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https://youtu.be/5Mri7VtJnAc
SIRATYST (Stuff I Read and Thought You Should Too) -- “To ravage, to slaughter, to usurp under false titles, they call empire; and where they make a desert, they call it peace.” (Calgacus, as quoted by Tacitus, Agricola 30-31)"
Saturday, July 29, 2017
Wednesday, July 26, 2017
Tuesday, July 25, 2017
Feminism Co-opted -- By Linda Ford
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ORIGINAL: https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/07/25/feminism-co-opted/
I am a retired history professor and historian of women, a socialist, and a radical feminist. I know what feminism is, and I know it’s being co-opted. What is feminism? How is it defined? Feminism is the belief in equality for women. But feminism is being used now for unrelated, or even opposite causes, like war, transgender bathrooms, anti-Russia hysteria and political opportunism.
Large crowds of women descended on Susan B. Anthony’s grave in Rochester, NY, on Election Day 2016. Anthony’s grave, in what I saw as a desecration, became completely covered with “I Voted” stickers. I was not surprised to see Mayor Lovely Warren (Democrat) and Congresswoman Louise Slaughter (Democrat) prominently present, nor was I astounded that all of the women interviewed were voting for Hillary Clinton (Democrat and not really a feminist). So therefore I was also not shocked to learn that the whole long queue—at one point taking two hours to get through—was organized by local Democrats. What would Susan B. Anthony’s reaction have been to this purported homage to her struggle for equal political rights for women? As a self-proclaimed “revolutionary” for women’s rights, and a woman who always refused to support any “party not fully and unequivocally committed to equal rights for women,” I do not believe she would have welcomed a demonstration instigated in the service of a political party not fully committed to women’s equal rights, and definitely committed to endless war and global, capitalist-based inequality for women.
Anthony advocated egalitarian feminism (as opposed to so-called 19th century “domestic” feminism, limited to power growth within the family), as did her comrade Elizabeth Cady Stanton. They fought for equal political rights for women first, believing that women’s social and economic rights would follow from women gaining political rights, not without a struggle of course. They believed, like Alice Paul and the National Woman’s Party of the early 20th century, like the 1970s wave of feminists and (to a large extent) the weatherwomen of the 1980s and the Earth First! women of the 1990s and early 00s, that women are the same as men in intelligence and abilities (with exceptions in obvious physical strength, for some), but many also believed, paradoxically, that women are superior to men because of being inherently nonviolent and compassionate. Seeking male-female equality through various political, social and cultural means, has never been easy: it has always been met with, sometimes violent, resistance by the patriarchy.
Feminism has also been constantly thwarted by co-optation. The champion co-opter of potentially radical social and political movements, is the Democratic Party. In working on my present book on women political prisoners from the late 19th century to the present, I have seen it again and again. The American political system has nearly always been dichotomous, and the Democratic Party, especially in the 20th century, with its image and brand as “liberal” and “progressive,” became the party which absorbed labor unrest, black civil rights, and feminism. Once “feminists” are re-imagined as liberal Democrats, revolution (sorry Susan B.) and radicalism are done. I remember being part of a Seneca Falls ERA Conference/Celebration in 1998, and witnessing Hillary Clinton’s triumphal entrance into the city. My remark to the woman standing next to me about Bill Clinton’s questionable personal relations with women (not only affairs, but evidence of procurement, and possible assault and rape) was met with visible horror and a literal turning away from such sentiments. Hillary Clinton is also not a feminist, if that means actually working to help women in the aggregate gain equal rights and a better life—not as a First Lady, Senator, or Secretary of State. She definitely, as Barbara Ehrenreich has written, smashed the “myth of innate female superiority” when it came to advocating and wielding violence. Ehrenreich also notes Clinton’s “racial innuendoes,” along with her “free-floating bellicosity.” So plastering Susan B. Anthony’s grave with “I Voted” for Hillary stickers was not really appropriate.
I also had a lot of trouble reading that seven historians of women, some of whom I’ve always respected, signed on to a Boston Globe piece in February 2017, that equates the very early, and very brave, abolitionist/women’s rights advocate Angelina Grimke’s speech to the Massachusetts legislature in 1838, with Senator Elizabeth Warren’s (Democrat, MA) partisan attempts in the Senate to discredit President Trump’s choice for attorney general, Jeff Sessions. Warren had every right to do that, but it hardly takes the same amount of courage as being the first ever woman to speak before a hostile male audience on the serious subject of abolition. And, august women historians, Donald Trump (and the GOP) is hardly a picnic (although I personally think he perfectly represents what America is), but he defeated Clinton because she is very unpopular and apparently her campaign people bungled the PR/money necessary to win, not because (as the Democrats and the “deep state” and corporate media people who love them will tell you) “the Russians were targeting her campaign.” [!] Dear fellow women historians, where is your (credible) evidence? Your context? Your rational explanations for this Russian targeting? These are seven very good, very co-opted feminists. As is Terry O’Neill, former president of NOW, who, in the euphoria of the (Democratic) March for Truth in Washington last summer, complained that her “entire mission” of electing “good, progressive feminist [Democratic] candidates to office “ is going to be ruined because “a hostile, foreign government has installed a puppet as president of the United States.” Seriously?! Seriously co-opted.
Feminism is also co-opted and mocked by popular culture, in so many ways. You have ugly sexist humor at the Oscars in 2013 via host Seth MacFarlane singing “We Saw Your Boobs”—which, right now is all you will see of 99% of supposedly privileged female celebrities, the female body being objectified and reduced yet again to sex object, even though we 70s feminists fought so hard to change all that. We have denials, in mass media magazines, of college rape culture, in spite of vast evidence to the contrary, with, in 2014, Rolling Stone throwing their investigative reporter Sabrina Rubin Erdely relentlessly under the bus for her (pro-women) story on the University of Virginia’s rape culture and (ironically) the denial of its existence by university authorities and ( surprise!) the police. Women’s status/image/power in the culture have been rapidly sliding backwards since the 70s and 80s. Even feminist pop icons like Wonder Woman, have been co-opted.
In a way, Wonder Woman also represents the contradictions of radical, egalitarian feminism. Her creator, William Moulton Marston, wanted to show female superiority, and so placed her origins in all-female Amazon society. I’ve—as a feminist—always loved the idea of Amazon society, whether as historical reality (there is evidence) or Greek and Roman myth. In both cases, Amazon society is a women-run matriarchy, led by strong, capable women warriors, warriors who did go to war for more than self-defense, although they apparently were always up against stronger armies. Marston’s superior Amazon society was also, although featuring women warriors, a peace-loving society. Hence Wonder Woman was tasked to bring her superpowers to the service of a peaceful world: she would save the world from violence and evil. She was also a female superhero, personifying Anthony and Paul’s feminism whose “ideal is strength,” as did the Amazons of history and myth.
So now we have Gal Gadot’s Wonder Woman, the movie, and again, feminism is co-opted, this time in the service of what Glen Ford of black agenda report calls the War Party. The New York Times’ review of “Wonder Woman” said the movie highlights Wonder Woman’s “sacred duty to bring peace to the world,” although admitting it took a lot of killing to do it. There is, therefore, this Orwellian “war is peace” aspect to the film. The Wonder Woman I knew and loved was never this bloodthirsty, seeming to revel in the violence and the fight. She was always the strong character—female superhero!—she did not, as goddess and superhero, have an equal and/or romantic relationship with Captain Steve Trevor, always portrayed as weak and in need of rescue. I also had a problem with the actress Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman, a woman, in real life, very much in the service of Israeli aggressive military might, even when that might was turned against the children of Gaza in 2014. Wonder Woman here, as Jonathan Cook recently wrote in an excellent piece on Mondoweiss, is disguised as someone practicing “humanitarian intervention,” à la neo-liberal imperialists like Hillary Clinton. Wonder Woman, in this movie, is promoting aggressive western military domination. Amazonian feminism, women warriors ruling their own world, or a superhero woman saving the world without bringing more violence to it, is co-opted.
The ideal of feminism is being muddied on numerous fronts. Jeremiad writer, and a hero of mine, Chris Hedges, recently wrote of transgender women accusing “radical feminists” of being “patriarchal” for defining women as someone born female, with the requisite equipment, and then unfairly excluding people who choose to changeover. Well—why do you want to join an oppressed group? (How many transgenders are we talking about?) And women are an oppressed group. Ask single mothers who cannot make ends meet. Ask all working women who (according to NOW) make between 47 to 73 cents, based on class and race, to the male dollar? Ask women who suffer catcalls, insults, workplace harassment, and an alarming rise in domestic and campus violence, and violence in the military and from police. Ask women who remain out of the Constitution, with no Equal Rights Amendment in sight, without equal protection (Title IX is for federally funded schools and sports teams and see how equally that works), without equal political representation, without a decent, strong, respectful image in the culture. We have a thoroughly militarized, patriarchal culture—discounts to servicemen, “thank you for your service” on entertainment talk shows, Air Force flyovers at football games, camouflage clothing everywhere—and huge military budgets for the huge imperial/global/capitalist enterprise that is America—bipartisan, backed by popular culture, and co-opting feminists in its service. Oh, we need feminism, real, radical feminism, to fight a patriarchy that is alive, well and thriving.
Monday, July 24, 2017
@leecamp: URGENT--Congress Considering Bipartisan Bill To Make Political Activism A Felony!
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https://youtu.be/-ikNZwkY9MY
Background on the bill from Glenn Greenwald & Ryan Grim: https://theintercept.com/2017/07/19/u-s-lawmakers-seek-to-criminally-outlaw-support-for-boycott-campaign-against-israel/
Seattle PI (Joel Connelly) on Cantwell's Support for bill: http://www.seattlepi.com/local/politics/article/Connelly-Cantwell-is-sponsor-of-controversial-11303051.php
@LeeCamp says: NOW'S THE TIME TO ACT!
BUT CALL ALL THESE REPS: Cathy McMorris-Rodgers, Adam Smith, Derek Kilmer, Dave Reichert, Rick Larsen, Jaime Herrera-Butler, Dan Newhouse
FYI: @SaneProgressive has a youtube that calls these bills a criminalization of protest against the Palestinian genocide: https://youtu.be/uBbjuLso5Tg (language not safe for work)
https://youtu.be/-ikNZwkY9MY
Background on the bill from Glenn Greenwald & Ryan Grim: https://theintercept.com/2017/07/19/u-s-lawmakers-seek-to-criminally-outlaw-support-for-boycott-campaign-against-israel/
Seattle PI (Joel Connelly) on Cantwell's Support for bill: http://www.seattlepi.com/local/politics/article/Connelly-Cantwell-is-sponsor-of-controversial-11303051.php
@LeeCamp says: NOW'S THE TIME TO ACT!
Senate bill 720
CALL CANTWELL! 1 (202) 224-3441H.R.1697
PRAMILLA JAYAPAL DID NOT SIGN ON!
FYI: @SaneProgressive has a youtube that calls these bills a criminalization of protest against the Palestinian genocide: https://youtu.be/uBbjuLso5Tg (language not safe for work)
Thursday, July 20, 2017
Tuesday, July 18, 2017
"New York Times Beats War Drums Against Iran"--ESSENTIAL TO WATCH from @therealnews
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Vijay Prashad and Trita Parsi join Paul Jay to discuss the New York Times article, 'Iran Dominates in Iraq After U.S. 'Handed the Country Over''
Clarifies the confusion around U.S. Iraq/Iran policies.
"New York Times Joins Trump and Saudi Arabia in Targeting Iran"--MUST WATCH by @therealnews
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https://youtu.be/GdNzJBuWycQ
ARTICLE TURNS THE FACTS ON THEIR HEAD -- [paraphrase of Prof. Sabah Alnasseri]
https://youtu.be/GdNzJBuWycQ
ARTICLE TURNS THE FACTS ON THEIR HEAD -- [paraphrase of Prof. Sabah Alnasseri]
Sunday, July 16, 2017
Saturday, July 15, 2017
Tupac Talks Donald Trump & Greed in America in 1992 Interview | MTV News
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https://youtu.be/GL-ZoNhUFmc
+ Come back, Tupac, your country needs you…
--Jeffrey St. Clair at Counterpunch
https://youtu.be/GL-ZoNhUFmc
+ Come back, Tupac, your country needs you…
--Jeffrey St. Clair at Counterpunch
Thursday, July 13, 2017
"House Panel Votes to Debate Post-9/11 Blank Check for War" + NKorea Initially Supportive of Nuclear Weapons Ban
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https://youtu.be/qxY13PDOEDk
CALL REPS AND MAKE SURE THIS GETS VOTED ON NOW THAT IT WILL BE PASSED OUT OF APPROPRIATIONS COMMITTEE
More info (excerpt):
https://youtu.be/qxY13PDOEDk
CALL REPS AND MAKE SURE THIS GETS VOTED ON NOW THAT IT WILL BE PASSED OUT OF APPROPRIATIONS COMMITTEE
More info (excerpt):
De-Authorize the Use of Military Force
Last Thursday the U.S. House Appropriations Committee unanimously passed an amendment that would — if passed by the full Congress — repeal, after an 8-month delay, the Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) passed by Congress just after September 11, 2001, and used as a justification for wars ever since.
Also last week, the U.S. Conference of Mayors unanimously passed three resolutions strongly urging Congress to move funding from militarism to human needs, rather than — as President Trump’s budget proposal would do — moving money in the opposite direction. One of these resolutions, introduced by the Mayor of Ithaca, N.Y., closely resembled an initial draft that I had produced, and which people had successfully passed some variation of in several cities.
Some of the points made in the “whereas” clauses of the resolution are rarely acknowledged. This was one:
“WHEREAS, fractions of the proposed military budget could provide free, top-quality education from pre-school through college, end hunger and starvation on earth, convert the U.S. to clean energy, provide clean drinking water everywhere it’s needed on the planet, build fast trains between all major U.S. cities, and double non-military U.S. foreign aid rather than cutting it.”
Monday, July 10, 2017
Moon of Alabama Corrective to My Recommendation of Max Blumenthal on Syria in this Blog's Prior Entry -- PLEASE READ
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ORIGINAL (which includes jabs at Rania Khalek and and Ben Norton) AT:
http://www.moonofalabama.org/2017/07/syria-a-grayzone-of-opinionated-turncoats.html#more
EXCERPT:
http://www.moonofalabama.org/2017/07/syria-a-grayzone-of-opinionated-turncoats.html#more
EXCERPT:
Max Blumenthal is a well connected and known author who has done work on the Palestinian cause from a somewhat leftish perspective. He is also an arrogant and ignorant showman.
Blumenthal currently edits the Alternet Grayzone project. In their recent writings he and his co-writers profess to dislike the al-Qaeda led opposition in Syria. Yet it is exactly the same opposition they earlier vehemently supported.
Yesterday the Real News Network interviewed Blumethal on his recent piece about CNN's al-Qaeda promotion. The headline: Max Blumenthal on How the Media Covers Syria. During the interview Blumenthal laments the failure of progressive media on Syria:
In my opinion, they have abrogated their mission, which should be to challenge mainstream narratives and particularly imperial narratives on issues like Syria. I understand there are massive human rights abuses by the Syrian government, but that's not reason enough to not explore what the West's agenda, the Gulf agenda is for that country, what the consequences are, to actually get into the geopolitical issues. Instead, we've seen Democracy Now propagate generally a regime change narrative.I don't believe they actually have a line on Syria. It's more a fear of actually taking on the official line. I haven't found a single article in the Intercept challenging the regime change line on Syria.
Blumenthal is outraged, OUTRAGED, that "progressive" media peddle the Syria conflict along "the official line".
Yet in 2012 Max Blumenthal resigned as columnist from the Lebanese paper Al Akhbar English because the paper did not write along "the official line". He publicly (also here) smeared and accused his Al Akhbar collegues for taking a cautious or even anti-opposition position on Syria. They challenged the mainstream narratives while Blumenthal, with his resignation and his writing about it, solidly aligned with the imperial project. Back then he himself went along "the official line". Then as now the Real News Network helped him along:
I noticed that it was publishing op-eds by people like Amal Saad-Ghorayeb, who were just openly apologetic of the Assad regime, if not cheerleading Assad as this kind of subaltern freedom fighter leading what she called a front-line resisting state, or Sharmine Narwani, the blogger who was nickel-and-diming civilian casualty counts, [..]
...
This just was really too much for me.
...
My problem was that the opinions at Al-Akhbar's website in support of the Assad regime, which I've identified specifically by Amal Saad-Ghorayeb and Sharmine Narwani and by the editor-in-chief, Ibrahim al-Amin, were not based on any journalistic fieldwork. They're based on poring over YouTube clips, looking at textbooks, or really disturbing citations by Amin of anonymous regime sources, including documents that he cited which he referred to as investigations of people detained for trafficking weapons.
At that time Max Blumenthal was sitting in the U.S. stenographing Syrian opposition propaganda. Yet he accused Sharmine Narwani and other writers living in Lebanon and Syria of lack of journalistic fieldwork and of "poring over YouTube clips". Narwani wasn't amused by his ignorance:
I have made two trips to Syria in the past six months – the first to interview a wide range of domestic opposition figures, most of whom have spent years languishing in Syrian prisons; the second just a week ago, to spend time with the UN Observer team and learn about the changed military landscape throughout the country.No journalistic fieldwork? How would Max know? He has done none on Syria, yet he presumes to condemn the dogged pursuit of truth by others.
Al Akhbar early on recognized the foreign sponsored insurgency in Syria for what it is. Max Blumenthal took the easy route of joining the anti-Syrian propaganda train. Even worse - he publicly smeared the writers at Al Akhbar who were searching for the least harmful solution for Syria.
Now Max Blumenthal has found an outlet that pays him for writing along the very line he condemned when he resigned from Al Akhbar. Nowhere do I find an explanation by Blumenthal for his change of position. No public apology for smearing his former colleagues has been issued by him.
Sunday, July 09, 2017
"Max Blumenthal on How the Media Covers Syria"--@maxblumenthal w/aaronmate @therealnews
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https://youtu.be/vcAqZWCnePM
BRAVELY POINTING OUT THE COWARDICE OF DEMOCRACY NOW (W/WHOM THEY HAVE BOTH BEEN ASSOCIATED)
https://youtu.be/vcAqZWCnePM
BRAVELY POINTING OUT THE COWARDICE OF DEMOCRACY NOW (W/WHOM THEY HAVE BOTH BEEN ASSOCIATED)
Saturday, July 08, 2017
"Trump, Putin, Russiagate Collide at G20"--AGAIN, EXCELLENT @maxblumenthal w/Aaron Mate @therealnews
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https://youtu.be/uk6eQBEROOg
WATCH THIS TO FIND OUT IF RUSSIA IS TRYING TO SUBVERT THE WHOLE WEST!
https://youtu.be/uk6eQBEROOg
WATCH THIS TO FIND OUT IF RUSSIA IS TRYING TO SUBVERT THE WHOLE WEST!
Friday, July 07, 2017
Wednesday, July 05, 2017
The Real Reason Washington is Worried about North Korea’s ICBM Test by Stephen Gowans [I COULD NOT AGREE MORE!]
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STEPHEN GOWANS' ORIGINAL POST IS AT THE LINK & CONTAINS THE CITATIONS AT END OF ARTICLE: https://gowans.wordpress.com
“The truth,” it has been said, “is often buried on the front page of The New York Times.” [2] This is no less true of the real reason Washington frets about North Korea’s missile tests.
With its ICBM test signaling its capability to retaliate against US aggression, North Korea has made clear that the United States’ seven decades long effort to topple its government may never come to fruition—a blow against US despotism, and an advance for peace, and for democracy on a world scale
July 5, 2017
By Stephen Gowans
A number of countries have recently tested ballistic or cruise missiles and a handful, not least Russia and China, possess nuclear-tipped ICBMs capable of striking the United States. And yet the missiles and nuclear weapons program of only one of these countries, North Korea, arouses consternation in Washington.
What makes tiny North Korea, within its miniscule defense budget, and rudimentary nuclear arsenal and missile capability, a threat so menacing that “worry has spread in Washington and the United Nations”? [1]
“The truth,” it has been said, “is often buried on the front page of The New York Times.” [2] This is no less true of the real reason Washington frets about North Korea’s missile tests.
In a July 4, 2017 article titled “What can Trump do about North Korea? His options are few and risky,” reporter David E. Sanger, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the unofficial think-tank of the US State Department, reveals why Washington is alarmed by North Korea’s recent test launch of an intercontinental ballistic missile.
“The fear,” writes Sanger, “is not that [North Korean leader] Mr. Kim would launch a pre-emptive attack on the West Coast; that would be suicidal, and if the North’s 33-year-old leader has demonstrated anything in his five years in office, he is all about survival.”
Washington’s alarm, according to Sanger, is that “Mr. Kim [now] has the ability to strike back.” In other words, Pyongyang has acquired the means of an effective self-defense. That, writes Sanger, makes North Korea “a dangerous regime.”
Indeed, to a world hegemon like the United States, any renitent foreign government that refuses to place itself in the role of vassal becomes “a dangerous regime,” which must be eliminated. Accordingly, allowing pro-independence North Korea to develop the means to more effectively defend itself against US imperialist ambitions has no place in Washington’s playbook. The United States has spent the past 70 years trying to integrate the tiny, plucky, country into its undeclared empire. Now, with North Korea’s having acquired the capability to retaliate against US military aggression in a manner that would cause considerable harm to the US homeland, the prospects of those seven-decades of investment bearing fruit appear dim.
US hostility to North Korean independence has been expressed in multifarious ways over the seven decades of North Korea’s existence.
A three-year US-led war of aggression, from 1950 to 1953, exterminated 20 percent of North Korea’s population and burned to the ground every town in the country [3], driving the survivors into subterranean shelters, in which they lived and worked. US General Douglas MacArthur said of the destruction the United States visited upon North Korea that “I have never seen such devastation…After I looked at the wreckage and those thousands of women and children and everything, I vomited.” [4]
A vicious seven-decades-long campaign of economic warfare, aimed at crippling the country’s economy, and engendering attendant miseries among its people, has conferred upon North Korea the unhappy distinction of being the most heavily sanctioned nation on earth. Nestled among the tranches of US sanctions are those that have been imposed because North Korea has chosen “a Marxist-Leninist economy,” [5] revealing what lies at the root of US hostility to the country.
For decades, North Koreans have lived under a US nuclear Sword of Damocles, subjected repeatedly to threats of nuclear annihilation, including being turned into “charcoal briquettes” [6] and “completely destroyed,” so that they “literally cease to exist” [7]—and this before they had nuclear weapons and the rudimentary means to deliver them. In other words, in threats to vaporize North Koreans, Washington has threatened to make them the successors to aboriginal Americans as objects of US perpetrated genocides.
We should remind ourselves why North Korea withdrew from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) in the first place. As University of Chicago history professor Bruce Cumings writes, for North Korea the nuclear crisis began in late February 1993, when
“General Lee Butler, head of the new U.S. ‘Strategic Command,’ announced that he was retargeting strategic nuclear weapons (i.e., hydrogen bombs) meant for the old U.S.S.R, on North Korea (among other places.) At the same time, the new CIA chief, James Woolsey, testified that North Korea was ‘our most grave current concern.’ By mid-March 1993, tens of thousands of [US] soldiers were carrying out war games in Korea…and in came the B1-B bombers, B-52s from Guam, several naval vessels carrying cruise missiles, and the like: whereupon the North pulled out of the NPT.” [8]
Two and half decades later the B1-B bombers and several naval vessels carrying cruise missiles—this time, US ‘power-projecting” aircraft carriers—are back.
Last month, Washington sent not one, but two aircraft carriers, the USS Carl Vinson and the USS Ronald Reagan, to the waters between Japan and Korea, to conduct “exercises,” “a show of force not seen there for more than two decades,” reported The Wall Street Journal. [9]
At the same time, the Pentagon sent B1-B strategic bombers, not once, but twice last month, to conduct simulated nuclear bombing runs “near the Military Demarcation Line that divides the two Koreas;” in other words, along the North Korean border. [10]
Understandably, North Korea denounced the simulated bombing missions for what they were: grave provocations. If the communist country’s new self-defensive capabilities spurred consternation in Washington, then Washington’s overt display of its offensive might legitimately enkindled alarm in Pyongyang. The Wall Street Journal summed up the US provocations this way: the “U.S. military has conducted several flyovers near the Korean Peninsula using B-1B [i.e., nuclear] bombers and directed a Navy aircraft carrier group to the region—all to North Korea’s consternation.” [11]
Robert Litwak, director of international security studies for the Wilson Center, explains the reason for Pyongyang’s consternation, if it’s not already blindingly obvious. US-led war games “[may look] like a defensive maneuver for us, [but] from North Korea‘s perspective, they may think we’re preparing an attack when you start bringing B2 fighters.” [12]
In January, North Korea offered to “sit with the U.S. anytime” to discuss US war games and its nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs. Pyongyang proposed that the United States “contribute to easing tension on the Korean peninsula by temporarily suspending joint military exercises in south Korea and its vicinity this year, and said that in this case the DPRK is ready to take such responsive steps as temporarily suspending the nuclear test over which the U.S. is concerned.” [13]
The North Korean proposal was seconded by China and Russia [14] and recently by South Korea’s new president Moon Jae-in. [15] But Washington peremptorily rejected the proposal, refusing to acknowledge any equivalency between US-led war games, which US officials deem ‘legitimate’ and North Korea’s missile and nuclear tests, which they label ‘illegitimate.” [16]
US rejection of the China-Russia-South Korea-backed North Korean proposal, however, is only rhetorically related to notions of legitimacy, and the question of legitimacy fails to stand up under even the most cursory examination. How are US ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons legitimate and those of North Korea not?
The real reason Washington rejects the North Korean proposal is explained by Sanger: an agreed freeze “essentially acknowledges that the North’s modest arsenal is here to say;” which means that Pyongyang has achieved “the ability to strike back,” to stay the US hand, and deter Washington from launching a regime change aggression in the manner of wars it perpetrated against Saddam and Gaddafi, leaders who led pro-independence governments which, like North Korea, refused to be integrated into the informal US empire, but which, unlike North Korea, relinquished their means of self-defense, and once defenseless, were toppled by US-instigated aggressions.
“That is what Mr. Kim believes his nuclear program will prevent,” writes the Council on Foreign Relations member, referring to the US effort to bring the United States’ seven-decades-long campaign of regime change against Pyongyang to a head. And he may, Sanger concedes, “be right.”
Anyone concerned with democracy should take heart that North Korea, unlike Gaddafi’s Libya and Saddam’s Iraq, has successfully resisted US predations. The United States exercises an international dictatorship, arrogating onto itself the right to intervene in any part of the globe, in order to dictate to others how they should organize their political and economic affairs, to the point, in North Korea, of explicitly waging economic warfare against the country because it has a Marxist-Leninist economy at variance with the economic interests of the upper stratum of US society whose opportunities for profit-making through exports to and investments in North Korea have been accordingly eclipsed.
Those countries which resist despotism are the real champions of democracy, not those which exercise it (the United States) or facilitate it (their allies.) North Korea is calumniated as a bellicose dictatorship, human rights violator and practitioner of cruel and unusual punishment of political dissidents, a description to a tee of Washington’s principal Arab ally, Saudi Arabia, a recipient of almost illimitable military, diplomatic and other favors from the United States, showered on the Arabian tyranny despite its total aversion to democracy, reduction of women to the status of chattel, dissemination of a viciously sectarian Wahhabi ideology, an unprovoked war on Yemen, and the beheading and crucifixion of its political dissidents.
If we are concerned about democracy, we should, as Italian philosopher Domenico Losurdo argues, also be concerned about democracy on a global scale. The worry that has spread in Washington and the United Nations is a worry that democracy on a global scale has just been given a boost. And that should not be a worry for the rest of us, but a warm caress. [emphasis mine]
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