http://www.activistpost.com/2010/12/reemergence-of-neocons.htmlDecember , 2010 -- Brinkmanship on the Korean peninsula: Poking the North Korean tiger....or is it the big OIL discovery in that neck of the wood by the Chinese......
Obama is allowing the U.S. military to play with nuclear fire in northeast Asia....
WMR's Asian intelligence sources are shedding more light on what prompted the artilley exchange between North and South Korea on November 23, the greatest outbreak of hostilities on the Korean peninsula since the signing of the armistice in 1953.
The outbreak of warfare was the result of a covert South Korean attempt to exfiltrate defecting North Korean military officers.
WMR's sources report that South Korea's Yeonpyeong Island has a hilly ridge parallel to the North Korean coast. South Korean artillery batteries were positioned just behind this ridge, and the fishing village on Yeonpyeong is located behind the ridge. When the North Korean artillery opened up, the village was in the line of fire, since the North Korean shell trajectories went over the ridge and into the village. This information was confirmed by Japanese military intelligence. The Japanese sources also noted that thew South Korean batteries between the fishing village and the North Korean coast relied on self-propelled howitzers.
The Yeonpyeong village is dominated by a South Korean military base, however, civilian houses were allowed to be build next to the hastily-built base.
The Yeonpyeong village is dominated by a South Korean military base, however, civilian houses were allowed to be build next to the hastily-built base.
In the first round of North Korean retaliatory artillery fire in response to the South Korean shells fired into disputed waters, the North Korean shots were very precise, hitting military structures. One early shell landed behind the town and into the sea. The two South Korean civilians killed were members of a construction crew inside the South Korean military base.
The civilian shopping center that was hit by the North Koreans, which caused a fire to engulf nearby homes, was formerly a secret military intelligence center. North Korea was operating on older intelligence.
WMR has also learned that Kim Jong-il and his heir apparent, his son Kim Jong-un, visited the North Korean base area near Yeonpyeong just four days before the artillery exchange, while they were on a nationwide disciplinary tour.
The section of the Northern Line the Kims visited was optimal for covert smuggling between South Korean military officers and their North Korean counterparts. The smuggling mainly involves electronics and luxury foods in trade for North Korean counterfeit cigarettes and certain high-end products like ginseng from the North, and likely gems and gold. Some officers on the North Korean side were likely reprimanded by Kim Jong Il and his top military commanders from Pyongyang.
All North Korean ships are now under guard to prevent further defections. At least twelve North Korean officers fled during the past month's discipline campaign, surfacing in Europe. South Korean military intelligence in all likelihood used a Son Won-il class HDW 214 submarine similar to Israeli Dolphin class, to exfiltrate the North Korean defectors.
When the alarm went off, North Korean patrol ships, we have learned, pursued the South Korean submarine. South Korean artillery fired a "screen" of shells between the fleeing submarine and its North Korean pursuers. North Korea then issued a warning to the South Koreans to desist from further action.
The South's submarine was hit by a grenade-launched depth charge, and was crippled.
North Korea fired on Yeonpyeong island. South Korea fired back in a massive strike to damage as many North Korean military positions as possible to prevent further pursuit of the submarine.
During the subsequent US-South Korean exercises, South Korean President Lee Myung-bak ordered another round of artillery firings from Yeonpyeong, in order to buy time for divers to retrieve damaged parts left by the retreating submarine.
However, the US Korea command was so alarmed at Lee's brinkmanship it ordered a halt to Lee's plan. Submarine infiltration and exfiltration of defectors is probably at the root also of the sinking of the South Korean anti-submarine warfare vessel Cheonan, a friendly fire scenario that is looking more and more as something Lee decided to subsequently use to increase tensions with the North. Lee's government and his U.S. allies decided to cook intelligence and evidence that pointed to North Korean culpability in the sinking, even producing a rusty German-made torpedo to use as evidence that it was a North Korean torpedo that sunk the ship....
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My impression of President Obama's trip to Asia is that he has unfortunately gone as chief arms salesman to new frontiers. This says much more about the US than it does about Asia. First, Congress allocates much of our discretionary income, more than half, to strengthening our military and bolstering our armaments, and then our President flies off to Asia to boost the sales of tanks, planes and missiles to client states. We call it geopolitics, but at its heart it is about greed and gluttony. Asian economies seem vibrant. Ours seems stuck in the mud of militarism.
America's needless wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are reducing us to a second or third rate power, a helpless giant. China is one beneficiary of our wasteful militaristic policies. India and other Asian countries could be as well, if they resist the temptation to purchase our second-hand military hardware and follow our lead into unnecessary and illegal wars. If the United States still wishes to be respected in the world it needs to return to the basics of democracy, human rights, the rule of law and international cooperation. There are too many serious problems confronting the world for the US to be focused on pushing arms and building war coalitions in Asia or any other part of the world. We need to think much more deeply about the example we are setting and how it is already returning to haunt us.....
By Mickey Z.
Dec , 2010,
“People from poorer places and poorer countries have to call upon their compassion not to be angry with ordinary people in America.....” --Arundhati Roy
More than half (53.3 percent) of US tax dollars go to a criminal enterprise known as the US Department of Defense [sic], a.k.a. the worst polluter on the planet. We hear about tax cuts this and budget that and all kinds of other bullshit from the US government and the corporations that own it . . . but the reality remains: Roughly one million tax dollars per minute are spent to fund the largest military machine (read: global terrorist operation) the world has ever known.
What do we get for all that money? To follow, is but one tiny example that mostly slipped through the cracks earlier this year.
On July 23, 2010, Tom Eley at Global Research wrote: “According to the authors of a new study, ‘Cancer, Infant Mortality and Birth Sex-Ratio in Fallujah, Iraq 2005–2009,’ the people of Fallujah are experiencing higher rates of cancer, leukemia, infant mortality, and sexual mutations than those recorded among survivors in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the years after those Japanese cities were incinerated by US atomic bomb strikes in 1945.”
For those unfamiliar with the US attacks on Fallujah, first of all: You should be fuckin’ ashamed of yourselves. Secondly, here’s Patrick Cockburn’s basic description: “US Marines first besieged and bombarded Fallujah, 30 miles west of Baghdad, in April 2004 after four employees of the American security company Blackwater were killed and their bodies burned. After an eight-month standoff, the Marines stormed the city in November using artillery and aerial bombing against rebel positions. US forces later admitted that they had employed white phosphorus as well as other munitions. In the assault, US commanders largely treated Fallujah as a free-fire zone to try to reduce casualties among their own troops. British officers were appalled by the lack of concern for civilian casualties.”
Of crucial importance is this: A high proportion of the weaponry used by the US in the assault contained depleted uranium (DU).
And you and I paid for it all.
The aforementioned study found that the cancer rate “had increased fourfold since before the US attack” and that the forms of cancer in Fallujah are “similar to those found among the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bomb survivors, who were exposed to intense fallout radiation.”
Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Yeah, Americans paid for those bombs, too.
In September 2009, Fallujah General Hospital had 170 newborn babies:
Cockburn writes of a “12-fold increase in childhood cancer in under-14s. Infant mortality in the city is more than four times higher than in neighboring Jordan and eight times higher than in Kuwait.”
Dig this: After 2005, thanks to this “major mutagenic event” (DU), the proportion of girls born in Fallujah has increased sharply likely because “girls have a redundant X-chromosome and can therefore absorb the loss of one chromosome through genetic damage,” explains Eley.
And you and I paid for it all.
“The impact of war on civilians was more severe in Fallujah than anywhere else in Iraq because the city continued to be blockaded and cut off from the rest of the country long after 2004,” adds Cockburn.
While I could go on with the gory details, I’d much rather you ask a few questions:
You don’t have to tell me your answers. I’m a co-conspirator just like you.
Save your answers for the children of Fallujah. I’m sure they’re wondering why the fuck we all choose to remain silent and inactive.....