty, contending that these weapons of mass destruction keep us secure. Despite this morbid logic, we learned recently that our government's leaders have a set of fortified sites constructed to save themselves in the event of nuclear catastrophe while the rest of us fend for ourselves.


More... (http://portside.org/2017-08-03/banning-nuclear-weapons-beginning)

[ckaihatsu]

via wsws.org (http://www.wsws.org)

Not since the Cuban missile crisis of 1962 has the world stood so close to the brink of nuclear war.

More... (http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/08/09/pers-a09.html)