home / subscribe / donate / tower / books / archives / search / links / feedback / events / faq
Is it the guy who asks you after the meeting about how the antiwar movement needs to get "serious" and asks you lots of questions about terrorism and "fighting back"? Jennifer Van Bergen reports, first-hand. Part 2 of our series on what really happened on 9/11/2001: the physics of collapse, and how not to make a "pancake" by Manuel Garcia, PLUS Engineer Pierre Sprey on why "controlled demolition" theories are off target. What you just missed, but can still get, in our last newsletter: Paul Craig Roberts on the Collapse of America. CounterPunch Online is read by millions of viewers each month! But remember, we are funded solely by the subscribers to the print edition of CounterPunch. Please support this website by buying a subscription to our newsletter, which contains fresh material you won't find anywhere else, or by making a donation towards the cost of this online edition. Remember contributions are tax-deductible. Click here to make a donation. If you find our site useful please: Subscribe Now! |
Today's Stories October 20 / 22, 2006 Gary Leupp Christopher
Brauchli Winslow Wheeler Michael Donnelly Susie Day Lucinda Marshall
October 19, 2006 Elaine Cassel Col. Dan Smith Manuel Garcia, Jr. Josh Gryniewicz Amira Hass Eric Holt-Gimenez Jesse Hagopian Sam Husseini John Weisheit CP News Service Website of
the Day Art Gallery
of the Day
October 18, 2006 Joshua Frank Dr. Curran
Warf, MD Saul Landau Tom Barry Bruce Jackson Dave Lindorff Frederico Fuentes Michael Simmons Daryll E. Ray Kate Doyle Website of
the Day
Michael Neumann Manuel Garcia,
Jr. Stephen S.
Pearcy Sharon Smith Al Krebs David Underhill Daniel Wolff James Brooks Website of the Day
October 16, 2006 Gary Leupp Patrick Cockburn David Wilson Robert Fisk Robert Jensen Ingmar Lee
/ Krista Roessingh Mike Whitney Jake Whitney Sanho Tree Website of
the Day
Uri Avnery John Walsh Jean Bricmont Jennifer Van Bergen Ralph Nader Floyd Rudmin Mark Weisbrot Laura Carlsen Hani Shukrallah Dr. Susan Block John Chuckman Lucinda Marshall Don Monkerud Missy Comley
Beattie Ron Jacobs Website of
the Weekend
October 13, 2006 Jorge Mariscal Stephen Philion John Blair Col. Dan Smith Alastair Crooke / Mark Perry Stephen Fleischman Charles Perroud Anne E. Brodsky Website of the Day
October 12, 2006 Jonathan Cook Norman Solomon M. Shahid Alam Paul Craig
Roberts Meredith Schafer / Chris Kutalik Carl Gelderloos Alastair Crooke / Mark Perry Charles Sullivan William S. Lind CP News Service Website of
the Day
October 11, 2006 John Feffer Dave Lindorff Jackson Katz April Howard / Ben Dangl Michael Carmichael Ken Couesbouc Gregory Afghani Alexander Cockburn Website of
the Day
October 10, 2006 Paul Craig
Roberts Robert Robideau Joshua Frank Dave Lindorff Dave Zirin Heather Gray James Knotwell Missy Beattie Mike Whitney David Rosen Website of the Day
Robert Fisk Norman Solomon Ron Jacobs Gideon Levy Walter Brasch Mickey Z. John Holt Lucinda Marshall Saul Landau Website of the Day
October 7 /
8, 2006 Alexander Cockburn Peter Kwong Ralph Nader Mark Donham Dave Lindorff Peter Bosshard Ron Jacobs Lawrence R.
Velvel Fred Gardner David Green Jim B. Missy Beattie Michael Donnelly Jackson Thoreau Jon Hung CounterPunch
News Service Tom D'Antoni Poets' Basement Website of the Weekend
Alison Weir Tiffany Ten
Eyck / Mark Brenner Corporate Crime Reporter Juan Antonio
Montecino Walden Bello Christopher
Brauchli Brynne Keith-Jennings Jonathan Cook Website of the Day
John Walsh Carol Norris Paul Craig Roberts Ricardo Alarcón James Abourezk Nicola Nasser Kirkpatrick Sale Uri Avnery Website of the Day
Elizabeth Terzakis Paul Wolf Sean Penn Dave Lindorff Diane Farsetta Sharon Smith Felice Pace Sara Roy Website of
the Day
Jennifer Van
Bergen Greg Moses Stan Cox Niranjan Ramakrishnan Evelyn Pringle Fred Wilhelms Michael Abelman Gary Leupp Website of the Day
October 2, 2006 Eric Hazan Mike Whitney Norman Solomon Assaf Kfoury Missy Beattie Arthur Neslen Paula J. Caplan Website of the Day
Sept. 30 /
0ct. 1, 2006 Paul Craig
Roberts Marjorie Cohn Ben Tripp Ron Jacobs Ralph Nader Mike Whitney Christopher Reed Seth Sandronsky Fred Gardner Mokhiber /
Weissman Michael Dickinson Alan Gregory Poets' Basement
September 29, 2006 Bruce Jackson Michael J.
Smith Emira Woods William S.
Lind David Swanson Jonathan Cook Website of the Day
Sen. Russ Feingold Ron Jacobs Mokhiber /
Weissman Lee Sustar Robert Jensen John Chuckman Evelyn Pringle Nicola Nasser Uri Avnery Website of the Day
Patrick Cockburn Camilo Mejia Ben Terrall Ridgeway /
Ng Joe Allen Andrew Wimmer Franklin C. Spinney Website of
the Day
Hani Shukrallah William Blum Niranjan Ramakrishnan Barbara Becnel Paul Rockwell Dave Lindorff Rich Gibson Anthony Papa Nate Mezmer Uri Avnery Website of the Day
Patrick Cockburn Jonathan Cook Joshua Frank Paul Craig
Roberts Robert Jensen Dave Lindorff Norman Solomon Dr. Charles
Jonkel Michael Dickinson Alexander Cockburn Website of
the Day
September 23
/ 24, 2006 Jonathan Cook Jeffrey St.
Clair Dr. Anon Tom Barry Carl G. Estabrook Laura Carlsen Todd Chretien Dr. Charles
Jonkel Debbie Nathan Fred Gardner Fred Wilhelms Seth Sandronsky Ralph Nader Rev. William
Alberts Jon Van Camp Heather Gray David Vest Jeffrey St.
Clair Poets' Basement Website of
the Weekend Video of the Weekend
September 22, 2006 Patrick Cockburn Michael Donnelly Ramzy Baroud Evo Morales Stanley Howard Sarah Leah
Whitson JoAnn Wypijewski Website of the Day
Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad Justin E. H.
Smith Mike Roselle Amira Hass Deborah Rich Mickey Z. Saul Landau Website of
the Day
Sharon Smith Christopher
Reed John Ross Joshua Frank Arthur Neslen Norman Solomon Michael Carmichael Evelyn Pringle Hugo Chavez Website of the Day
Patrick Cockburn Jeff Leys Brian M. Downing Col. Dan Smith Liaquat Ali
Khan Ron Jacobs Nik Barry-Shaw
/ Yves Engler Lucinda Marshall Saul Landau Photo of the Day Website of
the Day
Carl Boggs Uri Avnery Mike Stark / Jim Bullington Joshua Frank John Murphy Ramzy Baroud Dave Lindorff Bill Quigley Website of the Day
Subscribe Online
|
Weekend
Edition "We Don't Negotiate with Evil"How the US Declared War on North KoreaBy GARY LEUPP North Korea proclaims UNSC Resolution
1718 "a declaration of war." The "luxury goods" aren't specified, but surely include such items as French champagne and Hennessy cognac, which the Kim Jong-il is known to consume in quantity and to distribute among his generals. "This will be a little diet for Kim Jong-il," smirked a visibly pleased U.S. UN ambassador John Bolton in announcing the resolution. That's sure to get the (rather corpulent) Dear Leader's dander up. But any old commercial vessel flying the DPRK flag could be carrying some bottles of French wine or cognac. U.S. naval vessels can now, under a cloak of international legitimacy, and "in accordance with [its] national laws," stop and board any North Korean merchant ship on the high seas and go snooping around. The resolution specifically bars "automatic military enforcement of its demands under the [UN] Charter's Article 41," but according to AP reporter Burt Herman, "This would be the scenario: North Korean ships suspected of carrying weapons [or cognac?] would be halted at sea by a U.S.-allied naval force, with commandos swooping in from helicopters to search the vessel from bow to stern." Such incidents could produce armed resistance from the crews, humiliations for the DPRK, or both, and these in turn might provoke tit-for-tat actions against U.S. (and/or Japanese) civilian ships by the North Korean navy. The issue of Pyongyang's nuclear weapons program, which could be resolved through negotiations or handled through the traditional doctrine of deterrence, could mushroom into a very ugly explosive situation. Maybe that's the intention. China inspects North Korean cargoes entering the PRC as a matter of routine, and the mainstream press is emphasizing this to show that the whole world, including traditional Korean ally China, is implementing the UNSC resolution. But China has expressed grave reservations about the resolution's provisions pertaining to cargo inspection, since they could produce a maritime confrontation, and has said it will not be checking any North Korean ships. Beijing's UN ambassador Wang Guangya has declared, "Inspections yes, but inspections are different from interception and interdiction" on the high seas. So why didn't China abstain from or veto Resolution 1718? Obviously Beijing's concern about nukes on the Korean peninsula, impatience at Pyongyang's nuclear program, and desire to maintain cordial relations with the U.S. and its imperialist allies outweigh its concern about some incidents on the high seas. If there is war, China probably wants none of it. But China while insisting on the vague "military enforcement" ban hasn't done all it could to defuse the situation. It could, for example, have made its endorsement of the resolution contingent upon a U.S. pledge to engage in direct talks with North Korea. What we're left with is the North Koreans backed into a tight corner, perhaps about to explode another nuclear device, thinking (like Americans, Russians, Britons, French, Chinese, Israelis, South African whites, Indians and Pakistanis before them) that this will protect them. This situation was not inevitable. In October 1994, during the Clinton administration, the U.S. and DPRK signed an "Agreed Framework" in Geneva whereby
The DPRK in fact did hold up its end of the bargain. Although it initially balked at accepting South Korean-designed Ulchin 3-4 light-water power plants, it agreed in Kuala Lumpur in June 1995 to negotiate directly with the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization (KEDO), whose leading members are South Korea, the U.S. and Japan, which favored the construction of such plants in the North. In December 1995, KEDO and Pyongyang signed an agreement for the provision of the reactors by 2003. Meanwhile North Korea continued to cooperate with the IAEA. As Bush entered office, physicist Gordon Prather writes, "according to the IAEA, there were no nuclear programs peaceful or otherwise underway in Iraq or North Korea." But in 2002 the U.S. administration claimed that Pyongyang "had violated the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty by obtaining unbeknownst to the IAEA prototypes of high-speed gas centrifuges from Pakistan and that by 2001, DPRK engineers were producing unbeknownst to the IAEA enriched uranium in significant quantities." As in the case of Iraq, U.S. officials claimed to have "intelligence" at variance with U.N. inspectors' reports. In March 2001, just weeks after his inauguration, Bush was asked by reporters why the U.S. wasn't continuing Clinton's negotiations with Pyongyang. "We're not certain as to whether or not they're keeping all terms of all agreements," he replied, in what Time Magazine's Tony Karon called "a potentially catastrophic gaffe." According to Karon, "as U.S. officials hurried to emphasize immediately after Bush's statement, Washington has no evidence that North Korea is not complying with the terms of that agreement. Given the epic paranoia and unpredictability of the regime in Pyongyang, the last thing you want to do is accuse them of cheating - unless you're consciously setting out to take it to the next level." But surely that was the point---to take it to the next level! (Why is the Eagles' "Take It to the Limit"---with its lyrics about dreaming, being shown signs, and burning out---echoing in my head as I write?) While South Korean President Kim Dae-jung sought to pursue "sunshine diplomacy" with the north, which had resulted in the summit between him and Kim Jung-il in Pyongyang in June 2000, neocon ideologues gathered around Vice President Dick Cheney were actively sabotaging any diplomatic efforts. In 2002 the U.S. ceased the fuel oil shipments specified in the Agreed Framework, thereby unilaterally abrogating the Clinton-era pact (along with so many other international agreements deemed wimpy by these cowboys). In January 2002, President Bush told an America shell-shocked by 9-11 that North Korea was part of an "axis of evil," deliberately tarring it with the same brush as al-Qaeda. Pyongyang was obviously in Washington's crosshairs, much to the dismay of Kim Dae-jung and South Korea's sunshine diplomacy advocates. As the U.S. attack on Iraq (based on lies about weapons of mass destruction) loomed in January 2003, the DPRK with little to lose announced its withdrawal from the Non-Proliferation Agreement. Undersecretary of State for Arms Control John Bolton pursued the "axis of evil" attack theme, describing life in the DPRK as a "hellish nightmare" and Kim Jong-Il as "tyrannical" in July 2003. Pyongyang responded in kind, calling the present U.S. UN ambassador "human scum" and a "bloodsucker." Late that year, China proposed a plan for North Korea to dismantle its nuclear programs in return for security guarantees and economic aid. But Cheney, according to an official quoted by Knight-Ridder newspapers, insisted on impossible revisions in an effort to sabotage that plan. "I have been charged by the President with making sure that none of the tyrannies in the world are negotiated with," Cheney growled. "We don't negotiate with evil; we defeat it." The Chinese and South Koreans have appealed to the U.S. to cool the rhetoric and to engage in the bilateral talks with North Korea that the latter has repeatedly demanded. Mainstream U.S. newspaper editors have urged Washington to formally promise not to attack the DPRK in exchange for the dismantling of its military nuclear program. \ But it seems that Washington indeed, as Time Magazine suggested six months before 9-11---before simplistic "evil" had yet entered the American political vocabulary---is "consciously setting out to take it to the next level." That could be around 45,000 feet, the altitude of the mushroom cloud over Nagasaki on August 9, 1945. Gary Leupp is Professor of History at Tufts University, and Adjunct Professor of Comparative Religion. He is the author of Servants, Shophands and Laborers in in the Cities of Tokugawa Japan; Male Colors: The Construction of Homosexuality in Tokugawa Japan; and Interracial Intimacy in Japan: Western Men and Japanese Women, 1543-1900. He is also a contributor to CounterPunch's merciless chronicle of the wars on Iraq, Afghanistan and Yugoslavia, Imperial Crusades. He can be reached at: gleupp@granite.tufts.edu
|
from CounterPunch Books! The Case Against Israel By Michael Neumann Grand Theft Pentagon: Tales of Greed and Profiteering in the War on Terror by Jeffrey St. Clair Sick of sit-on-the-Fence speakers, tongue-tied and timid? CounterPunch Editors Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St Clair are available to speak forcefully on ALL the burning issues, as are other CounterPunchers seasoned in stump oratory. Call CounterPunch Speakers Bureau, 1-800-840-3683. Or email beckyg@counterpunch.org. The Occupation by Patrick Cockburn |