Carl,
One interesting thing about this for me is that the Korean man whom Dennis
Bernstein always interviews on Flashpoints about this issue, appeared to
believe that the missile could actually reach the US with a nuclear warhead. At
least, that's what I think I heard him say.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
Sent: Sunday, December 03, 2017 1:00 AM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: US Hysteria Blooms in Wake of North Korean
Missile Splashdown
Donald Trump, Master of the Fake News.
Honest Donald's used Hysteria.
Carl Jarvis
On 12/2/17, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
US Hysteria Blooms in Wake of North Korean Missile Splashdown By
William Boardman, Reader Supported News
30 November 17
Suppose an opportunity for peace arrived - could the US see it?
The most dangerous thing about the North Korean missile launch is the
reaction of the unprincipled, under-informed, white identity extremist
sitting in the Oval Office. If there's a nuclear war coming out of
this manufactured "crisis," the buck will have stopped with him. Not
that President Trump doesn't have other fools egging him on to risk
global chaos and destruction in response to an imaginary, inflated
threat from an impoverished nation of 25 million people. Sadly, this
is not a surprising development after more than sixty years of
aggressive US behavior toward North Korea.
But first, what about that November 29 missile launch, widely and
dishonestly played as showing that that North Korea could hit any
point in the US, even Washington or Mar-a-Lago? That meme is a
speculative fear-tactic. In the fine print, none of the experts, not
even hawkish defense secretary General Jim Mattis, one of the last
supposed grown-ups in Trumplandia. The North Korean missile went
higher - roughly 2,800 miles - than any previous North Korean missile,
but it didn't go very far, about
600
miles, landing in the ocean short of Japan.
Based on this scant information, mostly provided by the North Korean
government, experts like David Wright of the Union of Concerned
Scientists extrapolated the missile's potential range from the actual
600 miles to an estimated 8,000 miles. This is not a scientific
measurement but a speculative conjecture based on science as well as
the unknown assumptions that the tested missile was carrying an actual
warhead. Wright allowed for the possibility that the missile's high
performance was because it carried a dummy warhead of almost
inconsequential weight. Wright concluded, according the New York
Times, that "the distance traveled, while impressive, does not
necessarily translate into a working intercontinental ballistic
missile that could deliver a thermonuclear warhead." That's something
of a non-threat threat lurking in a hypothetical future. For General
Mattis, the projected possible threat, free of historical or strategic
context, was all too real in his hyperbolic projection:
The bottom line is, it's a continued effort to build a threat - a
ballistic missile threat that endangers world peace, regional peace,
and certainly, the United States.
This isn't General Mattis prematurely overreacting to just one
unevaluated missile test. General Mattis engages in the standard
military operating procedure of threat-inflation on a regular basis,
which does not distinguish him from two generations of other official
military and executive branch fearmongers scaring us with apparent
North Korean intentions, even while driving those intentions with
real, constant American threatening. As General Mattis put it in late
October:
North Korea has accelerated the threat that it poses to its neighbors
and the world through its illegal and unnecessary missile and nuclear
weapons programs.. I cannot imagine a condition under which the United
States would accept North Korea as a nuclear power..
He said, "unnecessary." He must know that's absurdly Orwellian. The
United States and North Korea have been in a state of war since 1950.
The armistice of 1953 suspended the fighting but did not end the war.
From then until now, North Korean sovereignty has been irrelevant to
American leaders. So here we are, with North Korea already a nuclear
power and the US refusing to accept a new reality, never mind US
responsibility for creating that new reality through decades of open
bellicosity. The times called the most recent missile launch "a bold
act of defiance against President Trump," which is a laughably unaware
acceptance of the American assumption that it has any right to any
authority over another sovereign state.
American denial of the North Korean perspective is the driving force
in this largely artificial confrontation. North Korea has already been
overrun by American forces once in living memory, in a war with
largely unexamined American atrocities (we've propagandized their
atrocities to a fare thee well). Overrun by Americans, only to be
counter-overrun by the Chinese, North Koreans might well want to be
left alone. The US and its allies, especially South Korea and Japan,
have maintained unrelenting hostility to North Korea, whose best
friend is an unreliable China. Why wouldn't North Korea want a nuclear
deterrent? Deterrence is the American justification for a nuclear
arsenal that dwarfs all others but the Russians'.
But American leaders insist on calling North Korea a threat. North
Korea was a threat in 1950. and that turned out very badly for them.
Today, North Korea is a credible threat to no one except perhaps its
own people. A North Korean attack on anyone would be met with
overwhelming force up to and possibly including nuclear obliteration.
North Korea is in check, and any honest observer knows that. Some even
say so. Defense Dept. spokesman Colonel Robert Manning, in striking
contrast to his shrill boss General Mattis, said:
We are working with our interagency partners on a more detailed
assessment of the launch.. the missile launch from North Korea did not
pose a threat to North America, our territories or our allies.. We
remain prepared to defend ourselves and our allies from any attack or
provocation.
That is so rational and basic that it should hardly need saying. We
don't live in a time when basic and rational get much attention.
American arrogance and paranoia toward North Korea are longstanding,
untreated pathologies that continue to worsen. As our Trump tweeted in
early October, with his usual fact-free, threatening bombast:
Presidents and their administrations have been talking to North Korea
for
25
years, agreements made and massive amounts of money paid ... hasn't
worked, agreements violated before the ink was dry, makings fools of U.S.
negotiators. Sorry, but only one thing will work!
Our Trump coyly avoided saying what he thought that one thing was, but
his Secretary of State still says, "Diplomatic options remain viable
and open for now." Not that anyone pays much attention to Rex
Tillerson these days as he guts the State Dept. of effective,
experienced personnel. Much greater play goes to the crazy ranters who
are already blaming the victims if it turns out we have to attack them
(sounds like domestic violence, doesn't it?). Case in point is Lindsey
Graham, who plays a deranged Republican Senator from South Carolina,
saying:
If we have to go to war to stop this, we will. If there's a war with
North Korea it will be because North Korea brought it on itself, and
we're headed to a war if things don't change.
Or as the battering husband puts it: "She just wouldn't listen to me!"
Echoing the blame-the-victim mantra, UN Ambassador Nikki Haley (famous
for saying "women don't care about contraception") told the UN
Security Council the missile launch was an act of "aggression" with
serious potential
consequences:
. make no mistake the North Korean regime will be utterly destroyed..
The dictator of North Korea made a decision yesterday that brings us
closer to war, not farther from it. We have never sought war with
North Korea and still today we do not seek it.
But they just won't listen!
In North Korea, after the missile launch, leader Kim Jong Un said that
his country has "finally realized the great historic cause of
completing the state nuclear force." A nuclear deterrent, in other
words. This may or may not be entirely true. But they may or may not
be beside the point. As writers in Japan Times note, this missile
launch and its accompanying official statements could be an olive branch:
[North Korea] then said its pursuit of the "strategic weapon" had been
intended to "defend the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the
country from the U.S. imperialists' nuclear blackmail policy," and
emphasized that it would "not pose any threat to any country and
region as long as the interests of the DPRK (the Democratic People's
Republic of Korea) are not infringed upon.. The DPRK will make every
possible effort to serve the noble purpose of defending peace and
stability of the world."
Does it matter whether this is true as long as everyone acts like it's
true?
Our Trump has a random relationship with truth, and his spokeswoman
says it doesn't matter whether his racist tweets are real or fake
news. So what we have here is an excellent opportunity for the
mocker-in-chief of his Asian allies to seize the opportunity to make
white identity extremism great again
and- oh, never mind.
William M. Boardman has over 40 years experience in theatre, radio,
TV, print journalism, and non-fiction, including 20 years in the
Vermont judiciary. He has received honors from Writers Guild of
America, Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Vermont Life magazine,
and an Emmy Award nomination from the Academy of Television Arts and
Sciences.
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work.
Permission
to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader
Supported News.
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