A Dispatch from Pyongyang

A Dispatch from Pyongyang




September 8 2012 – September 15 2012



I’ve felt like landing at the other planet where I were allowed 'living off the grid' a short period of time (8 days) in the past life (1970s) at the present time (2012).



I am a junk, I’m as stubborn as a garbage bag that Time can not decay...





The Metropolitan City of Pyongyang



Preface: Don’t shoot the messenger



With a gumption and gusto to challenge the conventional wisdom and massive propaganda against the one of the axis of evil nations, Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, I, without prejudice, antagonism, or love of communism, have embarked ‘a Once in a Lifetime Journey’ on the eight-day NGO group tour of eleven participants, whose heads were chock-full of the horror stories of gulag, starvation, dictatorial and inhumane sovereignty, etc.



I was a one and only Korean-Canadian participant who was born, cultured, and educated in the South Korea, and, most importantly, had once lived briefly as a teenager under the jurisdiction of North Korean regime when the People’s Army in 1950 swarmed over the most of the southern section of South Korean territory during the Korean War.

Since I was the most knowledgeable among the tour participants in Korean history, geography, culture, and other aspects of life, and fully bilingual in both English and Korean, other participants (all were white US citizenry) appeared to have a wishful thinking that I function as an unofficial interpreter or a ciceroni, even though we had two official North Korean guides assigned throughout the tours.



Therefore, I, from the beginning of our tour, declared clearly: “Don’t make any misunderstanding about me. I am one of the tour participants as you are and you do not expect any help from me when you need a translator or interpreter, period.”

However, I was, constantly and persistently, pestered to function as an interpreter by a Jewish yenta whose flaring nostrils vibrate uncontrollably like a burro when she was reminded by me repeatedly of the fact that I am not her James or a house Negro. (You have to be a patient listener in the group tour since the ever-present chatterbox in the group cannot talk to the wall, but needs at least one nodding respondent to take a fancy about one’s conceit.)



In essence, I simply wanted to play a role of a messenger, no more or less other than a story teller that spins a yarn…even though I shared blood, genes, culture, language, habitats, and other essential things with both North and South Koreans.

During the brief stopover in Seoul, South Korea, I witnessed the rampant process of ‘de-Koreanizing’…a Korean in blood, color, and physiognomy, but a pseudo-American in facial features, in taste, in words, in songs, in opinion and in wisdom.

History and memory are both dead. Consent to Americanizing is manufactured and propagated with a tool called the “Han Wave”, a devilish and neo-colonial product of the syncretic culture, a hodgepodge of mongrel, ghoulish, risible, and crass slapsticks that sadly ridicule South Koreans themselves.



On the morning of departure to Beijing, South Korean Daily Newspaper printed a story that these days in Pyongyang there are many Northern women wearing a mini-skirt and high-heel shoes, which is a sign of Northerners admiring and emulating the Southern fashion and culture. (It was a shameful and naked lie that Northern Girls love to wear the miniskirt...I have not seen even one girl wearing a skirt above their knees during my entire trip.)

Now, let us jump into the lake of Chosen and get hold of a mini-skirted Northern lady.



But remember that I am only a messenger.

Please don’t shoot the messenger.

If you don’t like my story, you go there by yourself and find whether I tell the truth or not.



Author’s note: I sometimes write my diary as if I write a roman-a-clef in order for readers to get familiar with the actual scenes that they could never envisage in reality, because you, the readers of my diary, might not be able to form a mental image of various scenes in the soi-disant “Hermit Kingdom”, since you are not cultured or programmed to be able to figure out the naked reality where the Northerners live.



Inside the Subway Station in Pyongyang





Day One: A Historical background in Korean peninsula in the 50s and beyond



During the coffee break before the boarding time at the Beijing Airport, I offered a concise/laconic/succinct briefing about the Korean history to our tour group that consist of four men/seven women, with half of them Jewish origin.



As Americans are notoriously ignorant of world history, geography, and culture, I began to describe the history that Korea was once a united country under the Japanese colonial occupation until FDR offered Joseph Stalin to divide Korean peninsula in two when they met at Yalta just before the Japanese surrender in 1945.



In other words, I emphatically wanted to educate our tour members that Americans walked into Korean peninsula in 1945 not as a liberator but the military occupiers just replacing Japanese colonial masters.

In addition, I re-affirmed the historical fact that the US Military Governor ordered to abolish the Korean Provisional Government that was already established by the people in the South and brought in their comprador/puppet Dr. Sygnman Rhee from Princeton New Jersey, crowning him as the President.



Sygnman Rhee was a house steward for Uncle Sam who trained him a factotum intellectual that was well versed in Western culture and married with a Caucasian woman of an Austrian origin whose love convinced him that he is a white man.

Rhee was speaking his native language, Korean, with accent and intonation that‘s not familiar with native Koreans as if he’s a half-Korean and a half-American.

Though Rhee was a Korean by birth, he has also become the ‘ultimate other’ by choice, after just three decades of foreign residence in the US. (after four decades of foreign residence, I still speak Korean language with precision and without an accent.)

Rhee was such unpopular and repressive in his first two-year presidency before the Korean War that people rose up to overthrow his regime numerous times.

And Rhee employed massively the former Korean collaborators to Japanese Empire as his executioners who massacred thousands of people in the military campaigns against the revolts that obviously solicited and invited the North’s attempt to unify Korea militarily once and for all.



I attempted to tell the historical truth that the soi-disant ‘August 15 Liberation’ from the Imperial Japan did not bring about the sovereign/independent state for Koreans, instead new neo-colonial overlord disguised a democratic liberator moved in to replace old master…the South Korea began a puppet state (the regime of Syngman Rhee), then a vassal state (Gen. Park CH), followed by a neo-colonial, satellite state and client state (present Republic) to be palatable to the hegemonic American Imperialism.

The South Koreans have become a gaggle of Apes that worships blindly an imported God, Jesus, fights greedily over the bowls of rice, jettisons massively its faltering indigenous culture, and emulates blindly an enchilada of Western concepts with abandon.



I realized immediately that I had a problem with our tour delegates…they did not get the message that the United States of America was a culprit to cause the separation of people and land in Korea from the get go.

The US Government wanted to establish the military foothold in the Korean peninsula in preparation for containing Soviet and Chinese influences and for perpetuating its hegemonic neo-colonialism in the former colonial territories in the Pacific and Southeast Asia region.

They said no, no, and no such thing could possibly occur because we were the one that liberated you, Koreans, and other Southeast Asians from Jap’s colonialism as we were doing the same things in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and Syria liberating people from the dictators and offering them a democracy now.

History shows that our efforts to bring a democracy to all over the world were too numerous to catalogue completely. (The late Gore Vidal once quipped that ‘democracy’ becomes a nonsense word in the US.)



At this point, I made up my mind that I should not involve with any discussion, argumentation, or judgment call during our tour period in the North… in order to avoid any unpleasant or awkward situation, I had to build the firewall around me, assuming that one or two members of our tour group might be a katsa (a case officer) or sayanim (a resident helper) from the Mossad, CIA, or DIA. (It is well known in the intelligence community that there are thousands of sayanim for Mossad around the world who play many different roles; a car sayan who helps Mossad agent rent a car without a routine documentation, an apartment sayan would find a safe house for a katsa from Mossad without raising suspicion, a bank sayan, would get you money in the middle of night, and a doctor sayan would treat your bullet wound without reporting to police.)

Therefore, my interaction with other members trickled down to the point where I solely observe and evaluate by myself independently the people, social milieu, and the system analysis in the North.



On the plane, I was surprised to find that there were so many tourists from the European Continent…Belgians, Netherlanders, French, Russians, Polish, Hungarians, even some Africans, Japanese, and Pakistanis or Indians…Americans were no where except our tour group.

Frankly speaking I was not pleasant or comfortable but somewhat subdued and in deep pen-see even though I was holding a stand-alone entry visa, as I entered into an unknown territory where I might be perceived as a South-Korean-born reactionary whose entire life was devoted to the ideological services to the US empire. (The North would not place a welcome mat before me if they knew that I worked for the South Korean government during my early career in the 70s.)



We landed at the Airport located about 30-minite ride from the Capital City, Pyongyang, where there were no ramp facilities and we were taxied by a trolley-bus to the main building.

Surprisingly, the entry and custom clearance went through in a breeze without any hitch and we were greeted by Mr. Kim and Miss Lee, both gregarious young 20ish interpreters,

and Mr. Han, the 30ish driver who would be with us entire period while traveling around the country. (It’s also a fun to compare the immigration/custom clearance between the US and North Korea…a browbeating, Doberman-pinscher US agent toting a side-arm at the border post in the freedom-loving and the most democratic nation on the globe versus a friendly, smiling, courteous, and unarmed well-wisher in the most oppressive nation on the planet.)



However, I’ve felt like landing at the other planet where I were allowed 'living off the grid' a short period of time (8 days) in the past life (1970s) at the present time (2012).

I mean it is not too gross, offensive, derogatory, or overstated to term the societal ambience in present North Korea as if we were living in South Korea in the 70s.



We were immediately ushered toward an immaculately-cleaned tour bus that’s too large to accommodate an eleven-member delegate from the US NGO in San Francisco.

The NGO has been sending their delegates all over the world for decades…Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Palestine, Iran, Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, North Korea, South Korea, etc.,…in order to educate people about how we, individually and collectively, contribute to global problem and then to suggest ways in which we can contribute to positive change locally and internationally.

We were not traveling for voyeurism or rubbernecking as most of the group tour tends to trot around, but offering the participants an opportunity to journey to other countries to examine a situation firsthand to see beyond what is conveyed by the mass media and to learn about unfamiliar culture, tradition, mores, and other essentials, meet with people from all walks of life, establish meaningful relationship with people from other country.



On our way from the Airport to the Hotel Y where most of foreign tourists stay during their journey, our bus shared the multi-lane highway with an ox-cart carrying piles of wood and a horde of bikers and pedestrians rushing for home after work.

Our bus barely made 50 miles an hour not because of traffic jam but a rough surface of the asphalted roadway.



When we entered into the city center of Pyongyang, not many vehicle traffics but a few tandem-trolley bus powered by electricity clogged the six-lane boulevard that lined with well-maintained trees, shrubs, benches, and high-rise apartments, but no commercial buildings and stores whatsoever such as shopping mall, supermarket, factory outlet, convenience store, bakery, coffee-shop, food cart, pet-shop, or lottery-sale windows.

You absolutely don’t have to worry about colliding head-on with cell-phone reading pedestrians or bumping into the path of dog-walkers...no pet animals, neither stray nor pampered, dog, cat, turtle, fish, or parakeet,



No neon-sign board or sales-pitch placard demands my attention.

The streets were Spartan, austere, plain, and settled calm with people walk along the way home or lined for a bus ride home.

No crooning buskers, hat-in-hand pan-handlers, mini-skirted street-walkers, begging/tear-jerking/infirm pensioners, wailing ambulances, fire-trucks or police cruisers.

No one appears to be different from others...most of them wear the same attire, shoes, hats and carry the same style shoulder bags.

We were in the center of a metropolitan city (population: 3.5 million) with serene, calm, settled, and trash-bins/carbon-monoxide/crime-free ambience.



The ever-present, sparkling and conspicuous are the two paralleled iconography: the amicably smiling portraits of Grand Marshals: Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il, underneath the signboard demanding people to act with deadly gravity:

1. Let us protect our beloved leader Kim Jong Un.

2. Let us keep up our ‘Military First’ Policy.

3. Let us kick the US Imperialists out of Korea.



Prior to departure to North Korea, our tour group had received a series of intensive educational bulletin from the coordinator of the NGO about the over-all situation in North Korea in particular and Asia Pacific region in general.

We were fully aware of the political system in the North that the country has been run by Kim family since 1945 as a Kim Dynasty.

However, contrary to the popular theory that Kim Family runs the Dynasty, the Worker’s Party in the North Korea has been the one and only organization that control both military and civilian apparatus firmly and exclusively.

Without the loyal support from the Party apparatchiks, Kim Family could not have lasted a minute in holding the regime tightly under their control for over half a century.



With a female county commissar, the Korea Worker’s Party



Day Two: Jaw, Jaw is much, much better than war, war!!



On Sunday, we took several and uneventful junkets according to the official itineraries onto the various sites: the Kim Il Sung Square, the National Cemetery for the Patriots, The Revolutionary Square, and one of restaurants designated for the foreign tourists.

During our luncheon break, one of our group asked Mr. Kim, the male guide, whether she would be allowed to attend the church service, by saying that she, as a Catholic, never missed the Sunday service since she became a Christian.



Mr. Kim appeared to be totally nonplused and confused by her request, suggesting that the Northerners would spend their Sunday for a rest to be ready for coming week’s assignment that was given by their greatest leader, Kim Jong Un.

I found that Mr. Kim and the Catholic lady live thousands miles apart in one hand and think as if they were the same species in other perspective...I did not see them apart from each other but stand on the same pedestal where their cultural icons are shown in a different iconography: one in Jesus Christ worshipped by the billions, and the other in Grand Marshals followed by just 23 millions.



They are a product of their own cultural evolution based on memes analogous in many ways to the biological evolution based on genes...the term memes refer to a replicator of cultural information that transmits to other mind.

According to the Oxford Professor, Richard Dawkins who coined the word, the examples of memes are tunes, catch-phrases, clothes fashions, deities, concepts, ideas, opinions, theories, practices, habits, dances and moods which propagate within a culture.

Some suggested that memes evolve by natural selection—in a way very similar to Darwin’s biological evolution—on the premises that variation, mutation, competition, and inheritance influence their replicative success. For example, while one idea may become extinct, other ideas will survive, spread, and mutate, for better or worse, through modification.



In this perspective, neither Mr. Kim nor a Catholic Lady was wrong or sorry not to meet the demand of others...we are the victim of our own faults that we manufactured, operated, and fulfilled in the course of our life.

If Mr. Kim were born and brought up in the Western cultural environment, he would surely have been immersed with the same memes that a Catholic lady got pummelled by Christian deity and worshipped Jesus in his entire life, and in vice versa, a Catholic lady were becoming a political commissar to devote herself absolutely toward the “Self-reliance” policy of the North Korea.



Some contend that memes most beneficial to their hosts will not necessarily survive; rather, those memes which replicate the most effectively spread best; which allows for the possibility that successful memes might prove detrimental to their hosts.

Memes do not always get copied perfectly, and might indeed become refined, combined or otherwise modified with other ideas, resulting in new memes.



This illustrate clearly how I have metamorphosed from the life of a capitalist pig to an enlightened contrarian...I was born, educated, programmed, employed, and functioned as a lackeyed puppet to serve my totalitalian boss in return for a luxurios, greedy, and selfish life-style that I had chosen to enjoy my entire life.

When I was given a chance to look back my past life and to reflect it with a help from a unique cultural perspective, I did not hesitate to make a change toward an unconventional path and go the roads less traveled by others. (I became a Chomskyian.)

In other words, I, unlike other immigrants, had a capacity to pick, absorb, choose, and modify the various memes in the new world but did not copy them perfectly...and make it refined mine.

In Christian parlance, I was born again!!



The more I travel, meet, talk, and engage with others who do have a contrary ideology against me, the more I feel that so-called Westerners do not hold the earth exclusively on their palm to formulate whatever they like, no matter whether they are rich, civilized, powerful, educated, internet-wired, tablet/cellphone-crazy, or Kangnam-styled.

And the only remedy to solve the conflicts among us is not to argue, fight, or kill others, but to understand, accommodate, and facilitate the methods to alleviate or minimize the impact of the conflicts among us.

That’s why we, the tour group, were here to stay, see, feel, experience, and understand bodily and spiritually about others who are living in the realm of totally different cultural background.

In other words, jaw, jaw is much better than war, war!!



The Pioneer Boy/Girl Group





Day Three: the Political Commissars and Joe Blows



In our civilized and democratized Western world, there are a horde of the North Korean experts—journalists, pundits, anchor persons, think tank researchers, mandarins, academic professors, ex-CIA officers—who boast that they know what’s going on in the political arena at the Kim Dynasty.

However, most of them even have not had placed their foot on the tarmac of the Kim Il Sung Square, but read, sitting in a cubicle, the articles and news stories others wrote about and came to the one-man rule myth: the Kim is the supreme leader who leads the country single-handedly and wields the power arbitrarily...that is, Kim is one and only a King, Emperor, Evil, Executioner, Dictator, as if Jesus is one who saves or destroys us.

And we, civilized and programmed ‘Sheeple’, nod sheepishly and oblige to believe that these experts were the accredited lecturers/informers/experts and we accept their theories without any doubt.



But the fact of matter is that in the real world, no individual could attain an absolute command post and dictate one’s edict arbitrarily without significant assistance from a category of people called ‘nomenklatura’, the administrative, military, economic, cultural, and intellectual elites who benefit from the regime and therefore endeavor to keep the system intact.

In other words, there should be an enchilada of various entities that are manned by cadres, professionals, handlers, and other functionaries whose roles are essential in order to execute the edicts or maintain the ideologies like ‘Juche’ (self reliance), ‘Sun-kun Movement’ (Military First), or anti-US Imperialism.

These functionaries in the North are called “commissars” appointed by the Worker’s Party...village commissar, county commissar, provincial commissar, military commissar...they are ultimately responsible to execute and maintain the modus operandi with precision and no civilian or military personnel challenge or oppose their direction.



The Worker’s Party is the final sayer and arbiter to make a decision, to correct the mistake, or to implement the policies...the Kim is simply an icon as a Jesus in Christianity.

It’s not terribly important how Kim is personally thinking, acting, talking, or dancing...it’s not a one-man show but all choreographed according to the Party lines that were made behind the thick curtains in the Party Headquarters.

And then, who are these Commissars? And how were they picked up and crowned to be Commissars?



On early Monday morning, we were taken by our bus to the huge compound where a row of buildings, dormitory, playground, gymnastics room, was surrounded by thick forest in the suburban area.

And we saw a gaggle of young students, boys and girls, with a special uniform and red mufflers fluttering around their neck...they were just getting off the limousine bus with a heavy loads of various luggage containing snacks, clothes, books, sleeping bags and other essentials to stay in field.

A team of brightly sharp-eyed boys acknowledged us silently with a ‘Hello, How Are You’ nod...I immediately felt and noticed that they were the candidates for the Party Commissars for the next generation!!



These youngsters belong to the Young Pioneer Group that are picked by their fellow students and teachers and housed for the special trainings for weeks every year until eventually chosen by the Party to be manned the posts to follow what the Party orders.

I was told by our tour guides that there are just over 1.5 million Party members among 23 million people. And I personally met and talked with just one Party member during our entire tour. (Mr. Kim, our guide, wished that he’d become eventually a party member so that he’d have a more comfortable life.)



After lunch, we were heading for the City of Wonsan, a harbor city located by the east seaside 250km away from Pyongyang.

During the three-hour drive on the four-lane highway, we were amazed to witness that there were more broken-down vehicles by the roadside than running cars on the road...several military jeeps and coal-powered trucks were languishing away on the side of road, a grease-monkey soldier laboring under the bonnet while a platoon of soldiers squatted on their knees with cigarette butts in their hands.

A huge dump truck belching a plume of black smoke rumbled through the pockmarked surface with abandon.

We did not see any tow-truck activities, let alone a Triple-A guy to rescue the immobilized cars.



There were more pedestrians walking along the highway than moving jalopies...young, old, girls, soldiers, farmers, house-wives, and a team of workers with shovels on their shoulders.

They did not look like traveling long distance but visiting their neighbor villages or marching toward their daily assignments because they did not carry any luggage or lunch pails.

I saw a single, young girl walking alone up the hill with a handbag dangling on her back...if a girl with the same age dares to walk alone in the highway in anywhere USA, you surely end up a carcass thrown by the passing car after being raped by civilized, enlightened, democratized, human-right aficionado, the MR. USA.

Along the highway we only saw one large city and no villages were in sight during the trip, except several checkpoints manned by a policeman or a military personnel with a light side-arm.

Our bus passed through dozens of tunnels on the road where the camouflaged sentry boxes were manned by the People’s Army soldiers and every entry to tunnel was equipped with the tank barrier concrete walls ready to block the passage.



At the rest stop on the road, we located no villagers or wanderers but a couple of shop girls to attend the gift shop and tea house.

The girls, as the service girls in restaurant, wear the traditional costumes that cover the full body length including the shoulder, legs and sleeves, showing a pleasant and gregarious demeanor with a big smile. (They look as healthy as a horse.)

They reminded me of the Korean old saying suggests that a man born in the southern part of Korea is built figuratively better than the man born in the north, while a woman in the northern half of Korea is more beautiful and attractive than a southern-born woman.



Up until now, we have not met or talked personally with any Joe blow Northerners whose identity was not introduced by our tour guides...as a one and only bilingual tourist in the team, I have had multiple chances to strike a conversation with a passerby or the shop girls, but I never engaged with them in Korean language whenever there were our tour group around in the vicinity...that is, I was not there as a native Korean but a Canadian!!

However, as a former South Korean, I have felt that I could read their emotion, feeling and heartbeat without saying a word.

For me, I did not have any complaint about the lack of personal contact that most of our tour members lodged on our guides; I did not have to talk to the Northerners...I knew immediately as soon as we arrived in the Airport and passed through the streets of Pyongyang City, I felt that I was taken aback to the years of 1960s and 1970s in the South Korea when and where I had studied, worked, and lived in almost same environs.



And I came to a conclusion that the North and South Korea are far apart in every aspect of life for over a half century and they do not share any thing any more culturally, spiritually, economically, financially, and even figuratively and linguistically. They were totally disengaged, disconnected, and disenchanted from eath other.



The Kindergarten in the Co-op Farm

Day Four: The Potemkin Villages



In every guided tour, the ‘Potemkin’ village is a must place to be included in the official itineraries and ours was not an exception...when we arrived at the co-op farm near Wonsan City, the area where a row of houses, offices, and school buildings was vacant and no sign of human activities...except the sound of organ playing on the kindergarten site where we were scheduled to visit.

A 50ish lady with a neat and clean dress greeted us with a cordial manner took us around the compound and facilities that were surrounded by spotless and garbage-free garden.

The lady sheepishly explained us that most of the co-op members are on an assignment to take an excursion to the neighboring town for meetings.



Later, we were led to the kindergarten playground and joined with a gaggle of boys and girls who made a circle to dance and sing.

Some younger kids were squatting by the railings and watched us with showing no emotion whatsoever...they showed no sign of vigor, curiosity, cheerfulness, or alertness, but bored, tired, and lack of desires to do anything kids want to play.

The scene kept remind me of my kindergarten years when I was led by a house-maid who pulled me on a tricycle...wearing a bright yellow jacket with a bow-tie and leather backpack swinging on my back.

The kids showed an obvious signs of stunted growth due to the lack of nutritional diet that I had not seen in the streets of Pyongyang City.

I felt sad and uncomfortable when I realized that these kids eventually end up in a category of Joe Blow/canon fodder class in the coming generation. (As a capitalist, I bought a temporary comfort by donating, personally and sub rosa, a few hundreds greenbacks for the acquisition of extra food for the kids, after all of our tour members boarded up the bus for departure.)



Lastly, the lady invited us to her house located on the perimeter of the co-op ground that has three-bedrooms with a family room, kitchen, and out-house.

Her home was spot-clean but frugally equipped with hard floor, desks and ever-present portraits of the Grand Marshals. No desktop or laptop computer, cell-phone or home phone, electric cooker, coffee-maker, toaster, water-purifier, washer or drier.

One thing I tried and failed to locate was a trash can, drum, or facilities to hold or keep the waste matters...

Except in our hotel room, there were no ways we may dispose our trashes in the street or the place we visited...in other words, they barely create garbage or have got nothing to trash but to reuse it or make it bio-degradable.

In this sense, the North Koreans were the most environmentally friendly people around the world and saviors of the planet ultimately.



The second ‘Potemkin’ village was the Maternity Hospital in Pyongyang City... as in the Hospitals in Canada, this huge Maternity Hospital did not have a billing Department.

From towels, baby food, medicine, and other essentials for the delivery of babies to the accommodation, transportation, or any medical procedures, the state pays all the costs.

It’s true that the medical equipments were somewhat outdated and old-fashioned, and doctors and nurses were not trained as if we, the Westerners, enjoy utilizing their state of art skills.

However, they don’t have to worry about whether the penniless mothers may not get the treatments in the Hospital. All are taken care of by their Great Leader, period.

In this sense, we should have built their Potemkin village more vigorously in our capitalistic society.



When I realized that there was not a single panhandler, homeless or obese people, young or old, in cities, streets, or at the social gatherings to be found, I wanted to theorize that the whole North Korean society must be a ‘Potemkin’ Village!!

You may keep beggars and homeless people out of sight by kicking them out from the city limit as we habitually do in our Western civilized society...but we cannot possibly do incarcerate the obese people in prison because they are too many to keep them out of sight in the cities, say in New York, Chicago, LA, Paris, London, Seoul, Tokyo, etc.



But how could the Kim Family keep these obese people out of sight from all over the country?

Reality is that there were no fat men in North Korea to keep them in the concentration camp! They don’t have a luxury, time, or lifestyle to become fat, overweight or obese people...because they have to walk, walk, and walk, all day, all seasons, all years, and all life until they finally kick the bucket! The North Koreans don’t have to spend hours of time on a treadmill to run like a squirrel in a barrel to keep shape like a human being...

In this sense again, I realized that we, civilized Westerners, are over-fed, over-nourished, over-indulged, over-pampered, and over-weighted in entire life producing tones of waste foods that we could share with the hungry people around the world.



Now, let’s go to the May Day Stadium where the monumentally choreographed mass gymnastics display proudly how North Koreans live a life under the shadows of two Grand Marshals.



The Arirang Mass Games





Day Five: The Arirang Mass Game



The mass game in the May Day Stadium was absolutely a pinnacle of our journey in the North Korea...a synchronized performance of gymnastics, acrobatics, and dances that 100,000s of youngsters honor and praise the image of their Great Leaders, the Worker’s Party of Korea, the People’s Army.

The Games were recognized by the Guinness World Record as the biggest event of its kind in 2007.



Every spectators including all foreigners in the arena were ecstatic and in hallelujah mood, joining with every moves and changes of scene that made them crazy about the performances.

The performances were in no way described accurately without watching the games with your own eyes.

I have no other ways except praising it fantastic, awesome, magnificent, marvelous, sensational, incredible...the scenes I ever witnessed the performances of youngsters, the backbone of the North Korea.



I will bet my precious ass that no country in the world could train their youngsters in a fashion as the North Koreans employ to formulate the games.

If they were taken to the Yankee Stadium and allowed to show the performances to the American people, a majority of American spectators would either shudder in fear of their dynamics or praise in honor of their agility, acknowledging that their cheerleading performances before the major games are an infantile gaga-ing to stir up the senile audiences.



I definitely could say that you would be very sorry if you die before seeing their performances .It’s much, much inspiring and awesome game than any sports events in the West. And I wouldn’t hesitate a minute to visit again the North Korea for their mother of all games.







A briefing officer at the Pueblo Spy Ship







Day Six: De-Militarized Zone and Pueblo Spy Ship



DMZ cuts the Korean Peninsula roughly in half, 250 km long and 4 km wide, the most heavily fortified no-man’s land.

When we were taken there after two and half hours of bus drive along the almost deserted highway between Pyongyang and Kaesong, the southern part of South Korean compound was deserted with no sign of human activities like the ghost town in the forest...only the northern side was bustling with hundreds of tourists from all over the world.



After a routine inspection over the hut where the armistice agreement was signed, we settled down for sometime at the Conference room on the demarcation line to relax and reflect over half century of tit-for-tat occurrences in the area...the fact of matter is that it’s not a talk, arbitration, or negotiation between North Korea and South Korea...it’s always between North Korea and the United States of America, draped under the false flag of the United Nations. The South Koreans have always been played a role of the puppet directed by their overlord, USA.

In other words, the South Korean officials do not have a dictionary to describe an affirmative ‘NO’ to their master, USA, in the affairs on the Peninsula, while the North exclusively stands alone against their enemy, an 800-pound Gorilla...with a little or no geo-political consideration in terms of the China/Russia relationship.



The North Koreans appear to be enjoying immensely to show off their prized catch in 1968, the Pueblo Spy Ship, permanently moored in the beach at the Daedong River that meanders the City of Pyongyang...it became a must site to go and hear for all North Koreans, children, soldiers, citizens, country bumpkins, or foreign tourists about the incursion the Spy Ship has made into their territorial water and Lyndon Johnson’s abject apology in order to getting the captured crews released.



It was an ironic to see the Spy Ship moored in the same place where the US General Sherman incident occurred in 1866...an armed merchant ship was destroyed and crews killed when the US attempted to open up Korea to trade and the Christian missionaries.

It’s also hilarious to hear that the US District Court Judge in 2008 awarded $65 millions in damage what the litigation-crazy American crews filed against the North Korean Government for torture and maltreatment during the captivity. (Forget about Abu Ghrail, Guantanamo, or Bagram. In the US Prison in Florida and Texas, the inmates were routinely savaged by dogs, electrocuted with cattle prods, and burned by toxic chemicals.)



The core problem for Americans in general and our tour team in particular appears to me that they are living in a ‘victory culture’ totally oblivious about the historicity of the US imperialism...wrapped themselves around with the blanket of the slogans; America, the good, democracy, freedom-loving, and righteousness: we are always doing a good thing, always altruistic in every move for the sake of democracy and benefits of others, and others are evil, if they don’t follow our orders.



Despite the constant predictable sloganeering about freedom and democracy, the US has always been more concerned about preserving corporate interests and a hegemonic domination of power, with an ideology that is unyielding and destructive.

Entire peoples and nations around the world have been ruined and exploited. This is why people around the world hate USA, not because of a vague dispute with a vague concept like freedom.



When the North Korean said “We ain’t gonna follow your order!”, arming themselves with the nuclear arsenals, Uncle Sam employs a variety of tools to harass, sanction, attack, and eliminate the North.

You may find the antithesis in the following article against the typical mainstream argument that the North Korea should abolish their nuclear capabilities and ‘say Uncle’ to the US imperialism



The night scene in Pyongyang



Day Seven: The Samson Option



I have written the following article in October 2006 after I read the NY Times article that the US intelligence groups predicted the demise of the North Korea in 5 years.

Since my article, two nationalistic leaders who have tried and failed to join the Nuclear Club have been murdered unceremoniously and miserably (Saddam Hussein in Iraq and Muammar Gaddafi in Libya).



In the sea of neo-colonial nations in Asia, the Kim Dynasty remains one and only authentic, genuine, and bona fide sovereign nation as countries like Cuba, Venezuela, , Bolivia, Ecuador, Iran, and Zimbabwe.

Myanmar (formerly Burma) finally succumbed to the Western Power recently, and Aung San Suu Kyi will play a role of a mama-san in the global brothel, selling out the vast field of the pristine forests to the salivating Octopus, Wall Street.





“Samson said; let me die with the Philistines…so the dead which he slew at his death were more than they which he slew in his life” (Judges 16:4-30)



1. The Perception Gap



For the month of October this year, there has been vociferous gaga among nations over the nuclear test of the North Korea that panjandrums of pundits, scholars, anchorpersons, and analysts of every colors pitched in their high opinion about what to do with the pariah state.

In other words, the Western mass media constantly tell us how Americans see the nuclear proliferation in the Far East region in their own perspective and the same outlet rarely tell us much about how others living in the region see it.

The gap between perceptions on the issue is so enormous that people are confused and misinformed of the situation that might develop into the nuclear brinkmanship and eventual nuclear conflagration in the Korean peninsular and vicinity.



For the better understanding of the situation, we have to wear two pairs of shoes from both sides on the equal footing, the US and the North Korea, not like the Western mainstream media that propagate and spin only the one-sided story from the US government, depicting the North Korea an unstable, irrational, and rogue regime ruled by crazy man, Kim Jong-Il.

Now let’s begin putting ourselves into the Uncle Sam’s shoes…



The United States want the North Korea to stop immediately the nuclear programs, because the regime of Kim Jong-Il is one of the axis of evil that threatens the world peace. In addition to economic sanction against the North Korea, Uncle Sam immediately exercised the piracy on high seas under the PSI (Proliferation Security Initiative) that violates the international law, and the US Defense Secretary strongly demanded his counterpart from the South Korean Government that the South should take part in the PSI operation against the North, that is, the US want their lackey regime joining to escalate in war footing against their Northern brother.

In sum, the US determine this time not to engage in peaceful negotiation but to bring about their ultimate objective of another “regime change” operation against the sovereign country as they exercised, for years, against many countries numerous times around the world, various Latin American countries, Yugoslavia, Somalia, Libya, Yemen, Iraq, Afghanistan, et al.



From North Korea’s perspective on the other hand, its nuclear program is a fundamental element in their national defense and security.

Therefore, there is little likelihood that Kim Jong-Il would give up the weapon of last resort.

Just for a moment imagine what you would do if you were put in the North Korean shoes…for them, scrapping the nuclear program is like throwing out the life jacket from the typhoon-wrecked vessel in the middle of the ocean that would be one and only tool to save them from drowning in the sea of enemies, Japan, South Korea, USA et al.



Would you give up one and only bargaining chip before sitting down with the 800-pound gorilla with megatons of nuclear, hydrogen, and chemical bombs who has been historically harassing, sanctioning, shooting, bombing, killing, and “regime-changing” at will the poor and weaker nations around the world?

Thinking from more rational perspective, you’d be quite easy to comprehend why the North Korea decided to possess the nuclear bombs, if you turn your attention toward the Israeli decision to become the member of the Nuclear Club in early 60s when Israelis felt its survival was on the line. (The media rarely compare Israeli situation with North Korea’s because they for decades conspired to remain silent on Israeli’s nuclear arms.)



The Israeli Government in early 1960s adopted the Samson Option as their basic defense policy against the Arab enemies, realizing that nuclear weapons are one and only equalizer in order to survive in the situation encircled by Arab Muslim nations.

“Never Again!” reasoning that Holocaust occurred in part because Jews in Europe did not resist became a zeitgeist that Israel would never be passive in the face of its enemy attack even though they face total annihilation.



2. The Samson Option: 1st Edition



The Samson Option refers to Samson’s choice, the Biblical namesake in Judges 16:4-30, who brought down two main pillars of a great temple when he was cornered by the Philistines, killing both his enemy and himself.

The basic defense policy of Israel since its birth was to build the strongest military power in both conventional and thermo-nuclear arms, and it would not hesitate to flex her muscle when dealing with her neighbors, Arab countries.



According to Seymour Hersh, the author of “The Samson Option”, Israeli Prime Minister Levi Eshkol in the 60s pondered about the Dimona nuclear programs the practical ones because the Dimona project was costing upward of $500 million a year, more than 10 percent of the Israeli military budget.

He was initially worrying about the money not being spent elsewhere: “I don’t have the money for it. How many children will go without shoes? How many students will not go to university?”



But for Ben-Gurion’s eye, the Father of Israeli State, “the nuclear project was holy”, assuming sacred dimensions…and the American Jews, from the billionaires to the father of H-bombs in the US, led a secret campaign for the Israeli to acquire the atomic bombs, raising billions of dollars and providing the nuclear technology.

Above all, it was an undeniable fact that the US, Great Britain, and France were conspired to provide Israelis with materials, money, technologies, and acquiescence, in order to position a teeny small Jewish nation a nuclear gendarmerie in the region.



Ever since Harry Truman’s support of the birth of Israel (there is an episode that two Jews delivered two suitcases of cold cash, 2 million dollars, to the Truman campaign train), the US government, Democrat or Republican, turned the blind eyes on the Israeli nuclear ambition and behaved like a cat that swallowed the canary when they were pushed to the limit.

During the 1973 Yom Kippur War when Israeli defense was in danger of total collapse by the invading Arab forces, the Israeli Government threatened both Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon with the use of nuclear weapons against the Arab countries.



In the Gulf War in 1991, the US Government had provided the Israelis the batteries of the Patriot Missiles against the incoming Scud missile attacks by Saddam Hussein, fearing that the Israeli Government might engage in pre-emptive nuclear strike against the Iraq.

On the issue of Iranian attempt to develop the nuclear capabilities, it is rational, putting in terms of the Samson Option, to think that Israelis strongly feel compelled to strike first, before Iran has the ability to make its own first strike.

In sum, the fact that the nuclear capability empowered the Israel providing the leverage in regional conflicts has offered an attractive logic for other countries considering the nuclear option: the United States has never attacked a country with nuclear arms.



3. The Samson Option: 2nd Edition



Since Israel was known a country holding the nuclear bombs in the basement, India and Pakistan officially declared to join the Nuclear Club, making total eight countries membership nation.

For Kim Jong-Il North Korea, it is apparent and logical to join the Nuclear Club that would guarantee to protect them from the Yankee harassment and insult.

It is bizarre to see why the Western nations cannot understand the North Korea’s situation while they can understand the fear that forced Israelis to hold the nuclear option.



In case of Pakistan, Uncle Sam initially regarded it as a rogue nuclear state when it test fired missiles capable of carrying the atomic warhead with North Korea’s Rodong technology.

It is also known fact that the North Korea had acquired the bomb making techniques from the Pakistan in return for exchanging missile technology, designating both Pakistan and North Korea the violating countries of the NPT (Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty).

And voila!

Pakistan is a great friend of Uncle Sam, getting billions of military aids from the US and North Korea became an evil nation that threatens the world peace.



Imagine for a moment that Kim Jong-Il does not have nuclear deterrence against his enemies…the street of Pyongyang flares up frequently, at Uncle Sam’s whim, with cluster, napalm, and 500-pound bombs lobbed by Tomahawk missiles and a squadron of B-52 bombers launched from the Guam Air Base.

Imagine for a second how many North Korean men, women, and children would perish without any recourse to counterbalance the barbaric and cowardly bombing raids.

One does not need to imagine the scenario in case the North Korea with a lack of nuclear capability…the world already and abundantly experienced how Uncle Sam punished the weak countries at random in order to shape world in his own image.



Now, is there still anyone to rebuke Kim’s rationale holding the nuclear bombs in his bosom while accepting Israelis Samson Option?



4. Conclusion



In essence, the Samson Option adopted by various weak nations upset the cold war model for nuclear strategy…during the Cold War, the more you hold nuclear weapons, the more you have power and deterrence against your enemies.

Not any more!

You don’t need piles of atomic bombs to deter the enemy attack but how and when one or two bombs strategically position to strike and disrupt the core area.



Ariel Sharon, an Israeli General and ex-Prime Minister, once said: “Arab may have the oil, but we have the match.” (Since January he is in a vegetative coma state peeing and pooping in his pants devoid of his arrogance and chutzpah.)

Kim Jong-Il brags: “We don’t have a luxury of cell phone, I-Pod, or HD TV, but have an A-bomb to take you to Inferno together.”

However there is a slim hope that we, if logical, sane, and reasonable, could prevent any nation to initiate the suicidal attack, since the Samson Option requires preparing for the total annihilation of the launching nation.



Kim may behave like a sewer rat, but he still has a choice of biting you when you corner him with no escape route.

On the other hand, Kim is poised, contrary to the Western media spins, no threat of launching the Samson Option on its neighbors, Japan and South Korea unless he feels otherwise no other choice.

How a nation that cannot feed its own people three-meals-a-day could engage in a war against the enemy whose conventional and nuclear arsenal could annihilate the whole population on the earth?



Don’t let the spin-doctors (the stupidity of Mr. Cho-Joong-Dong in South Korea and the arrogance of the Neo-Con warmongers in US) dictate your life!

Sanctions and other efforts, like “Do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do” US imperial diplomacy, to isolate the North Korea are not the most effective way to deal with nuclear-armed “madman”, Kim Jong-Il.

I tell people you only live this life once, whether you are an American, North or South Korean, Jew or Japanese! We all are on the same boat.

The choice is with us…and jaw-jaw is always better than war-war.

Let us resume talking again.



Peace! Insh Allah! Shalom!

The last thought: the only way a country like North Korea or Iran can protect itself from US attack, other than full-scale obeisance, is to acquire nuclear weapons. That is precisely why the US and Israel are so eager to ensure that the Iran does not have a bomb.







The trolley bus in the street of Pyongyang

The Friday night dance party for the University Students





Day Eight: I’m as stubborn as the garbage bag that time cannot decay...



Robert Mugabe (Zimbabwe): When the United Kingdom once condemned of his authoritarian policies and alleged racist attitudes as being comparable to those of German Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler, Mugabe responded mocking the UK's claims by saying that "I am still the Hitler of the time. This Hitler has only one objective, justice for his own people, sovereignty for his people, recognition of the independence of his people, and their right to their resources. If that is Hitler, then let me be a Hitler tenfold."



Hamid Karzai (Afghanistan) : on his perceived image as an impotent leader in thrall to the US Administration, he said he was willing to shoulder insults in return for US assistance: “Me, a Puppet? My God! If we were called puppets or I am called a puppet because we are grateful to America, then let that be my nickname.”



Park Chung-Hee (South Korea ): “I have the mindset and spirit befitting a Japanese subject and am willing to give my life for Emperor.”

Military Dictator/President made a pledge of allegiance written in his blood to the Japanese Emperor in 1939 when Korea was in colonial thrall of the Japanese Empire.

Hundreds of thousands of Koreans have collaborated with their Japanese masters and volunteered to fight in the war against China and Southeast Asia for the Japanese Imperial occupation during the WWII.



When new neo-colonial master, Uncle Sam, replaced an old colonial master, Japs, General/President Park again pledged his allegiance—not with his own blood, but with his Sheeple’s blood this time—to new overlord by dispatching the thousands of the Korean soldiers to the killing field during the Vietnam War.

Now South Koreans are about to reinstate Military Dictator Park posthumously as the Father of South Korean Prosperity as they are poised to elect his daughter a next El Presidente.



Juche Ideology (North Korea): The three fundamental principles are 1. Political Independence 2. Economic Self-sustenance 3.Self-reliance in Defense

The Koreans used to bemoan about their predicaments by saying that the shrimp (Korean peninsular) whose back gets broken in a fight between whales (China, Russia, Japan, and now Uncle Sam).

Three principles are the common factors that all the colonized people wanted to achieve in their endeavors to be free from the hegemonic powers of the Western imperialism.



A poet/song-writer/singer, Leonard Cohen croons in a sentimental style: “I am a junk. But I’m stubborn as those garbage bags that time can not decay. I’m still holding on...Sail on, Sail on. Sail on...”



The North Korea through the lens of the obese and fat Westerners is obviously a junk...and the garbage man (the West) wants to haul out the junk as soon as possible, but time can not decay the bag and the junk keeps sail on, on, and on...but how long?



I find no merit, goodness, worthiness or national wishes to get North and South re-united to One Korea at this stage.

They are as foreign to each other as a Yahweh in Torah vs. a Jesus in New Testament.

They are as distinctive to each other as an athletic grown-up vs. an over-fed Mama-boy.



The truth of matter also is that there is no possibility, let alone probability to see two regions re-united in any fashion as far as there remains the US occupation forces in the peninsula. And everyone knows that Yankees will never leave voluntarily...but a delusion lingers on especially in the vassal state, South Korea, that the two Koreas may be re-united while carrying the US Imperial Army on their back.



Now the South got the permission from the Obama Administration to extend their missiles to reach far up the Chinese mainland and to increase its payloads to carry heavier bombs...Yankees want to use the peninsula a stepping-stone to bridge the Pacific Ocean for ultimate target, China.

Is the nation really sovereign or independent if it needs the permission from others in order to have a weapon for the national defense?

Isn’t it bizarre to hear a rationale that the Occupied pays their Occupier billions of dollars for the costs of the Occupation with their blood money?



It’s a waiting game...Americans and their puppet, the South Koreans, wish the North Koreans revolt against the Kim Family joining their over-fed club...making 23 millions de-Koreanized to become an ape-faced South Korean! (You have to work like a dog before allowing you to join the club and it’s a big mistake anticipating that the Northerners would become a yes-man to kowtow to the Southern puppet for American overlord.)



And China would never allow the North Korean regime to fall apart becoming a satellite state of the US Empire that lurks across the Yalu and Tumen River.



The mass game to praise their Great leaders





Postscript: Chinese economy has been bottomed out



On the returning flight to Beijing, I was seated with Gino, a Belgian physician who was traveling with his daughter...he explained to me that the purpose of his trip was to teach his young daughter how the communist system makes people suffering from economic predicaments to political oppression.

I explained him that communism has got nothing to do with economic situation in the North, by adding an episode as follows:



“Suppose you were living in the island with your daughter surrounded by your neighbors who are determined to kill you and your daughter, what would you do?”

His answer was: “fight to death till I secure my family to live by arming myself to the teeth. It doesn’t matter whether I could not afford to have extra clothing or three meals a day.”

I re-affirmed his answer by saying that you don’t mind to lose your freedom for the sake of acquiring security... in other words, survival is a priority...his answer: “Exactly.”



The North Koreans have done the same thing as exactly as Gino would do to save themselves from the US imperial threats to destroy their country for over half a century by arming with the Nuclear arsenals that have cost enormous amounts of money and resources to acquire the technology, raw materials, and endeavors.

In the process of getting the Nuclear Bombs, the Northerners suffer immensely and continuously from the retarded economy to the political hardship that the US has been inflicting upon them in the forms of political, economic and financial sanctions, various embargoes ranging from energy, resources, and technologies.



After hour-long discussion, he thanked me that I let his brain function more wisely and wake him up from the one-sided stories by the mainline media in the West.



On arrival in Beijing Airport, I could see a screen of thick smog appeared in the sky that you could hang your hat on it...the first sign of the capitalist maladies that sick, maim, and slowly and eventually kill us...

In the ‘Soho’ commercial district in downtown, there were a row of high-rise buildings where most of the retail stores were not occupied and not a silhouette of human activities was detected at all.

It appears that the economic development has outpaced the human capability to respond with the massive capital infusion in every corner of the City. A majority of Chinese people does not seem to have a dynamic intelligence to meet, challenge, accept, and absorb the excessive inroad of the global capitalism.

However, they were not in shock, awe, or panic mode, but with wait, see, and somewhat carry-the-day attitude, the typical, conventional, and long-lasting Chinese characteristics.



Chinese are more pragmatic than idealistic ready to choose economic prosperity over democratic system...the real issues in China are about the economy and prosperity, not the dissidents, ethnic revolts, or thick smog in the City.

When I raised the issue of one of the dissidents in China, a Chinese laughed and remarked: “you may think this issue with the same degree of concerns that the Americans entertain in the mainstream media about the incarceration of Leonard Peltier or Mumia Abu Jamal.”

Regarding the ethnic issues like Tibet and Uighurs, he raised the voice and asked:” If Hawaiians want to separate and re-establish their own sovereign country, would you, Americans, are happy to comply with their request?”

Chinese appears to think smog issue comparable to the traffic congestion in Beijing...it will disappear naturally when people get sick of cars and start to walk or bike again as they used to do.



Chinese firmly believe that the North Koreans are their friends and valuable neighbors no matter what others say.

Chinese would hold the Northerners tight on their bosom as comrades and partisans as they used to fight together against the Japanese Imperial Army in the 1930s.

2012 US Elections: Obamney vs. Rombama

War, economic collapse, and personal devastation await Americans no matter who they vote for - and what we should do instead.



By Tony Cartalucci



August 25, 2012 "Information Clearing House" ---- A vote for Obama will bring war with Syria, Iran, and eventually Russia and China. The economy will continue to suffer in order to bolster the interests of off-shore corporate-financier interests, while the collective prospects of Americans continue to whither and blow away. A vote for Romney, however, will also bring war with Syria, Iran, and eventually Russia and China. The economy will also continue to suffer in order to bolster the interests of off-shore corporate-financier interests, while the collective prospects of Americans continue to whither and blow away. Why?



Because the White House is but a public relations front for the corporate-financier interests of Wall Street and London. A change of residence at the White House is no different than say, British Petroleum replacing its spokesman to superficially placate public opinion when in reality the exact same board of directors, overall agenda, and objectives remain firmly in place. Public perception then is managed by, not the primary motivation of, corporate-financier interests.



It is the absolute folly to believe that multi-billion dollar corporate-financier interests would subject their collective fate to the whims of the ignorant, uninformed, and essentially powerless voting masses every four years. Instead, what plays out every four years is theater designed to give the general public the illusion that they have some means of addressing their grievances without actually ever changing the prevailing balance of power in any meaningful way.



The foreign policy of both Obama and Romney is written by the exact same corporate-financier funded think-tanks that have written the script for America's destiny for the last several decades.



Bush = Obama = Romney



As was previously reported, while the corporate media focuses on non-issues, and political pundits accentuate petty political rivalries between the "left" and the "right," a look deeper into presidential cabinets and the authors of domestic and foreign policy reveals just how accurate the equation of "Bush = Obama = Romney" is.

















Image: Professional spokesmen, representative not of the American people but of Fortune 500 multinational corporations and banks. Since the time of JP Morgan 100 years ago, the corporate-financier elite saw themselves as being above government, and national sovereignty as merely a regulatory obstacle they could lobby, bribe, and manipulate out of existence. In the past 100 years, the monied elite have gone from manipulating the presidency to now reducing the office to a public relations functionary of their collective interests.



George Bush's cabinet consisted of representatives from FedEx, Boeing, the Council on Foreign Relations, big-oil's Belfer Center at Harvard, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), Circuit City, Verizon, Cerberus Capital Management, Goldman Sachs, and the RAND Corporation, among many others.











Image: The Henry Jackson Society is just one of many Neo-Conservative think-tanks, featuring many of the same people and of course, the same corporate sponsors. Each think-tank puts on a different public face and focuses on different areas of specialty despite harboring the same "experts" and corporate sponsors.



....



His foreign policy was overtly dictated by "Neo-Conservatives" including Richard Perle, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Jeane Kirkpatrick, Paul Wolfowitz, James Woolsey, Richard Armitage, Zalmay Khalilzad, Elliot Abrams, Frank Gaffney, Eliot Cohen, John Bolton, Robert Kagan, Francis Fukuyama, William Kristol, and Max Boot - all of whom hold memberships within a myriad of Fortune 500-funded think-tanks that to this day still direct US foreign policy - even under a "liberal" president. These include the Brookings Institution, the International Crisis Group, the Foreign Policy Initiative, the Henry Jackson Society, the Council on Foreign Relations, and many more.









Image: A visual representation of some of the Brookings Institution's corporate sponsors. Brookings is by no means an exception, but rather represents the incestuous relationship between US foreign and domestic policy making and the Fortune 500 found in every major "think-tank." Elected US representatives charged with legislative duties, merely rubber stamp the papers and policies drawn up in these think-tanks.

....



Obama's cabinet likewise features representatives from JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs, the Council on Foreign Relations, Fortune 500 representatives Covington and Burling, Citi Group, Freedie Mac, and defense contractor Honeywell. Like Bush's cabinet, foreign policy is not penned by Obama sitting behind his desk in the Oval Office, but rather by the very same think-tanks that directed Bush's presidency including the Council on Foreign Relations, RAND Corporation, the Brookings Institution, the International Crisis Group, and the Chatham House. There are also a myriad of smaller groups consisting of many of the same members and corporate sponsors, but who specialize in certain areas of interest.













Image: Obama, not a Marxist. A visual representation of current US President Barack Obama's cabinet's corporate-financier ties past and present. As can be plainly seen, many of the same corporate-financier interests represented in Obama's administration were also represented in Bush's administration.



And with Mitt Romney, "running for president" against Obama in 2012, we see already his foreign policy advisers, Michael Chertoff, Eliot Cohen, Paula Dobrainsky, Eric Edelman, and Robert Kagan, represent the exact same people and corporate-funded think-tanks devising strategy under both President Bush and President Obama.



While Presidents Bush and Obama attempted to portray the West's global military expansion as a series of spontaneous crises, in reality, since at least as early as 1991, the nations of Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, Sudan, Somalia, and many others that previously fell under the Soviet Union's sphere of influence, were slated either for political destabilization and overthrow, or overt military intervention. While the public was fed various narratives explaining why Bush conducted two wars within the greater global "War on Terror," and why Obama eagerly expanded these wars while starting new ones in Libya and now Syria, in reality we are seeing "continuity of agenda," dictated by corporate-financier elite, rubber stamped by our elected representatives, and peddled to us by our "leaders," who in reality are nothing more than spokesmen for the collective interests of the Fortune 500.













Image: The International Crisis Group's corporate sponsors reveal a pattern of mega-multinationals intertwined with not only creating and directing US, and even European foreign policy, but in carrying it out. ICG trustee Kofi Annan is in Syria now carrying out a ploy to buy time for NATO-backed terrorists so they can be rearmed, reorganized, and redeployed against the Syrian government for another Western-backed attempt at regime change - all done under the guise of promoting "peace."



No matter who you vote for in 2012 - until we change the balance of power currently tipped in favor of the Fortune 500, fed daily by our money, time, energy, and attention, nothing will change but the rhetoric with which this singular agenda is sold to the public. Romney would continue exactly where Obama left off, just as Obama continued exactly where Bush left off. And even during the presidencies of Bill Clinton and Bush Sr., it was the same agenda meted out by the same corporate-financier interests that have been driving American, and increasingly Western destiny, since US Marine General Smedley Butler wrote "War is a Racket" in 1935.



What Should We Do About It?



1. Boycott the Presidential Election: The first immediate course of action when faced with a fraudulent system is to entirely disassociate ourselves from it, lest we grant it unwarranted legitimacy. Boycotting the farcical US elections would not impede the corporate-financier "selection" process and the theatrical absurdity that accompanies it, but dismal voter turnout would highlight the illegitimacy of the system. This in many ways has already happened, with voter turnout in 2008 a mere 63%, meaning that only 32% of America's eligible voters actually voted for Obama, with even fewer voting for runner-up John McCain.



Ensuring that this mandate is even lower in 2012 - regardless of which PR man gets selected, and then highlighting the illegitimacy of both the elections and the system itself is the first step toward finding a tenable solution. People must divest from dead-ends. Presidential elections are just one such dead-end.



Focusing on local elections and governance first, not only emphasizes the primacy of local self-determination, but affords us a grassroots-up approach to transforming our communities, and collectively our nation back into something truly representative of the people.



2. Boycott and Replace the Corporate Oligarchy: The corporate-financier interests that dominate Western civilization did not spring up overnight. It is through generations of patronage that we the people have granted these corporate-financier interests the unwarranted influence they now enjoy. And today, each day, we collectively turn in our paychecks to the global "company store," providing the summation of our toil as fuel for this oligarchy's perpetuation.



By boycotting the goods, services, and institutions of this oligarchy, we steal the fire out from under the proverbial cauldron - the very source of the current paradigm's power. While it is impractical to commit overnight to a full-spectrum boycott, we can begin immediately by entirely boycotting corporations like Coca-Cola and Pepsi, Kraft, Unilever and others by simply supporting local businesses and our local farmers market. This "voting with one's wallet" is a form of democracy that unlike elections, will undoubtedly shift the balance of power toward a system more representative of the people's interests.



By creating self-reliant communities independent of the machinations of corporate-financier interests, we provide ourselves with the greatest form of insurance against instability and uncertainty - an insurance policy placed solely in our own hands.



3. Get Educated, Get Organized: Leveraging technology is a necessary step in eliminating dependency on other corporate-financier interests - such as big oil, big defense, big-agri, big-pharma, and the telecom monopolies. To leverage technology, people at a grassroots level must get organized, educate themselves, and collaborate to create local business models and solutions to systematically replace large multinational holdings.



A recent interview by geopolitical analyst Eric Draitser with Seth Rutledge, featured on Stop Imperialism, explored the possibilities of developing local broadband networks. Community spaces dedicated to technological education, collaboration, and resource pooling are also an emerging phenomenon. Called "maker spaces" or sometimes "hacker spaces," these grassroots initiatives serve as incubators for innovative, local small businesses.



Technology will eventually provide solutions to problems generally "solved" by government subsidies. Medicare, for instance, is a government subsidy to address the expenses and subsequent inaccessibility of medical care. Medical care, in turn, is expensive because the means to provide it are scarce. The supply of doctors, hospitals, treatments, biomedical technology, and many other aspects of modern health infrastructure are vastly outnumbered by demand.



Until technology can better balance this equation, people must organize to either defend as temporary stopgap measures, national programs that provide care to those who can't afford it, or create local alternatives. To cut programs people depend on for the sake of saving an economy plundered by special interests, to specifically preserve these same special interests is unconscionable.











An organized political front that demands the preservation/reformation of these programs as well as investment in the development of permanent technological solutions, needs not pass the hat around to the working or even productive entrepreneurial classes of society, but rather level taxes on parasitic financial speculation and market manipulation - thus solving two problems in a single stroke. Geopolitical analyst and historian Dr. Webster Tarpley has already enumerated such an approach in his 5 point plan for international economic recovery (.pdf) by specifically calling for resistance to austerity and a 1% Wall Street tax.



Conclusion



Undoubtedly people realize something is wrong, and that something needs to be done. To ensure that the corporate-financier elite remain in perpetual power, a myriad of false solutions have been contrived or created out of co-opted movements, to indefinitely steer people away from influencing the current balance of power and achieving true self-determination.



By recognizing this and seizing the reins of our own destiny, we can and must change the current balance of power. In the process of doing so, we must recognize and resist attempts to derail and distract us by way of the incessant political minutia now on full display during the 2012 US Presidential Election. For every problem faced by society, there is a permanent, technological solution. For hunger there was agriculture, for lack of shelter, there was architecture, and no matter how daunting today's problems may seem, there lies similar solutions.



We must realize that by endeavoring to solve these problems, we jeopardize monopolies as insidious as they are monolithic, constructed to exploit such problems. If we fail to recognize and undermine these interests through pragmatic activism, we will be resigned to whatever fate these special interests determine for us, no matter how cleverly they sell us this fate as one of our own choosing.



This article was originally published at LandDestroyer

Amnesty International is US State Department Propaganda

Amnesty International is US State Department Propaganda




Amnesty run by US State Department representatives, funded by convicted financial criminals, and threatens real human rights advocacy worldwide.



By Tony Cartalucci









Image: From Amnesty International USA's website, "Free Pussy Riot." "Help Amnesty International send a truckload of balaclavas to Putin." This childish stunt smacks of US State Department-funded Gene Sharp antics - and meshes directly with the US State Department's goal of undermining the Russian government via its troupe of US-funded "opposition activists" including "Pussy Riot." That Amnesty is supporting the US State Department's agenda should be no surprise, it is run literally by the US State Department's Deputy Assistant Secretary for International Organizations, Suzanne Nossel.



....



August 22, 2012 - Mistakenly considered by many as the final word on human rights worldwide, it might surprise people to know that Amnesty International is in fact one of the greatest obstacles to real human rights advocacy on Earth. In its most recent 2012 annual report (page 4, .pdf), Amnesty reiterates one of the biggest lies it routinely tells:





"Amnesty International is funded mainly by its membership and public donations. No funds are sought or accepted from governments for investigating and campaigning against human rights abuses. Amnesty International is independent of any government, political ideology, economic interest or religion."



This is categorically false. Amnesty international is indeed funded and run by not only governments, but also immense corporate-financier interests, and is not only absolutely entwined with political ideology and economic interests, it is an essential tool used for perpetuating just such interests.



Amnesty International's Funding



Finding financial information on Amnesty International's website is made purposefully difficult - specifically to protect the myth that the organization is "independent." Like any organized criminal operation, Amnesty separates compromising financial ties through a series of legal maneuvers and shell organizations. Upon Amnesty's website it states:





"The work carried out through Amnesty International's International Secretariat is organised into two legal entities, in compliance with United Kingdom law. These are Amnesty International Limited ("AIL") and Amnesty International Charity Limited ("AICL"). Amnesty International Limited undertakes charitable activities on behalf of Amnesty International Charity Limited, a registered charity."



And it is there, at Amnesty International Limited, where ties to both governments and corporate-financier interests are kept. On page 11 of Amnesty International Limited's 2011 Report and Financial Statement (.pdf) it states (emphasis added):





"The Directors are pleased to acknowledge the support of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Oak Foundation, Open Society Georgia Foundation, the Vanguard Charitable Endowment Programme, Mauro Tunes and American Jewish World Service. The UK Department for International Development (Governance and Transparency Fund) continued to fund a four year human rights education project in Africa. The European Commission (EuropeAid) generously awarded a multi-year grant towards Amnesty International’s human rights education work in Europe."



Clearly then, Amnesty does take money from both governments and corporate-financier interests, one of the most notorious of which, Open Society, is headed by convicted financial criminal George Soros. In March, 2012, it was reported that a Bloomberg's report, "Soros Loses Case Against French Insider-Trading Conviction," indicated that an appeal based on a "human rights" violation against Wall Street speculator George Soros had been rejected by the "European Court of Human Rights."



Soros, whose Open Society also funds Human Rights Watch and a myriad of other "human rights" advocates, literally attempted to use the West's human rights racket to defend himself against charges of financial fraud in perhaps the most transparent illustration of just how this racket operates.



Soros, who was convicted and fined for insider trading in 2002 regarding French bank Société Générale shares he bought in 1988, has built an empire out of obfuscating global criminal activity with the cause of "human rights." His support, as well as that of the British and European governments, of Amnesty International aims solely at expanding this obfuscating.



Amnesty International's Leadership



Amnesty's leadership is also telling of its true agenda. Suzanne Nossel, Executive Director of Amnesty International USA, for instance was drawn directly from the US State Department - again, utterly contradicting Amnesty's claims of being "independent" of governments and corporate interests. Nossel continued promoting US foreign policy, but simply behind a podium with a new logo, Amnesty International's logo, attached to it. Amnesty International's website specifically mentions Nossel's role behind US State Department-backed UN resolutions regarding Iran, Syria, Libya, and Cote d'Ivoire.











Image: Same lies, different podium. Suzanne Nossel previously of the US State Department, is now executive director of Amnesty International USA. Her primary function of dressing up aspirations of corporate-financier global hegemony as "human rights advocacy" has not changed.

....





It has been documented at great length how these issues revolve around a decades long plan devised by corporate-financier interests to divide, destroy and despoil these nations who are seen as obstacles to US global hegemony. In the case of Syria specifically, it was revealed that the current "human rights" catastrophe stems back to a malicious 2007 conspiracy documented by "New Yorker" journalist Seymour Hersh, between the US, Israel, and Saudi Arabia which sought to purposefully fund, arm, and deploy sectarian extremists to undermine and overthrow the Syrian government - this knowing full well the human tragedy that would unfold.



Nossel's "contributions" then are simply to dress up naked military aggression and the pursuit of global corporate-financier hegemony with the pretense of "human rights" advocacy.



A glance at AmnestyUSA.org reveals that each and every front the US State Department is currently working on and has prioritized is also coincidentally prioritized by Amnesty International. This includes rallies and campaigns to support US State Department-funded Russian opposition groups (currently fixated on "Pussy Riot"), undermining the Syrian government, toppling the government of Belarus, and supporting the Wall Street-London created Aung San Suu Kyi of Myanmar (still called by its British Imperial nomenclature of "Burma" by Suu Kyi herself).



Amnesty International Betrays Real Human Rights Advocacy



Amnesty does indeed cover issues that are critical of US foreign policy, toward the bottom of their websites and at the back of their reports. Likewise, the corporate-media selectively reports issues that coincide with their interests while other issues are either under-reported or not reported at all. And it is precisely because Amnesty covers all issues, but selectively emphasizes those that are conducive to the interests of immense corporate-financiers that makes Amnesty one of the greatest impediments to genuine human rights advocacy on Earth.











Images: Manufacturing Dissent. "Free Pussy Riot" (above). Ironically, FIDH is directly funded by the US State Department via the Neo-Con lined US National Endowment for Democracy (NED) as well as George Soros' Open Society. "Russia: Stop Arms Transfer to Syria!" (below). If the US State Department wants it, be sure that US State Department-run Amnesty International will stage a demonstration for it - and regardless of size or legitimacy of the demonstration, expect the corporate-media to make it headline news.



....



Ordinary people are given the false impression that "someone is watching out" for human rights abuses, when in reality, all Amnesty and other organizations like it are doing, is managing public perception selectively of global human rights abuses, fabricating and/or manipulating many cases specifically to suit the agenda of large corporate-financier interests. This can be seen when entire reports out of Amnesty or Human Rights Watch consist solely of "witness reports" compiled from accounts of US-backed opposition groups.



In the rare instance that a report includes references to actual photographic, video, or documented evidence, such as Human Rights Watch's 2011 "Descent into Chaos" (.pdf) report, deceptive language is intentionally included along with throwaway passages to enable selective reporting and spinning by not only the Western corporate media, but by a myriad of faux-NGOs funded and run by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch's sponsors and affiliates. The Descent into Chaos report, regarding Thailand, was promply and amply spun and manipulated by US State Department-funded faux-NGO and "rights advocate" Prachatai.



When people erroneously believe that credible organizations are handling "rights advocacy" they will not only become complacent, they will become negligent of their own responsibilities to objectively examine potential abuses and speak out against them. Wall Street and London's corporate-financier interests have filled a void - that should be occupied by their greatest opponents - instead with a large advocacy racket of their own creation. Not only are they given a free pass to abuse human rights globally, they've actually used their controlled opposition to attack their opponents.



It is clear that Amnesty International is by no means an "advocate" of human rights, but rather an affront to human rights advocacy. It goes without saying that it should be boycotted out of existence and at the very least, identified as illegitimate and fraudulent - from its funding to its compromised leadership.



Additionally, we the people must tackle real violations of each others rights at the grassroots - because it is absolute folly to believe that global spanning organizations, funded by corporate-financiers, echoing the agenda of governments driven by special interests has our best interests and rights in mind.

Interfaith Dialogue in South Korea

By the Revd Dr Guen Seok Yang (Anglican Church of Korea)



1. General Context



Colonialism, cold war confrontation and developmentalist despotism were the three stages of last century of Korean history. Most Korean political, economic, cultural and religious conflicts are very much in debt to those historical experiences. For the majority of responsible thinkers in Korea, the crucial concern for their intellectual endeavour is how to overcome the heritages descended from those three historical experiences of perversion. Even in the overwhelming advance of globalisation, such a historical recognition is neither abandoned nor outdated by them. Rather, I believe, it is continued to be refined as a more elaborate idea, particularly within the Korean peoples' struggle against the ruthless appetite of neo-liberal capitalist globalisation.



The Christian history, particularly protestant history of Korea, has followed the same trajectory of the rather sad history of transaction with Western modernism. Under the colonialist formation of power relations, in which unequal communications were legitimised and the denial of Koreans interpretative potentials was socio-culturally generalised the protestant Christian mission was started. Because of the already formed colonial relations, Christianity could avoid an excessive burden to be a prime suspect of anti-Korean culture, and Christianity could compete and collaborate with Japanese colonialism under the common recognition of the inevitability of the unequal colonial power relationship with Koreans. The cold war in Korea has left not only several millions of victims but also deep scars of division. The atrocious antagonism between ideologies, and between religion and ideology, was the experience of the cold war confrontation. Through the war, Christian churches had experienced the oppression and antagonism by the communist ideology of North Korea. It was time for them to arm with anti-communist spirit. The exclusive and antagonistic attitude against the ideologies, cultures and religions became a socio-cultural character of the divided country. Exclusivism and dogmatism were the principles of cold war confrontation, not only for religions but also for political ideologies. Under the development of military dictatorship, this religious and ideological dogmatism was combined with the capitalist spirit of competition. It is not too excessive to say that this deliberate combination of religious ideological dogmatism and the capitalist spirit of competition is the main reason for the rapid economic and religious growth in Korea.



With the beginning of more democratised civil government and the end of the cold war system of the world in the 1990s, Korean society is experiencing unexpected confusions. For the development of democratic society and for the reunion of a divided country, Korean society demands a more tolerant and dialogical attitude of all segments of society. Korean society is waiting for the emergence of the new vision for humanity and community. I believe Korean peoples are expecting religions including Christianity to respond and to co-operate with others for the new vision of humanity and community. However, Korean religions including Christianity are not very ready to commit themselves to dialogue with others, particularly just to satisfy the peoples' expectation.



The overcoming of negative heritages of colonialism, cold war, and military dictatorship, and the participation to the constructive and co-operative dialogue with the other religions and ideologies, are both the basic contexts of Korean inter faith dialogue and for a Christian theology of religions.



2. The Social Practices of Inter Religious Co-opertion



In spite of the history of conflict and division, there have been experiences of inter-religious co-operation for social and national issues. The most foundational experience of inter-religious co-operation for national issues was the "March 1st movement", in which all the Korean religions including Christianity had co-operated in the independent movement against Japanese colonialism in 1919. Until now, this experience has become the foundational reason for why all the religions should co-operate with each other on national issues.



Although the reason is not very clear, the Anglican Church of Korea has been known as a church truly respecting Korean traditional culture. Perhaps it maybe the distinctive church building styles following Korean tradition. But as on reflection, the most important Anglican missionary experience for the inter-religious co-operation was the 1960's mission for coal miners. According to Bishop John Daily's diary, this mission was started very accidentally. One day, he was searching for missing students in mine villages. They were students who were arrested and sent to the mines by military government. As he was going to leave one village student camp failing to find his missing students, one of those students in the camp, asked the bishop to pray for them. Most of the students were not Christians. The bishop's translator, he was also a Buddhist, translated their request. When the bishop hesitated ho to do so, the Buddhist translator sincerely asked him to pray for them. Bishop John Daily remembered the experience as on eof the most exciting moments of his mission in Korea. Several months later, he started his mission for coal miners in that place. This mission has been known as the beginning of Korean industrial mission of the Christian church. Furthermore, he wanted to build an octagonal hall as a church building at the village. He planned to provide the eight different corners of the octagonal hall to different Christian denominations and other religions including Buddhism. Although his dream was not achieved, his experience has become a very important heritage of Anglican ecumenical and inter-religious co-operation.



Recently, the inter-religious co-operation for social issues and each of the religion's intended efforts to so-operate with other religions is clearly expanding. Many Buddhist temples are pronouncing congratulatory messages at Christmas. Some Christian churches, particularly Roman Catholic Churches, are celebrating the birth of the Buddha with Buddhists. But the most exciting experience, which will be remembered for a long time, was the 'three steps and one bow' protest journey that was organised very spontaneously in order to stop the national government's land reclamation project. This journey led by Buddhist and Christian leaders continued for sixty-five days. Finally, it succeeded in gainig the co-operation of most of the religions in Korea, and temporally achieved its goal of stopping the land reclamation project. With the success of this very religious protest journey for an environmental issue, the inter-religious co-operation for social issues becomes a much more widely and easily accepted agenda for Christian churches in Korea. We can expect that this developing and widening co-operation among religions in Korea will be advanced into a deep spiritual and theological dialogue.



3. Historical Experience of Inter Faith Dialogue



The history of inter faith dialogue in academic groups has to go back to the first encounter between 18th century Korean Confucian scholars and Christian literature, which was published as the result of 17th to 18th century Jesuit mission in China. This Christian literature includes the Chinese translation of Christian texts and Christian or non-Christian Chinese scholars' texts about Christianity. Through this encounter, a very spontaneous Confucian-Christian community has been established without any direct intervention from Roman Catholic missionaries in China. Although this pre-colonial and very voluntary acceptance of Christianity by Koreans has not been seriously reflected by official Roman Catholic historians or even by Korean scholars of mission studies, I believe this historical experience tells us many things about the present discussions about inter faith dialogue and Christian mission. Here I would like to talk about just one point. It is about what kind of process Confucian scholars had taken to understand Christianity. This small group of young Confucian scholars' main concern was to find a new way of self-discipline and governing of people (or community relationship), which are key themes of Confucianism. They had voluntarily read Christian texts. Their reading of Christian texts was not confined to intellectual and doctrinal understanding. They tried to practice Christian liturgical and spiritual teachings. They used to their own style of comparative method to read Confucian and Christian texts cross-scripturally as well as top practice the self-discipline methods of Confucianism an Christianity very cross-religiously. Through these readings in liturgical or spiritual practices, they wanted to carefully work out what changes were made in their mind and soul, and they wanted to find what kind of help the Christina teaching could give for the new way of self-discipline and community relationship. One interesting thing was that this experimental study had been carried out in the Buddhist temple by a group of sincere Confucian scholars. These Confucians' voluntary encounter with Christianity had given deep influences for the reformation of Confucianism and one of the results of the encounter was the voluntary formation of Christian community in Korea. However, Roman Catholic missionaries in China criticised the leaders of this community as sinners who profaned God and the church, furthermore, the Korean Confucian government suppressed them as heretics. I believe this pre-colonial experience of the encounter between Confucianism and Christianity tells us many things about today's issues, like '"What is the foundational motivation for inter faith dialogue?", "What kind of process has been taken in inter faith dialogue, particularly in relationship to various aspects of religious practices?", "What is Christian mission in the situation of inter faith dialogue?", "What is an equal and creative dialogical relationship among partners?".



Even after the beginning of protestant mission at the end of 19th century, this kind of comparative approach by Christian and non Christian Korean intellectuals has been continued. however, the present situation of inter faith dialogue, particularly after Christianity became one of the dominant religions in Korea, is not very easy. Rather, the Christian churches' narrow and triumphalistic attitude looks likely to suppress the sincere dialogue among religions.



4. The Present Disputes on Inter Faith Dialogue



In this final section, I would like to introduce the theological conflicts between church leaders and theologians involved in inter faith dialogue. In order to avoid too much theoretical discussion, I am explaining a discussion among church ministers, theologians and a Buddhist scholar, which was organised and publicised by one of the representative Korean theology journals, "Theological Thought". This dialogue shows us a development of the discussion of inter faith dialogue in Korea. As many Asian theologians know, Korean Christian churches except Roman Catholics were very antagonistic towards inter faith dialogue. Most Christian church leaders have regarded inter faith dialogue and pluralism as the most serious potential threat to Christianity. So, two eminent scholars from a Methodist Theological seminary had been expelled from their teaching position by Methodist church leaders. Some Presbyterian scholars has also been expelled or threatened with expulsion. But this situation is changing slightly since the middle of 1990s. With the development of the social experiences of inter-religious co-operation and public opinions' strong criticism of Christian exclusivism, the situation has advanced toward a more or less positive direction. The dialogue in the theological journal reflected such a changed situation.



In this dialogue, church ministers tried to put their emphasis on inter-religious co-operation for social issues rather then theological dialogue, and theologians did their best to persuade them of the need for theological dialogue. Here, what we have to look at is what kind of theological rhetoric and logic is used against intellectual and theological inter faith dialogue by church ministers. There is no change in their position that the inter faith dialogue, which is advocated by theologians, is paralysing the belief and the church membership of individual Christians as well as the mission and the very existence of Christian church. If I may summarise their assertions, in spite of the danger of over simplification, firstly, they consider that the inter faith dialogue promotes relativistic attitudes threatening the absoluteness of Christian truth. For them, all thoughts rejecting the absoluteness of Christian truth are anti-Christian. Secondly, they consider that Christians cannot devote themselves to mission without conviction about the absoluteness of Christian truth. Therefore, they assert that the pluralistic approach of inter faith dialogue is negating the inherited nature of the Christian church as a missionary community, and in the end it is destroying the foundation of the existence of the Christian church. Thirdly, they assert that theologians who are involved in inter faith dialogue are not in the position to decide the relationship among religions. Looking from their point of view, theologians' ideological and transcendental attitude pursue only what should be done without considering the living relationship with religions and religious individuals. Therefore, they ask theologians to reflect the living relationships instead of sticking to the ideological presuppositions. In this point, some of the contextual theologians support the church ministers' assertion. They also complain that inter faith dialogue in Korea is not very contextual, rather it is very western in its subjects and concerns. Fourthly, they assert that the problem of truth and the issue of co-operative practices for social issues have to be differentiated. Furthermore, they consider that co-operative inter-religious social practices have to precede theoretical and intellectual practices. Here, the church ministers advocate the reductive method of contextual theology, particularly of Minjung theology. Fifthly, they assert that the theologians do not have any concern for the development of the church and the concrete life of church members. They think theologians are people who judge the Christian church from outside the churches. They consider that is why theologians do not give any alternative suggestions about the issues that churches are facing in this secularised world of relativism. Although the assertions are expressed roughly and are rather church centred they clearly show the theological agendas that interfaith dialogue has to solve.

Corporate culture stunts and maims the young generation

Friends, as this forum is for thinkers I am reproducing one paragraph from an article published in TRUTHDIG, one written by Chris Hedges about the U.S.. It is beautifully written and encapsulates much of my own thinking which has featured in many of my posts.




The Perversion of Scholarship



“Corporate culture, which now dominates higher education, shares the predatory culture of the military. These cultures are about subsuming the self into the herd. They are about the acquiring of technical, vocational skills to serve the system. And with the increasing budget cuts, and more craven obsequiousness to corporate donors, it will only get worse. These forces of conformity are hostile to the humanities that teach students to question assumptions and structures, that prod them to seek a life of meaning and an ethical code that challenges the blind, utilitarian obedience to power and profit that corporations and the military instill. We will, I fear, continue to turn out the intellectually stunted and maimed, those who know school football records but no philosophy, drama, art, music, theology, literature or history. The goal of an education is not, in the end, to tell students what to think but to teach them how to think.”



The sentence which I believe has most import for today I have outlined in bold. Probably I would take ‘theology’ out of the list because surely it is irrelevant in 2012 (unless it is examined objectively and historically as evidence of how easily most humans can be conned). The saying that: ‘There’s a sucker born every minute’ is true in every respect!



‘Intellectually stunted and maimed!” Yes, folks, if you go to college or university and get only vocational training, it’s no wonder that you end up as cannon fodder for the Corporations and the Military and the Politicians.



If your mind has never been exposed to the great philosophers and their wise, profound thoughts about life and you’ve only been exposed to the Corporate Robber Barons and their miserable little deformed, grasping perspective on life then you are stunted for life.





And what is the effect if a student has nil exposure to psychology, sociology, and biology, etc, and the works of famous writers who weave amazing stories about humans and the bleak human condition and human cruelty and depravity and bravery and courage. You are handicapped for life!



And what about the importance of being educated to see the pros and cons of different political and economic systems, to examine them, to evaluate them, and to be taught how to change them when they fail to provide equality of income or representation or become misused by psychopaths and warmongers.



Surely each graduate should leave his place of learning with this basic knowledge otherwise he or she is not educated (able to question) but is an unthinking human robot who can be manipulated at will by the Oligarchs and Politicians and Shonks that infest our world.



Universities in Australia, the same as those elsewhere, are being turned into Corporate entities because of funding pressures. The rationale is: ‘You give us the graduates we want (who’ll do as they are told and make us a lot of money) and we’ll give you lots of BIG donations!’



But even worse, one top Australian University, Sydney, is in the process sacking staff and closing down courses so it can afford a swimming complex! WTF?



So, fellow thinkers, what do you think about the Hedges paragraph and my few elaborations. Is there truth there perchance? Are we educating a society full of morons, human robots, and sheeple? What will be the eventual result: a totalitarian government, BIG BROTHER, nuclear annihilation…?

Syrian war of lies and hypocrisy

Robert Fisk: Syrian war of lies and hypocrisy



The West's real target here is not Assad's brutal regime but his ally, Iran, and its nuclear weapons





Robert Fisk



Sunday, 29 July 2012

Has there ever been a Middle Eastern war of such hypocrisy? A war of such cowardice and such mean morality, of such false rhetoric and such public humiliation? I'm not talking about the physical victims of the Syrian tragedy. I'm referring to the utter lies and mendacity of our masters and our own public opinion – eastern as well as western – in response to the slaughter, a vicious pantomime more worthy of Swiftian satire than Tolstoy or Shakespeare.



While Qatar and Saudi Arabia arm and fund the rebels of Syria to overthrow Bashar al-Assad's Alawite/Shia-Baathist dictatorship, Washington mutters not a word of criticism against them. President Barack Obama and his Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, say they want a democracy in Syria. But Qatar is an autocracy and Saudi Arabia is among the most pernicious of caliphate-kingly-dictatorships in the Arab world. Rulers of both states inherit power from their families – just as Bashar has done – and Saudi Arabia is an ally of the Salafist-Wahabi rebels in Syria, just as it was the most fervent supporter of the medieval Taliban during Afghanistan's dark ages.



Indeed, 15 of the 19 hijacker-mass murderers of 11 September, 2001, came from Saudi Arabia – after which, of course, we bombed Afghanistan. The Saudis are repressing their own Shia minority just as they now wish to destroy the Alawite-Shia minority of Syria. And we believe Saudi Arabia wants to set up a democracy in Syria?



Then we have the Shia Hezbollah party/militia in Lebanon, right hand of Shia Iran and supporter of Bashar al-Assad's regime. For 30 years, Hezbollah has defended the oppressed Shias of southern Lebanon against Israeli aggression. They have presented themselves as the defenders of Palestinian rights in the West Bank and Gaza. But faced with the slow collapse of their ruthless ally in Syria, they have lost their tongue. Not a word have they uttered – nor their princely Sayed Hassan Nasrallah – about the rape and mass murder of Syrian civilians by Bashar's soldiers and "Shabiha" militia.



Then we have the heroes of America – La Clinton, the Defence Secretary Leon Panetta, and Obama himself. Clinton issues a "stern warning" to Assad. Panetta – the same man who repeated to the last US forces in Iraq that old lie about Saddam's connection to 9/11 – announces that things are "spiralling out of control" in Syria. They have been doing that for at least six months. Has he just realised? And then Obama told us last week that "given the regime's stockpile of nuclear weapons, we will continue to make it clear to Assad … that the world is watching". Now, was it not a County Cork newspaper called the Skibbereen Eagle, fearful of Russia's designs on China, which declared that it was "keeping an eye … on the Tsar of Russia"? Now it is Obama's turn to emphasise how little clout he has in the mighty conflicts of the world. How Bashar must be shaking in his boots.



But what US administration would really want to see Bashar's atrocious archives of torture opened to our gaze? Why, only a few years ago, the Bush administration was sending Muslims to Damascus for Bashar's torturers to tear their fingernails out for information, imprisoned at the US government's request in the very hell-hole which Syrian rebels blew to bits last week. Western embassies dutifully supplied the prisoners' tormentors with questions for the victims. Bashar, you see, was our baby.



Then there's that neighbouring country which owes us so much gratitude: Iraq. Last week, it suffered in one day 29 bombing attacks in 19 cities, killing 111 civilian and wounding another 235. The same day, Syria's bloodbath consumed about the same number of innocents. But Iraq was "down the page" from Syria, buried "below the fold", as we journalists say; because, of course, we gave freedom to Iraq, Jeffersonian democracy, etc, etc, didn't we? So this slaughter to the east of Syria didn't have quite the same impact, did it? Nothing we did in 2003 led to Iraq's suffering today. Right?



And talking of journalism, who in BBC World News decided that even the preparations for the Olympics should take precedence all last week over Syrian outrages? British newspapers and the BBC in Britain will naturally lead with the Olympics as a local story. But in a lamentable decision, the BBC – broadcasting "world" news to the world – also decided that the passage of the Olympic flame was more important than dying Syrian children, even when it has its own courageous reporter sending his despatches directly from Aleppo.



Then, of course, there's us, our dear liberal selves who are so quick to fill the streets of London in protest at the Israeli slaughter of Palestinians. Rightly so, of course. When our political leaders are happy to condemn Arabs for their savagery but too timid to utter a word of the mildest criticism when the Israeli army commits crimes against humanity – or watches its allies do it in Lebanon – ordinary people have to remind the world that they are not as timid as the politicians. But when the scorecard of death in Syria reaches 15,000 or 19,000 – perhaps 14 times as many fatalities as in Israel's savage 2008-2009 onslaught on Gaza – scarcely a single protester, save for Syrian expatriates abroad, walks the streets to condemn these crimes against humanity. Israel's crimes have not been on this scale since 1948. Rightly or wrongly, the message that goes out is simple: we demand justice and the right to life for Arabs if they are butchered by the West and its Israeli allies; but not when they are being butchered by their fellow Arabs.



And all the while, we forget the "big" truth. That this is an attempt to crush the Syrian dictatorship not because of our love for Syrians or our hatred of our former friend Bashar al-Assad, or because of our outrage at Russia, whose place in the pantheon of hypocrites is clear when we watch its reaction to all the little Stalingrads across Syria. No, this is all about Iran and our desire to crush the Islamic Republic and its infernal nuclear plans – if they exist – and has nothing to do with human rights or the right to life or the death of Syrian babies. Quelle horreur!

LIly-pad Strategy

Tomgram: David Vine, U.S. Empire of Bases Grows

By David Vine

Posted on July 15, 2012, Printed on July 17, 2012

http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175568/



It was January 15, 2004, and TomDispatch had only been in existence for a year when Chalmers Johnson, author of the prophetic book Blowback (published in 2000 and a bestseller after the 9/11 attacks), did a piece for this site entitled “America’s Empire of Bases.” He wrote then: “Due to government secrecy, our citizens are often ignorant of the fact that our garrisons encircle the planet. This vast network of American bases on every continent except Antarctica actually constitutes a new form of empire -- an empire of bases with its own geography not likely to be taught in any high school geography class. Without grasping the dimensions of this globe-girdling Baseworld, one can't begin to understand the size and nature of our imperial aspirations or the degree to which a new kind of militarism is undermining our constitutional order.”



It was a benchmark essay for TomDispatch and a theme -- the unprecedented way Washington was garrisoning the planet -- that Johnson would return to repeatedly and that others of us would take up. This mattered because, despite the crucial role that Washington's empire of bases played in the American way of war and its dreams of global dominance, bases were then, and remain today, a phenomenon largely ignored in the mainstream media.



In 2004, the Pentagon was, for instance, already building the first of its 505 bases, the biggest among them meant to be “enduring,” in Iraq -- American ziggurats, I called them at the time. Some of these were large enough to qualify as full-scale American towns, with PXs, fire departments, bus routes, the usual range of fast-food joints, internet cafes, and the like -- and yet it was the rare American reporter who saw a story of any sort in them, even when visiting one of them. The same was true in Afghanistan, where the U.S. was building (and is still upgrading) 400 or more bases. No one even bothered to try to count them up until Nick Turse did so in February 2010 for this site. (Ann Jones took TomDispatch readers onto one of them in August of that same year.)



In his books and at TomDispatch, Johnson put significant effort into trying to come up with a number for the bases the Pentagon garrisoned outside the United States. In January 2011, Turse returned to that task and found that number to be well over 1,100. Again, it’s not a figure you normally see reported in the mainstream. In March 2010, John Feffer reminded TD readers of just how far the Pentagon would go to hang onto a single major base, among so many, on the Japanese island of Okinawa.



One of the last essays Chalmers Johnson published at this site before his death in 2010 was entitled “Dismantling the Empire” and it was concerned with just how the U.S. could downsize its global mission and end its empire of bases. David Vine, anthropologist and author of Island of Shame: The Secret History of the U.S. Military Base on Diego Garcia, has been touring American bases for the past three years. In a major survey of the changing shape of our Baseworld, he suggests that unfortunately it isn’t shrinking at all, and that “dismantling” isn’t yet on the American horizon. This means that -- until the mainstream finally stumbles upon the import of this story -- TomDispatch has little choice but to stay on the bases beat for the foreseeable future. (To catch Timothy MacBain's latest Tomcast audio interview in which Vine discusses his experiences with the Pentagon’s empire of bases, click here or download it to your iPod here.) Tom



The Lily-Pad Strategy

How the Pentagon Is Quietly Transforming Its Overseas Base Empire and Creating a Dangerous New Way of War

By David Vine



The first thing I saw last month when I walked into the belly of the dark grey C-17 Air Force cargo plane was a void -- something missing. A missing left arm, to be exact, severed at the shoulder, temporarily patched and held together. Thick, pale flesh, flecked with bright red at the edges. It looked like meat sliced open. The face and what remained of the rest of the man were obscured by blankets, an American flag quilt, and a jumble of tubes and tape, wires, drip bags, and medical monitors.



That man and two other critically wounded soldiers -- one with two stumps where legs had been, the other missing a leg below the thigh -- were intubated, unconscious, and lying on stretchers hooked to the walls of the plane that had just landed at Ramstein Air Base in Germany. A tattoo on the soldier’s remaining arm read, “DEATH BEFORE DISHONOR.”







I asked a member of the Air Force medical team about the casualties they see like these. Many, as with this flight, were coming from Afghanistan, he told me. “A lot from the Horn of Africa,” he added. “You don’t really hear about that in the media.”



“Where in Africa?” I asked. He said he didn’t know exactly, but generally from the Horn, often with critical injuries. “A lot out of Djibouti,” he added, referring to Camp Lemonnier, the main U.S. military base in Africa, but from “elsewhere” in the region, too.



Since the “Black Hawk Down” deaths in Somalia almost 20 years ago, we’ve heard little, if anything, about American military casualties in Africa (other than a strange report last week about three special operations commandos killed, along with three women identified by U.S. military sources as “Moroccan prostitutes,” in a mysterious car accident in Mali). The growing number of patients arriving at Ramstein from Africa pulls back a curtain on a significant transformation in twenty-first-century U.S. military strategy.



These casualties are likely to be the vanguard of growing numbers of wounded troops coming from places far removed from Afghanistan or Iraq. They reflect the increased use of relatively small bases like Camp Lemonnier, which military planners see as a model for future U.S. bases “scattered,” as one academic explains, “across regions in which the United States has previously not maintained a military presence.”



Disappearing are the days when Ramstein was the signature U.S. base, an American-town-sized behemoth filled with thousands or tens of thousands of Americans, PXs, Pizza Huts, and other amenities of home. But don’t for a second think that the Pentagon is packing up, downsizing its global mission, and heading home. In fact, based on developments in recent years, the opposite may be true. While the collection of Cold War-era giant bases around the world is shrinking, the global infrastructure of bases overseas has exploded in size and scope.



Unknown to most Americans, Washington’s garrisoning of the planet is on the rise, thanks to a new generation of bases the military calls “lily pads” (as in a frog jumping across a pond toward its prey). These are small, secretive, inaccessible facilities with limited numbers of troops, spartan amenities, and prepositioned weaponry and supplies.



Around the world, from Djibouti to the jungles of Honduras, the deserts of Mauritania to Australia’s tiny Cocos Islands, the Pentagon has been pursuing as many lily pads as it can, in as many countries as it can, as fast as it can. Although statistics are hard to assemble, given the often-secretive nature of such bases, the Pentagon has probably built upwards of 50 lily pads and other small bases since around 2000, while exploring the construction of dozens more.



As Mark Gillem, author of America Town: Building the Outposts of Empire, explains, “avoidance” of local populations, publicity, and potential opposition is the new aim. “To project its power,” he says, the United States wants “secluded and self-contained outposts strategically located” around the world. According to some of the strategy’s strongest proponents at the American Enterprise Institute, the goal should be “to create a worldwide network of frontier forts,” with the U.S. military “the ‘global cavalry’ of the twenty-first century.”



Such lily-pad bases have become a critical part of an evolving Washington military strategy aimed at maintaining U.S. global dominance by doing far more with less in an increasingly competitive, ever more multi-polar world. Central as it’s becoming to the long-term U.S. stance, this global-basing reset policy has, remarkably enough, received almost no public attention, nor significant Congressional oversight. Meanwhile, as the arrival of the first casualties from Africa shows, the U.S. military is getting involved in new areas of the world and new conflicts, with potentially disastrous consequences.



Transforming the Base Empire



You might think that the U.S. military is in the process of shrinking, rather than expanding, its little noticed but enormous collection of bases abroad. After all, it was forced to close the full panoply of 505 bases, mega to micro, that it built in Iraq, and it's now beginning the process of drawing down forces in Afghanistan. In Europe, the Pentagon is continuing to close its massive bases in Germany and will soon remove two combat brigades from that country. Global troop numbers are set to shrink by around 100,000.



Yet Washington still easily maintains the largest collection of foreign bases in world history: more than 1,000 military installations outside the 50 states and Washington, DC. They include everything from decades-old bases in Germany and Japan to brand-new drone bases in Ethiopia and the Seychelles islands in the Indian Ocean and even resorts for military vacationers in Italy and South Korea.



In Afghanistan, the U.S.-led international force still occupies more than 450 bases. In total, the U.S. military has some form of troop presence in approximately 150 foreign countries, not to mention 11 aircraft carrier task forces -- essentially floating bases -- and a significant, and growing, military presence in space. The United States currently spends an estimated $250 billion annually maintaining bases and troops overseas.



Some bases, like Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, date to the late nineteenth century. Most were built or occupied during or just after World War II on every continent, including Antarctica. Although the U.S. military vacated around 60% of its foreign bases following the Soviet Union’s collapse, the Cold War base infrastructure remained relatively intact, with 60,000 American troops remaining in Germany alone, despite the absence of a superpower adversary.



However, in the early months of 2001, even before the attacks of 9/11, the Bush administration launched a major global realignment of bases and troops that’s continuing today with Obama’s “Asia pivot.” Bush’s original plan was to close more than one-third of the nation’s overseas bases and shift troops east and south, closer to predicted conflict zones in the Middle East, Asia, Africa, and Latin America. The Pentagon began to focus on creating smaller and more flexible “forward operating bases” and even smaller “cooperative security locations” or “lily pads.” Major troop concentrations were to be restricted to a reduced number of “main operating bases” (MOBs) -- like Ramstein, Guam in the Pacific, and Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean -- which were to be expanded.



Despite the rhetoric of consolidation and closure that went with this plan, in the post-9/11 era the Pentagon has actually been expanding its base infrastructure dramatically, including dozens of major bases in every Persian Gulf country save Iran, and in several Central Asian countries critical to the war in Afghanistan.



Hitting the Base Reset Button



Obama’s recently announced “Asia pivot” signals that East Asia will be at the center of the explosion of lily-pad bases and related developments. Already in Australia, U.S. marines are settling into a shared base in Darwin. Elsewhere, the Pentagon is pursuing plans for a drone and surveillance base in Australia’s Cocos Islands and deployments to Brisbane and Perth. In Thailand, the Pentagon has negotiated rights for new Navy port visits and a “disaster-relief hub” at U-Tapao.



In the Philippines, whose government evicted the U.S. from the massive Clark Air Base and Subic Bay Naval Base in the early 1990s, as many as 600 special forces troops have quietly been operating in the country’s south since January 2002. Last month, the two governments reached an agreement on the future U.S. use of Clark and Subic, as well as other repair and supply hubs from the Vietnam War era. In a sign of changing times, U.S. officials even signed a 2011 defense agreement with former enemy Vietnam and have begun negotiations over the Navy’s increased use of Vietnamese ports.



Elsewhere in Asia, the Pentagon has rebuilt a runway on tiny Tinian island near Guam, and it’s considering future bases in Indonesia, Malaysia, and Brunei, while pushing stronger military ties with India. Every year in the region, the military conducts around 170 military exercises and 250 port visits. On South Korea’s Jeju island, the Korean military is building a base that will be part of the U.S. missile defense system and to which U.S. forces will have regular access.



“We just can’t be in one place to do what we’ve got to do,” Pacific Command commander Admiral Samuel Locklear III has said. For military planners, “what we’ve got to do” is clearly defined as isolating and (in the terminology of the Cold War) “containing” the new power in the region, China. This evidently means “peppering” new bases throughout the region, adding to the more than 200 U.S. bases that have encircled China for decades in Japan, South Korea, Guam, and Hawaii.



And Asia is just the beginning. In Africa, the Pentagon has quietly created “about a dozen air bases” for drones and surveillance since 2007. In addition to Camp Lemonnier, we know that the military has created or will soon create installations in Burkina Faso, Burundi, the Central African Republic, Ethiopia, Kenya, Mauritania, São Tomé and Príncipe, Senegal, Seychelles, South Sudan, and Uganda. The Pentagon has also investigated building bases in Algeria, Gabon, Ghana, Mali, and Nigeria, among other places.



Next year, a brigade-sized force of 3,000 troops, and “likely more,” will arrive for exercises and training missions across the continent. In the nearby Persian Gulf, the Navy is developing an “afloat forward-staging base,” or “mothership,” to serve as a sea-borne “lily pad” for helicopters and patrol craft, and has been involved in a massive build-up of forces in the region.



In Latin America, following the military's eviction from Panama in 1999 and Ecuador in 2009, the Pentagon has created or upgraded new bases in Aruba and Curaçao, Chile, Colombia, El Salvador, and Peru. Elsewhere, the Pentagon has funded the creation of military and police bases capable of hosting U.S. forces in Belize, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama, Costa Rica, and even Ecuador. In 2008, the Navy reactivated its Fourth Fleet, inactive since 1950, to patrol the region. The military may want a base in Brazil and unsuccessfully tried to create bases, ostensibly for humanitarian and emergency relief, in Paraguay and Argentina.



Finally, in Europe, after arriving in the Balkans during 1990’s interventions, U.S. bases have moved eastward into some of the former Eastern Bloc states of the Soviet empire. The Pentagon is now developing installations capable of supporting rotating, brigade-sized deployments in Romania and Bulgaria, and a missile defense base and aviation facilities in Poland. Previously, the Bush administration maintained two CIA black sites (secret prisons) in Lithuania and another in Poland. Citizens of the Czech Republic rejected a planned radar base for the Pentagon’s still unproven missile defense system, and now Romania will host ground-based missiles.



A New American Way of War



A lily pad on one of the Gulf of Guinea islands of S­ão Tomé and Príncipe, off the oil-rich west coast of Africa, helps explain what’s going on. A U.S. official has described the base as “another Diego Garcia,” referring to the Indian Ocean base that’s helped ensure decades of U.S. domination over Middle Eastern energy supplies. Without the freedom to create new large bases in Africa, the Pentagon is using S­ão Tomé and a growing collection of other lily pads on the continent in an attempt to control another crucial oil-rich region.



Far beyond West Africa, the nineteenth century “Great Game” competition for Central Asia has returned with a passion -- and this time gone global. It’s spreading to resource-rich lands in Africa, Asia, and South America, as the United States, China, Russia, and members of the European Union find themselves locked in an increasingly intense competition for economic and geopolitical supremacy.



While Beijing, in particular, has pursued this competition in a largely economic fashion, dotting the globe with strategic investments, Washington has focused relentlessly on military might as its global trump card, dotting the planet with new bases and other forms of military power. “Forget full-scale invasions and large-footprint occupations on the Eurasian mainland,” Nick Turse has written of this new twenty-first century military strategy. “Instead, think: special operations forces... proxy armies... the militarization of spying and intelligence... drone aircraft... cyber-attacks, and joint Pentagon operations with increasingly militarized ‘civilian’ government agencies.”



Add to this unparalleled long-range air and naval power; arms sales besting any nation on Earth; humanitarian and disaster relief missions that clearly serve military intelligence, patrol, and “hearts and minds” functions; the rotational deployment of regular U.S. forces globally; port visits and an expanding array of joint military exercises and training missions that give the U.S. military de facto “presence” worldwide and help turn foreign militaries into proxy forces.



And lots and lots of lily-pad bases.



Military planners see a future of endless small-scale interventions in which a large, geographically dispersed collection of bases will always be primed for instant operational access. With bases in as many places as possible, military planners want to be able to turn to another conveniently close country if the United States is ever prevented from using a base, as it was by Turkey prior to the invasion of Iraq. In other words, Pentagon officials dream of nearly limitless flexibility, the ability to react with remarkable rapidity to developments anywhere on Earth, and thus, something approaching total military control over the planet.



Beyond their military utility, the lily pads and other forms of power projection are also political and economic tools used to build and maintain alliances and provide privileged U.S. access to overseas markets, resources, and investment opportunities. Washington is planning to use lily-pad bases and other military projects to bind countries in Eastern Europe, Africa, Asia, and Latin America as closely as possible to the U.S. military -- and so to continued U.S. political-economic hegemony. In short, American officials are hoping military might will entrench their influence and keep as many countries as possible within an American orbit at a time when some are asserting their independence ever more forcefully or gravitating toward China and other rising powers.



Those Dangerous Lily Pads





While relying on smaller bases may sound smarter and more cost effective than maintaining huge bases that have often caused anger in places like Okinawa and South Korea, lily pads threaten U.S. and global security in several ways:



First, the “lily pad” language can be misleading, since by design or otherwise, such installations are capable of quickly growing into bloated behemoths.



Second, despite the rhetoric about spreading democracy that still lingers in Washington, building more lily pads actually guarantees collaboration with an increasing number of despotic, corrupt, and murderous regimes.



Third, there is a well-documented pattern of damage that military facilities of various sizes inflict on local communities. Although lily pads seem to promise insulation from local opposition, over time even small bases have often led to anger and protest movements.



Finally, a proliferation of lily pads means the creeping militarization of large swaths of the globe. Like real lily pads -- which are actually aquatic weeds -- bases have a way of growing and reproducing uncontrollably. Indeed, bases tend to beget bases, creating “base races” with other nations, heightening military tensions, and discouraging diplomatic solutions to conflicts. After all, how would the United States respond if China, Russia, or Iran were to build even a single lily-pad base of its own in Mexico or the Caribbean?



For China and Russia in particular, ever more U.S. bases near their borders threaten to set off new cold wars. Most troublingly, the creation of new bases to protect against an alleged future Chinese military threat may prove to be a self-fulfilling prophecy: such bases in Asia are likely to create the threat they are supposedly designed to protect against, making a catastrophic war with China more, not less, likely.



Encouragingly, however, overseas bases have recently begun to generate critical scrutiny across the political spectrum from Republican Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison and Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul to Democratic Senator Jon Tester and New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof. With everyone looking for ways to trim the deficit, closing overseas bases offers easy savings. Indeed, increasingly influential types are recognizing that the country simply can’t afford more than 1,000 bases abroad.



Great Britain, like empires before it, had to close most of its remaining foreign bases in the midst of an economic crisis in the 1960s and 1970s. The United States is undoubtedly headed in that direction sooner or later. The only question is whether the country will give up its bases and downsize its global mission by choice, or if it will follow Britain’s path as a fading power forced to give up its bases from a position of weakness.



Of course, the consequences of not choosing another path extend beyond economics. If the proliferation of lily pads, special operations forces, and drone wars continues, the United States is likely to be drawn into new conflicts and new wars, generating unknown forms of blowback, and untold death and destruction. In that case, we’d better prepare for a lot more incoming flights -- from the Horn of Africa to Honduras -- carrying not just amputees but caskets.



David Vine is assistant professor of anthropology at American University, in Washington, DC. He is the author of Island of Shame: The Secret History of the U.S. Military Base on Diego Garcia (Princeton University Press, 2009). He has written for the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Guardian, and Mother Jones, among other places. He is currently completing a book about the more than 1,000 U.S. military bases located outside the United States. To listen to Timothy MacBain's latest Tomcast audio interview in which Vine discusses his experiences with the Pentagon’s empire of bases, click here or download it to your iPod here.



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Copyright 2012 David Vine







© 2012 TomDispatch. All rights reserved.

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