Stuart Jeanne Bramhall's Blog: The Most Revolutionary Act , page 1197

Down the Old Memory Hole: How Bush Jr Quashed the Movement for Korean Reunification

[image error] Nobel Peace Prize Winner Kim Dae Jung

With the Trump administration and the mainstream media gleefully beating the war drums for a military attack on North Korea, there’s crucial historical context missing from the corporate media coverage of this issue. I suspect most Americans have never heard of of Korea’s “Sunshine Policy” (1998-2008), aimed at eventual reunification of North and South Korea. We certainly heard about it here in New Zealand, thanks to the mass revolt in Bush’s diplomatic corps when he deliberately sabotaged this policy to isolate and provoke North Korea into amping up their their nuclear weapons program.

On learning of the Sunshine Policy, my Americans friends are shocked to learn that North Korea moved from active engagement in 1998 in nuclear disarmament and negotiations towards Korean reunification to announcing the their first nuclear weapons test in 2006. They also have no idea of the deliberate steps the Bush/Cheney administration took to sink the Sunshine Policy, nor their devious motives for doing so.

Carter’s 1994 Agreed Framework and the Origins of South Korea’s Sunshine Policy

The Sunshine Policy grew out of a treaty (the Agreed Framework) former president Jimmy Carter negotiated with late North Korean President Kim Il Sung in 1994. In return for North Korea agreeing to cease its nuclear weapons program and permitting the return of International Atomic Energy (IAEA) inspectors, the US agreed to replace the power lost when North Korea closed its Yongbyon reactor with oil shipments and two modern nuclear plants.

The North Koreans kept this agreement, and in 1998 South Korean president Kim Dae Jung began his Sunshine Policy aimed at lessening tensions and building reconciliation between North and South Korea. In June 2000, leaders of the two countries held a historic three-day summit in Pyongyang (the first in 50 years) and signed a pact in which they agreed to work towards reunification. Among other provisions, the agreement included substantial South Korean humanitarian aid to address North Korea’s chronic food shortages, loosening of restrictions on South Korean investment in North Korea, the opening of North Korea’s Kumgang Tourist Region to South Korean visitors, the establishment of a family reunification program, the opening of rail links through the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) and a worker exchange program permitting South Korean workers to work at North Korea’s Kaesang Industrial Park.

In 2000, Kim Dae Jung won the Nobel Peace Prize for his successful implementation of the Sunshine Policy.

Why Bush Deliberately Sabotaged the Sunshine Policy

Unfortunately George W Bush, who took office in 2001, had very different plans for the Korean peninsula. In his view, a paranoid militarist North Korean threatening US allies South Korea and Japan was the most potent argument he had to justify his obsession with building a missile defense system. Once Japan joined the effort to normalize relations with North Korea, the neocons in his administration also had real concerns about the potential threat to US strategic dominance in the region.

In “Blame Bush for North Korea’s Nukes”, journalist Barbara O’Brien gives a blow by blow description of Bush’s calculated efforts to derail the Sunshine Policy, starting with his refusal to meet with Nobel Prize Winner Kim Dae Jung during his March 2001 visit to Washington. In January 2002, Bush would make his infamous Axis of Evil speech, including North Korea with Iraq and Iran as states deliberately sponsoring terrorism and seeking weapons of mass destruction. In October 2002, a month after Japan joined the diplomatic effort to normalize relations with North Korea, he accused the latter (with even flimsier evidence than his administration put forward for Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction) of secretly developing a program to enrich uranium to weapons grade and unilaterally cut off oil shipments the US committed to under the 1994 Agreed Framework.

Bush would go on to pull US troops out of North Korea, where they had been working cooperatively with the North Korean Army searching for the remains of US army personnel killed in the Korean War.

As O’Brien asserts in her series, the immediate trigger for these moves was a visit by Japanese prime minister Junichiro Koizumi to North Korea in a first effort to normalize relations between the two countries. In the view of the Bush administration, an independent economic-political block consisting of Japan and a unified Korea posed a serious strategic threat to US dominance in Asia and had to be stopped. Her arguments make sense in view of the fact that direct US military occupation of South Korea only ended in 1994, a year after the South Korean people overthrew the last US-installed puppet dictator.

Provoking North Korea into Resuming Their Nuclear Weapons Program

In the face of growing belligerence and military threats from the US, in 2003 North Korea announced they were withdrawing from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and restarted the nuclear reactor frozen by the 1994 Agreed Framework. They also announced they were restarting their nuclear weapons program and long range missile testing. In 2004, they would announce they had successfully manufactured a nuclear weapon and in 2006 test their first nuclear weapon

Whereas there was no evidence they had nuclear weapons in 2002 when Bush first leveled accusations against them, by 2004 he managed to convince them their regime was under sufficient threat they needed nuclear weapons to defend themselves – he also managed to convince Congress that the North Korean threat justified massive expenditures on a wasteful and questionably effective missile defense system.

Meanwhile despite growing tensions from North Korea’s decision to resume their nuclear weapons program, the Sunshine Policy would limp along until 2008. A shooting incident at the Mount Kumgang tourist region (in which a South Korean tourist was shot by North Korean soldiers) effectively ended it.

Originally published in Dissident Voice

US Has Killed More Than 20 Million People in 37 “Victim Nations” Since World War II

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Generally speaking, the much smaller number of Americans who have died is not included in this study, not because they are not important, but because this report focuses on the impact of U.S. actions on its adversaries.

Counter Information

By James A. Lucas

Global Research, April 01, 2017

Popular Resistance 27 November 2015

First published in November 2015

After the catastrophic attacks of September 11 2001 monumental sorrow and a feeling of desperate and understandable anger began to permeate the American psyche. A few people at that time attempted to promote a balanced perspective by pointing out that the United States had also been responsible for causing those same feelings in people in other nations, but they produced hardly a ripple. Although Americans understand in the abstract the wisdom of people around the world empathizing with the suffering of one another, such a reminder of wrongs committed by our nation got little hearing and was soon overshadowed by an accelerated “war on terrorism.”

But we must continue our efforts to develop understanding and compassion in the world. Hopefully, this article will assist in doing that by addressing the question…

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It Is Now Legal To Privately Smoke And Grow Marijuana In South Africa

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Yesterday, a landmark ruling occurred in South Africa when the Western Cape High Court decided that keeping weed (dagga) illegal is unconstitutional.

Tales from the Conspiratum

Source: It Is Now Legal To Privately Smoke And Grow Marijuana In South Africa – True Activist

trueactivist.com 

ByAmanda Froelich
Posted onApril 1, 2017
South Africa’s Western Cape High Court declared that it is unconstitutional to ban the use of dagga (weed) by adults in private homes.

Credit: BTL

 Yesterday, a landmark ruling occurred in South Africa when the Western Cape High Court decided that keeping weed (dagga) illegal is unconstitutional. The decision marks a significant change in the south-African nation, as cannabis has essentially been legalized for private use.

Until March 31, 2017, the herb was illegal to grow, own or use under the “Criminal Prohibition of Dagga Act.” The Court deemed the prohibition to be unfair, outdated and discriminatory, however and said that the law disproportionately targeted people of color.

As a result, it is now legal for people to possess and use cannabis in their…

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The FBI Played a Central Role in the First ISIS Attack on U.S. Soil*

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The first attack on U.S. soil for which ISIS claimed responsibility—a 2015 shooting in Garland, Texas—was instigated by the FBI, according to an investigation by CBS’ “60 Minutes” and government documents obtained by an attorney involved in the case.

Hwaairfan's Blog

The FBI Played a Central Role in the First ISIS Attack on U.S. Soil*

Investigation finds an undercover agent encouraged a shooter in Garland to “tear up Texas.” It gets worse.

Photo Credit: Katherine Welles / Shutterstock.com

Photo Credit: Katherine Welles / Shutterstock.com

By Ben Norton

The first attack on U.S. soil for which ISIS claimed responsibility—a 2015 shooting in Garland, Texas—was instigated by the FBI, according to an investigation by CBS’ “60 Minutes” and government documents obtained by an attorney involved in the case.

In a macabre twist, an undercover FBI agent who encouraged one of the shooters to “tear up Texas” was also physically present at the scene of the crime, mere feet away from the shooters.

Prior to that, a separate informant was paid $132,000 by the FBI to pretend for three years to be friends with the future shooter. When the man found out his…

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REBEL YELL: John Patrick Judge – Judge For Yourself

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It was John Judge – in Feb 2002 – who first explained to me, during a public forum in Seattle, why 9-11 was an inside job.

RIELPOLITIK

Source  – jfkcountercoup.blogspot.ca

– At the time of his death, John Judge was working on creation of a Hidden History Museum and Research Center in Washington, DC, to educate a new generation about covert operations, and to support the work of investigative journalists and researchers looking into the National Security State and the rise of secrecy, government plans for extra-Constitutional jurisdiction during emergencies, and threats to civil liberties and international relations:

John Judge RIP (Dec. 14 1947 – April 15 2014) – By Bill Kelly 

I met John Judge in the fall of 1969 outside the University of Dayton Cafeteria at the Kennedy Union where he was manning a table and passing out literature for Conscious Objectors next to a US Marine Corps recruiting table. One of the papers on his table was a copy of Jim Garrison’s interview in Playboy, which I began to read and he told me to keep…

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US is like ‘armed robber breaking into your house’ – Iranian defense minister

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I love it – “like an armed robber breaking into your house.” What a perfect description of US foreign policy.

Tales from the Conspiratum

Go home bloody stupid Yanks and fix your own country.

“What are Americans doing in the Persian Gulf? They had better get out of this region and not cause trouble for the countries in the region,” Dehqan said in a statement carried by Iranian state media on Thursday.

Source: US is like ‘armed robber breaking into your house’ – Iranian defense minister — RT News

RT News

30 Mar, 2017



FILE PHOTO © David Flewellyn / U.S. Navy / Handout via Reuters


Iran’s defense minister, Hossein Dehqan, has advised the US military to leave the Persian Gulf and stop causing trouble there, local media report. The Minister was firing back at a US general who accused Iran of being a destabilizing force in its own region.

“What are Americans doing in the Persian Gulf? They had better get out of this region and not cause trouble for the countries in…

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Chomsky sees false flags before they occur!

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Interesting – Chomsky’s sudden conversion to false flag attacks – after 50 years of denying the reality of the JFK and similar CIA assassinations and 9-11.

Political Film Blog

Noam Chomsky and his smug, empty-headed cheerleaders have been making waves this week, apparently a full-blown conspiracy-theorist now. This is after Chomsky fucked up the US left for fifty years, denying the realities of the JFK hit and 9/11 attack, which was clearly allowed to proceed despite mountains of warnings. Noam completely ignores that the CIA knew the purported hijackers were inside the country for over a year! Where there’s smoke there’s fire.

But Noam would have none of it. Indignation and apathy were his M.O.

All that was pre-Trump, however. The rule book has been burned. Yes, Noam a false flag attack is a possibility. Of course it is. It always was. But since you had no interest in all the evidence, why should anyone care what you have to say at all? Phantom future attacks? By whom?

The people who can perpetrate a false flag attack…

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The Shoddy Science Behind Vaccination

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Vaccine Illusion: How Vaccination Compromises our Natural Immunity and What We Can Do to Regain Our Health

Tetyana Obukhanych PhD

2012

Available free from Greenmedinfo.com

Book Review

Trained immunologist Tetyana Obukhanych offers an excellent summary of the major flaws in the current body of vaccination research. I wasn’t terribly surprised to learn the field of immunological research is contaminated by the same unscientific dogma and bias as the fields of water fluoridation and nutrition research (see The Role of Western Medicine in the Epidemic of Obesity, Diabetes and Heart Disease)

Immunological research, like these other areas, is limited by what drug companies and government agencies, such as National Institutes of Mental Health, are willing to fund. At the moment, they refuse to fund experiments that test the current theory of how vaccines work. They also refuse to fund studies on adverse vaccine effects beyond two to three weeks of administration or in the area of naturally acquired immunity.

According to Obukhanych, the limited research evidence that exists suggests that quarantine is probably more effective than vaccination and, along with improved nutrition, is likely responsible for the overall decrease in deadly infectious diseases.

No Double Blind Studies

Her book begins by explaining how tetanus vaccine works – it actually immunizes patients against the toxin produced by Clostridium tetani, rather than the infectious agent itself. The effectiveness of tetanus toxoid has never been subjective to randomized controlled trial (ie double blind study). This would be viewed as unethical as it would leave the control group unprotected against tetanus. Obukhanych mentions a 1984 study revealing Vitamin C to be an effective alternative treatment of tetanus. Vitamin C treatment could be subjected to a randomized controlled trial, but it would be unlikely to receive funding.

Despite the strong pro-vaccine bias in the research community, Obukhanych offers up a number of laboratory and animal studies that challenge the concept of “immunological memory” and other dogma doctors and public health official disseminate about vaccines. She also examines some of the research pointing to the role “adjuvants” (mostly aluminum salts) play in dangerous allergic and autoimmune responses to vaccines.

Debunking Herd Immunity

She goes on to challenge the notion (with research evidence) that vaccinating children at age one and five with the MMR offers them “herd immunity” against measles, mumps and rubella. By definition, heard immunity only exists when 68% of the population has active antibodies against a specific infection. Most serological tests show that the virus neutralizing capacity that develops in response to MMR only lasts 2-5 years. This means the vast majority of adolescents and adults are unprotected.

Even more concerning, women vaccinated against measles at age five no longer pass protection against measles through their breast milk. Obukhanych believes this explains a significant increase in measles encephalitis in infants since 1990.

Obukhanych also devotes a chapter to a detailed scientific explanation of why flu vaccine is no longer protecting patients against influenza.

Is Monsanto responsible for a 90 percent drop in the bumblebee population?

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Past research has shown that glyphosate is capable of doing serious damage to bees, even at sub-lethal doses that are equivalent to what may typically be found in the environment.

ACGR's "News with Attitude"

Vicki Batts

3/30/2017

Source …..

The rusty patched bumblebee was, at one time, an ordinary bee with a substantial population across the US. But the once-common bee has fallen prey to human action, and the number of these little pollinators has declined drastically. Over the last two decades, the rusty patched bumblebee population has declined by a staggering 90 percent, rendering them the first bee species to be declared “endangered” in the contiguous United States. On March 21, 2017, the United States Fish and Wildlife Service listed the rusty patched bumblebee as endangered under the Endangered Species Act.

There are many factors in the decline of bee populations: Habitat destruction, disease, pesticides and GMO agriculture are all thought to play a role in the decimation of one of our most needed species of insects. Bees are essential to the pollination of many crops grown for food, and it is…

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The Ticking Time Bomb That Will Wipe Out Virtually Every Pension Fund In America

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Source: Michael Snyder, Guest Post
Are millions of Americans about to see the big, juicy pensions that they were counting on to fund their golden years go up in flames in the biggest financial disaster in U.S. history? When Bloomberg published an editorial entitled “Pension Crisis Too Big for Markets to Ignore“, it simply confirmed what a lot of people already knew to be true.  Pension funds all over America are woefully underfunded, and they have been pouring mind boggling amounts of money into very risky investments such as Internet stocks and commercial mortgages.  Just like with subprime mortgages in 2008, this is a crisis that everyone can see coming well in advance, and yet nothing is being done about it.

On a day to day basis, Americans generally don’t think very much about pensions.  Most of those that have been promised pensions simply have faith that they will be there when they need them.

Unfortunately, the truth is that pension plans all over the country are severely underfunded, and this has already resulted in local fiascos such as the one that we just witnessed in Dallas.

But what happened in Dallas is just the very small tip of a very large iceberg.  According to Bloomberg, unfunded pension obligations on a national basis “have risen to $1.9 trillion from $292 billion since 2007″…

As was the case with the subprime crisis, the writing appears to be on the wall. And yet calamity has yet to strike. How so? Call it the triumvirate of conspirators – the actuaries, accountants and their accomplices in office. Throw in the law of big numbers, very big numbers, and you get to a disaster in a seemingly permanent state of making. Unfunded pension obligations have risen to $1.9 trillion from $292 billion since 2007.

And of course that $1.9 trillion number is not actually the real number.

That same Bloomberg article goes on to admit that if honest math was being used that the real number would actually be closer to 6 trillion dollars…

So why not just flip the switch and require truth and honesty in public pension math? Too many cities and potentially states would buckle under the weight of more realistic assumed rates of return. By some estimates, unfunded liabilities would triple to upwards of $6 trillion if the prevailing yields on Treasuries were used. That would translate into much steeper funding requirements at a time when budgets are already severely constrained. Pockets of the country would face essential public service budgets being slashed to dangerous levels.

So where are all of these pensions eventually going to come up with 6 trillion dollars?

That is a very good question.

Ultimately, even if financial conditions stay as stable as they are right now, a whole lot of people are not going to get the money that they were promised.

But things will get really “interesting” if we see a major downturn in the financial markets.  According to Dave Kranzler, if the stock market were to fall by 10 percent or more and stay there for a number of months, that “would cause every single public pension fund to blow up”.  And Kranzler is also deeply concerned about the tremendous amount of exposure that these pension funds have to commercial mortgages…

Circling back to the mall/REIT ticking time-bomb, while the Fed can keep the stock market propped up as means of preventing an immediate nuclear melt-down in U.S. pensions (all of which are substantially “maxed-out” in their mandated equities allocation), the collapse of commercial mortgage-back securities (CMBS) will have the affect of launching a nuclear sub-missile directly into the side of the U.S. financial system.

The commercial mortgage market is about $3 trillion, of which about $1 trillion has been packaged into asset-backed securities and stuffed into yield-starved pension funds. Without a doubt, the same degree of fraud of has been used to concoct the various tranches in these CMBS trusts that was employed during the mid-2000’s mortgage/housing bubble, with full cooperation of the ratings agencies then and now. Just like in 2008, with the derivatives that have been layered into the mix, the embedded leverage in the commercial mortgage/CMBS/REIT model is the financial equivalent of the Fukushima nuclear power plant collapse.

I have previously talked about the ongoing retail apocalypse in the United States which threatens to make so many of these commercial mortgage securities go bad.  It is being projected that somewhere around 3,500 stores will close in the months ahead, and this is going to absolutely devastate mall owners.  In turn, it is inevitable that a lot of their debts will start to go bad, and pension funds will be hit extremely hard by this.

But the coming stock market crash is going to hit pension funds even harder.  Stocks are ridiculously overvalued right now, and if they simply return to “normal valuations”, pension funds are going to lose trillions of dollars.

We are talking about a financial tsunami that will be absolutely unprecedented in our history, and yet investors continue to act like the party can last forever.  In fact, we just learned that margin debt on Wall Street has just hit another brand new record high…

The latest data from the New York Stock Exchange show margin debt, or cash borrowed to buy shares, hit a record $528.2 billion in February, up from its prior high of $513.3 billion in January.

Of course my regular readers already know that margin debt also shot up to dramatic peaks just before the last two stock market crashes as well…

Prior periods when margin debt hit records occurred around stock market peaks, including 2000 when the dot-com stock boom went bust, and 2007 when stocks began to crater amid early signs of trouble in the housing market ahead of the 2008 financial crisis.

Margin debt jumped 22% from the end of 1999 before peaking in March 2000 at $278.5 billion, the same month stocks peaked. In 2007, margin debt shot up to $381.4 billion in July, three months before stocks topped.

We are perfectly primed for the greatest financial disaster in American history, and yet very few people are sounding the alarm.

This massive financial bubble is a ticking time bomb, and when it finally goes off it is going to wipe out virtually every pension fund in the United States.

 

Source: The Ticking Time Bomb That Will Wipe Out Virtually Every Pension Fund In America

Photo credit: By OSTFlorida – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons