I could not resist to upload this. She seems a North Korean giri. She just melts my heart.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JLO4Hsf6kGw&feature=related
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Text Fwd: President Lee opposes a hard-line response to N. Korea’s “satellite” launch
* Image Source/ caption*
Same as the article below
'President Lee Myung-bak gives an interview to the Financial Times at the Blue House on March 30. He says he “intended to keep open a jointly run industrial enclave in order to foster dialogue even if Pyongyang tests a long-range missile in coming days.”'
http://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_northkorea/347159.html
President Lee opposes a hard-line response to N. Korea’s “satellite” launch: Lee reveals to Financial Times his intention of continuing Kaesong operations Posted on : Mar.31,2009 12:06 KST
In an interview published Tuesday in the British business daily Financial Times, President Lee Myung-bak stated, “Our ultimate objective is to convince North Korea to fully give up their nuclear weapons and also to usher in an era where the two Koreans will be able to coexist.” He added that taking a harder stance would not necessarily be helpful in achieving that ultimate objective. The interview took place Saturday at the Blue House.
Regarding the South Korean government’s response following North Korea‘s “satellite” launch, Lee formally announced a position both opposing a military response. He indicated his intention of supporting the ongoing operations of the Kaesong Industrial Complex.
Analysts are interpreting Lee’s position as indicative of a sober consideration of the reality of the North Korea issue, in which a hard-line response does not prove to be the best option. It also rearticulates a position regarding inter-Korea conduits during times of ‘crisis,’ keeping a minimal level of communication open.
Lee’s statements were characterized throughout by a consideration of the current international situation in which enacting sanctions against North Korea following a “satellite” launch would prove difficult. Indeed, it would be implausible to carry out effective sanctions against North Korea when two permanent member nations with veto power on the United Nations Security Council, China and Russia, are essentially opposed to such sanctions at the Security Council level.
The United States is engaging in a diversionary strategy of stating opposition to North Korea’s rocket launch, while also emphasizing the need for dialogue with North Korea. Appearing Sunday (local time) on Fox News, U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said that the U.S. has no plans to intercept a North Korean missile.
Previously, Stephen Bosworth, the U.S. Special Representative for North Korea Policy, sent a message of interest in dialogue with Pyongyang when he said in an interview Saturday with the Washington Post “Ideally, one would like to meet with the leader.” In light of this, analysts interpret President Lee‘s statement as reflecting the outcome of previous efforts to harmonize opinion between South Korea and the U.S., or at least minimally, taking into consideration trends in the Barack Obama administration.
Some analysts are concerned that in such a situation, the scope of South Korea’s activity could be curtailed if it continues adhering to its ineffective hard line in responding to North Korea. The government has been forced to bear in mind the changing international situation in which it appears that six-party talks and other forms of dialogue may resume after a certain cooling-off period.
It also appears to experts that President Lee was obliged to take into account negative public response to the heightening of tensions around the Korean Peninsula, including military clashes between the two Koreas. In terms of inter-Korean relations, Lee‘s statement indicates that the government will focus on managing the situation rather than aggravating relations with a hard-line response.
Moreover, South Korea has no means of independently responding with military force to a North Korean rocket launch. While it could carry out a preemptive attack with an F-15 fighter on the North Korean launch site, this is not a viable option because it would mean all-out war. The current SM-2 missile attached to the Aegis destroyer Sejong the Great is for air defense use only and could not be used to intercept a ballistic missile.
While government authorities have made a few references to maintaining the Kaeseong Industrial Complex, Lee’s statement can be interpreted as a clear and formal reiteration of the government‘s policy on it.
However, it is difficult to interpret it as either an active gesture of appeasement towards Pyongyang or a complete change in the tenor of North Korea policy as the government is still actively examining full participation in the Proliferation Security Initiative on weapons of mass destruction. A Cheong Wa Dae (the presidential office in South Korea or Blue House) official interpreted the President Lee’s interview on Monday as expressing he “has no intention of unilaterally worsening economic cooperation efforts, but neither does it plan to expand these efforts if North Korea keeps this up.”
Lee’s interview signals no great departure in the midst of managing this crisis from the previous tenor of inter-Korean relations, indicating a preference for a policy of engagement at the minimal level of dialogue and interchange, in lieu of a policy of closure or tolerance.
Please direct questions or comments to [englishhani@hani.co.kr]
© 2006 The Hankyoreh Media Company.
Text fwd: Czech Republic: humanists suspend 300 days relay hunger strike
* Text informed by Anna Polo on March 31, 2009*Czech Republic: humanists suspend 300 days relay hunger strike
Press release, March 31, 2009
The protest in the Czech Republic against the installation of US military bases, part of the NMD system also known as Star Wars, had brought two young activists to start a hunger strike in May 2008.
The two humanists, Jan Tamas and Jan Bednar ended their hunger strike after 21 days. From that day on, every day, for one day, a celebrity went on a relay fast. Among the protesters were scientists, academics, actors, directors, sportspeople and Parliament members coming from different parties. They included actress, Anna Geislerova, director Zdenek Troska, scientist Peter Pokorny and Lubomír Zaorálek, Vice President of the Czech Parliament.
"More than 300 persons participated in this protest, it is the most significant protest after the Velvet Revolution in 1989," Jan Tamas declared. "The fall of the government represents a victory of democracy for us, that's why we decided to suspend the relay hunger strike."
On Sunday, April 5, the day of the United States President's visit to Prague, a new protest of the nonviolent movement is scheduled in the Czech Republic.
Jan Tamas, leader of the protest against Star Wars and President of the Czech Humanist Party, has become the spokesperson for more than 70% of the Czech population. The majority of Czechs are against the presence of military bases on their territory and foreign interference on their affairs. The Nonviolent movement's requests to Obama are that the US give the Star Wars project once and for all and to choose the politics of disarmament in a brave and resolute way. These are the only grounds for the beginning of a real process of peace and reconstruction.
Jan Tamas 00420 776 785839 info@nenasili.cz
www.pressenza.org
www.europeforpeace.eu
www.theworldmarch.org
Video Fwd: Inside USA - The Other Hawaii - Sept 26 - Part 1
Video thankfully informed from Makiko Sato from indigenous people in Hawaii.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gIq8x9vnLf4
AljazeeraEnglish
“This week Avi Lewis visits the people behind the native movement for self-determination in Hawaii. Well over 200 years old the movement has recently been gaining on strength.
Archive footage courtesy of www.namaka.com.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gIq8x9vnLf4
AljazeeraEnglish
“This week Avi Lewis visits the people behind the native movement for self-determination in Hawaii. Well over 200 years old the movement has recently been gaining on strength.
Archive footage courtesy of www.namaka.com.”
Petition Fwd: Statement of Support for a Northeast Asia Nuclear Weapon Free Zone
Text forwarded on March 31, 2009
"Hello, the Peace Network and the People’s Solidarity for Participatory Democracy, joined with the Peace Depot, Japan has started the international signing movement for the Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zone in Northeast Asia (NEA-NWFZ). The result would be delivered to the six party nations and the United Nations at the Non-Nuclear Proliferation Treaty in the New York, early May, 2009 [translated]"
Please send your sign to Wooksik Cheong at wooksik@gmail.com
안녕하세요. 평화네트워크 정욱식입니다.
평화네트워크와 참여연대는 일본의 피스데포와 함께 동북아 비핵지대 창설을 위한 국제 서명운동을 시작했습니다. 본 서명 결과는 6자회담 참가국들과 5월 초순 뉴욕에서 열리는 핵확산금지조약(NPT) 회의에서 유엔에 전달될 예정입니다.
한국조직위원회 참가 단체들의 적극적인 참여를 부탁드립니다. 동의만 해주시면 영문명은 4월 국제대회 자료를 이용할 수 있을 것 같습니다. 내용은 아래와 같습니다.
정욱식 드림
We, the undersigned, express our support for the efforts to establish a Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zone in Northeast Asia (NEA-NWFZ). We believe it is an urgent and timely initiative both for strengthening the global tide toward a Nuclear Weapon Free World and for achieving regional stability and peace in Northeast Asia.
Setting the goal of achieving a NEA-NWFZ will create a new positive dimension in the on-going Six Party Talks among the Republic of Korea (ROK), Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea (DPRK), Japan, China, Russia and the United States, by incorporating its goal of “verifiable denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula” (Six-nation Statement, 19 September 2005) within the broader regional vision.
Global nuclear disarmament is an obligation not only of nuclear armed nations but of all nations, especially those whose security policy relies on a so-called nuclear umbrella. In this regards, all nations have the responsibility to find a path toward a security polity without nuclear weapons. A NEA-NWFZ will provide such a path for relevant nations in the region, including Japan and the Republic of Korea (ROK).
A realistic scheme for a NEA-NWFZ would be a 3+3 arrangement, in which the ROK, the DPRK and Japan would form the central parties of the zone and the neighboring nuclear weapon states (China, Russia and the US) would support it through the provision of security assurances, as this would build upon the 1992 Inter-Korean Joint Declaration on the Denuclearization of Korean Peninsula and Japan's Three Non-Nuclear Principles.
We call upon political leaders, both national and local, citizen groups, and individuals throughout the world, to express their support for a NEA NWFZ and to work together to realize it.
Name of individual or organization
* Note by No Base Stories of korea *
' Wooksik Cheong is one of the founding members and the representative of Peace Network, a non-governmental organization formed in 1999, working for peace and disarmament in the Northeast Asia and on the Korean Peninsula.
He is the leading member of the Korean committee for the International Conference against the Asia Pacific Missile Defense and for the End of Arms Race, Seoul, South Korea, April 16-18, 2009 and is one of the main speakers in the April 17 symposium program of the conference.
He is the author of the two articles.
http://nobasestorieskorea.blogspot.com/2009/03/text-fwd-missile-defense-and-korean.html
Saturday, March 21, 2009
Text Fwd: Missile Defense and the Korean Peninsula-What Is the Problem?
http://nobasestorieskorea.blogspot.com/2009/03/text-fwd-north-koreas-satellite-versus.html
Thursday, March 12, 2009
Text fwd: North Korea’s Satellite versus US-ROK Joint Military Exercise'
"Hello, the Peace Network and the People’s Solidarity for Participatory Democracy, joined with the Peace Depot, Japan has started the international signing movement for the Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zone in Northeast Asia (NEA-NWFZ). The result would be delivered to the six party nations and the United Nations at the Non-Nuclear Proliferation Treaty in the New York, early May, 2009 [translated]"
Please send your sign to Wooksik Cheong at wooksik@gmail.com
안녕하세요. 평화네트워크 정욱식입니다.
평화네트워크와 참여연대는 일본의 피스데포와 함께 동북아 비핵지대 창설을 위한 국제 서명운동을 시작했습니다. 본 서명 결과는 6자회담 참가국들과 5월 초순 뉴욕에서 열리는 핵확산금지조약(NPT) 회의에서 유엔에 전달될 예정입니다.
한국조직위원회 참가 단체들의 적극적인 참여를 부탁드립니다. 동의만 해주시면 영문명은 4월 국제대회 자료를 이용할 수 있을 것 같습니다. 내용은 아래와 같습니다.
정욱식 드림
Statement of Support for
a Northeast Asia Nuclear Weapon Free Zone
a Northeast Asia Nuclear Weapon Free Zone
We, the undersigned, express our support for the efforts to establish a Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zone in Northeast Asia (NEA-NWFZ). We believe it is an urgent and timely initiative both for strengthening the global tide toward a Nuclear Weapon Free World and for achieving regional stability and peace in Northeast Asia.
Setting the goal of achieving a NEA-NWFZ will create a new positive dimension in the on-going Six Party Talks among the Republic of Korea (ROK), Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea (DPRK), Japan, China, Russia and the United States, by incorporating its goal of “verifiable denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula” (Six-nation Statement, 19 September 2005) within the broader regional vision.
Global nuclear disarmament is an obligation not only of nuclear armed nations but of all nations, especially those whose security policy relies on a so-called nuclear umbrella. In this regards, all nations have the responsibility to find a path toward a security polity without nuclear weapons. A NEA-NWFZ will provide such a path for relevant nations in the region, including Japan and the Republic of Korea (ROK).
A realistic scheme for a NEA-NWFZ would be a 3+3 arrangement, in which the ROK, the DPRK and Japan would form the central parties of the zone and the neighboring nuclear weapon states (China, Russia and the US) would support it through the provision of security assurances, as this would build upon the 1992 Inter-Korean Joint Declaration on the Denuclearization of Korean Peninsula and Japan's Three Non-Nuclear Principles.
We call upon political leaders, both national and local, citizen groups, and individuals throughout the world, to express their support for a NEA NWFZ and to work together to realize it.
Name of individual or organization
* Note by No Base Stories of korea *
' Wooksik Cheong is one of the founding members and the representative of Peace Network, a non-governmental organization formed in 1999, working for peace and disarmament in the Northeast Asia and on the Korean Peninsula.
He is the leading member of the Korean committee for the International Conference against the Asia Pacific Missile Defense and for the End of Arms Race, Seoul, South Korea, April 16-18, 2009 and is one of the main speakers in the April 17 symposium program of the conference.
He is the author of the two articles.
http://nobasestorieskorea.blogspot.com/2009/03/text-fwd-missile-defense-and-korean.html
Saturday, March 21, 2009
Text Fwd: Missile Defense and the Korean Peninsula-What Is the Problem?
http://nobasestorieskorea.blogspot.com/2009/03/text-fwd-north-koreas-satellite-versus.html
Thursday, March 12, 2009
Text fwd: North Korea’s Satellite versus US-ROK Joint Military Exercise'
Text Fwd: Towards a New Korea Policy for the United States
Text Fwd from Solidarity for Peace And Reunification of Korea
Towards a New Korea Policy for the United States
Recommendations by the June 15th Korean American Committee
for Peace and Unification of Korea, March 6, 2009
I. Introduction
“And so to all other peoples and governments who are watching …….know that America is a friend of each nation and every man, woman, and child who seeks a future of peace and dignity.”
As concerned Americans of Korean descent working for greater friendship between the United States and Korea as well as for a peaceful unification of Korea, we are deeply moved by President Obama’s above message in his inaugural address.
We, Koreans came to the US, and became citizens of this newly adopted land, thereby becoming Korean Americans. We were educated and disciplined in Korea and have been tempered and nurtured in the US. We suffered from painful internecine war, have been living through agonies and sadness of ten million separated family members (many of us still are separated from family members in North Korea) and struggle for unification of the divided Korea. Therefore, Korean Americans have first-hand experience and sentiments of the motherland people, and have deeper understanding of its past and recent history and aspirations.
We would like to present our honest and sincere opinion, and recommendations for the US and peace in East Asia to the Obama Administration and the US Congress. As historical background, we are also attaching three essays of a Korean American’s observations and insights on the US-Korea relations and two ‘Korea Policy Recommendation’ submitted to the Clinton Administration in1999.
II. Three Essential Considerations
1) New Perspectives on North Korea
After over half a century, it is time to realize that disregard, malign neglect, belligerent isolation, ambivalent engagement and regime change policy of the US toward North Korea have all failed. What is needed at this time is a fundamental change in the US leaders’ perception on and approach to North Korea, and deal with it as is. A specialist on Korean peninsula wrote, “North Korea’s negative image as ‘uncooperative,’ ‘untrustworthy,’ or ‘deceitful’ is a devil of America’s own creation. The US became a victim to the devil of its own creation.”
From North Korea’s perspective, North Koreans have been living in their divided half of Korea with the South defining the North as the main enemy and under military and nuclear threat of the US for over half a century. Hundreds of thousands of North Koreans have died of famine; millions more suffer poverty and despair out of isolation. It can be said that US policy of animosity has in a way brought out a nuclear North Korea.
The US leaders may need to look back why the 1994 Framework Agreement with North Korea did not materialize. The Obama administration should be ready to reaffirm the spirit of the US-DPRK Joint Communiqué of October 12, 2000, in which both governments pledged “to make every effort in the future to build a new relationship free from past enmity.” The US is now at a crossroad of opportunity to reformulate a fundamental change in its policy and alter the underlying nature of US-North Korean relations: from confrontation to dialogue and engagement, from regime change to mutual respect and recognition.
2) Ending the Korean War
Since 1974 North Korea had proposed a peace treaty and normalize its relationship with the US. The US, however maintained policy of disregard and neglect to North Korea’s plea. It was only when North Korea was suspected of pursuing nuclear weapons programs that the US could no longer afford to ignore it. This situation led the US to sign the 1994 Agreed Framework.
As agreed, North Korea froze its nuclear reactors. However, construction of the LWR power plants that the US pledged had not progressed on schedule. The US did not move toward normalization of political and economic relations either. North Korea meanwhile did not collapse, as anticipated by US officials, and the Clinton administration changed its containment to an engagement policy belatedly in late1999.
The year 2000 saw significant progresses: the first ever North-South Korea Summit meeting on June 15 and the US-DPRK Communiqué of October 12. Secretary of State M. Albright made a historic visit to Pyongyang and paved the path for a summit meeting between Bill Clinton and Kim Jong Il. With George W. Bush as the next president however, fledgling engagement policy backpedaled to harsh containment policy thereafter.
The Agreed Framework was scrapped after James Kelly of the State Dept. visited Pyongyang in October 2002, a month after Japan’s Pyongyang Declaration envisioning normalization with North Korea. Pyongyang restarted its plutonium program in 2003 and test launched a long range missile and did nuclear test in 2006. This repercussions by North Korea has been partly the result of measly US implementation of the agreed items in the September 19, 2005 Joint Statement of the Six-Party Talks. Subsequently the Bush administration had changed its policy of regime change to bilateral dialogue in the last two years of his second term.
From the North Korean perspectives, in view of their past dealings with the US, it may be impossible for them to give up their weapons of deterrence, in the absence of a peace treaty ending the Korean War formally. It is about time the US plays a leadership role in negotiating a peace treaty so that a new era of peace, disarmament, reconciliation and cooperation can begin in earnest on the Korean peninsula. A peace treaty is one of the provisions in the Sept. 19, 2005 Joint Statement, not to mention the 1953 Korean War Armistice Agreement.
3) Source of Problems: Division of Korea
The source of all the problems arising form the Korean peninsula is the division of the country . Overcoming the division and achieving unification is a civic religion to Koreans of both sides and overseas. The South Korean public will support a bold effort of the US to engage the North. South Korean President Lee Myung-bak is likely to pursue close relations with the US over confrontation with the North. On the contrary, if the US coerces North Korea to the brink of military attack, the South Korean public sentiment will be against the US, as shown in the case of former South Korean President Kim Young-Sam during the Clinton era, when a war nearly broke out.
Amid the crisis in Iraq and Afghanistan, the US still has 28,000 troops stationed in South Korea. The American military presence - at an annual cost of billions of dollars for the US taxpayers -- is a drain in US defense spending. Phased withdrawal of US troops should be a part of the disarmament process in the Korean peninsula. The US may need to sidestep so that South and the North can revert to their own process of reconciliation and cooperation, without the direct involvement of the US confounding triangulation of problems.
III. Recommended Policy Measures
1. Diplomatic Relation with North Korea
President Obama should send an envoy of the highest level to Pyongyang soon to pursue direct negotiations with North Korea, in a step towards a comprehensive new deal covering the resolution of security, political, economic issues on the Korean peninsula that underlie nuclear issue. It should start with a simple step: an unconditional offer to exchange liaison offices and end the Korean War formally. The envoy should discuss earliest possible summit meeting with Kim Jong Il. It will install trust between the parties and insure the prospect for future roadmap of relations between the two countries.
In return for a new political, economic, and strategic relationship with Washington, Pyongyang needs to agree to satisfy international norms of behavior regarding proliferation matters along with nuclear and missile tests, and then move to eliminate such programs of international concern. Fostering sufficient mutual trust between the two will encourage North Korea to forgo its nuclear arsenal pursuant to the will of the late Kim Il Sung on the eventual denuclearization.
The North Korea nuclear issue already has agreed-on solution formula that it can attain a rather immediate achievement. The Obama administration has a chance to make history by ending the 60-year conflict that divides the Korean peninsula, and reversing an isolated nation from the global community thereby fostering peace in the US, East Asia and for the Korean people of the North-South and including over 2 million Korean Americans.
2. Signing of Peace Treaty
Both countries should initiate process of ending the Korean War. A declaration of ending Korean War should be signed by the US, North and South Korea, and China. An agreement should be worked out among North Korea, South Korea and the U.S. for mutual arms reductions in the Korean peninsula. The U.S. objective of dismantling North Korean nuclear and chemical weapons programs and missile system can also be attained within the scope of this measure.
To reduce tensions on the Korean peninsula and to improve the atmosphere for further diplomatic talks aimed for a negotiated settlement towards signing a peace treaty, it is suggested that all parties concerned – DPRK, ROK and the US -- suspend all military-related activities that are seen by the others as being provocative and threatening.
3. US-DPRK Summit Meeting
The earliest possible summit meeting with Kim Jong Il is highly desirable in view of the unique North Korean political system. At the summit, an agreement on the road map can be concluded, which would then be subject to Six-Party approval. There should be a commitment on the establishment of full diplomatic relations as Pyongyang dismantles its fuel-fabrication plant, reprocessing facility and reactor at Yongbyon. Korean peace treaty and abandonment of nuclear weapon program before the end of Obama's first term should also be committed.
Discussion on the United Nations human rights issue should also be addressed at the meeting.
President Obama can also encourage dialogue between the North and South in tandem with the inter-Korea 1992 Basic Agreement, June15, 2000 and October.4, 2007 Joint Declarations. The US should also encourage bilateral talks with Japan to implement the 2002 Pyongyang Declaration on normalization of relations between Japan and North Korea.
4. Strict Implementation by Action for Action
All the agreed items in the previous Joint Statements at the Six-Party Talks and any other future agreements should be carried out by “action for action” principle, such as the beginning of construction of conventional power plants as North Korea dismantles its nuclear programs and begins to turn over its nuclear material and weapons. North Korea should finalize the process of dismantling all nuclear facilities and materials and clear histories of produced plutonium, HEU and Syrian connection matters.
5. A Regional Security Organization
There should be a conference among the U.S., North Korea, South Korea, China, Russia, Japan for the purpose of establishing a North East Asia Security Organization as envisaged in the September 19, 2005 Joint Statement. The new organization can be assigned to facilitate international arrangements commensurate with the Korean unification and further to stipulate principles and procedures for the maintenance of peace in Northeast Asia.
IV. Conclusion
The 60-year-old division of Korea has been inflicting immeasurable inhumane tribulations to the Korean people. Yet it is the Koreans themselves who have to strive to achieve unification. In view of closely tangled tripartite relations, an earnest full engagement with North Korea by the US is the elixir of solution. From the start a comprehensive engagement, embracing the direct bilateral dialogue while coordinating the 6-Party Talks members, will lead to fruitful outcome. The Obama administration should invest serious resources for the goal, and not repeat the mistakes of the preceding administrations.
The US steps could be withheld or reversed if Pyongyang does not follow through on its commitments. Between the US and North Korea, which would be able to take risks without significantly jeopardizing their national security? The US would be with a much greater margin of safety. For the North, it is a matter of survival or extinction. Even in pursuing our own national interest, if it is not based on the international justice and moral value, it will quickly lose respect and support of other countries as it did in the immediate past administration.
We all saw our demise in Vietnam because we failed to understand Vietnamese history and nationalism. So are the Iraq of today and possibly Afghanistan. Deeper understanding of Korea's history and the nature of its national sentiment would lead the US to enjoy a genuinely beneficial relationship with the Korean people. President Obama and Vice President Biden have the opportunity to usher in a new chapter in the history of Northeast Asia. As president Obama said: “We are ready to lead once more,” and yes, we can!
* Related article*
http://www.spark946.org/bugsboard/index.php?BBS=eng_2&action=viewForm&uid=30&page=1
The Korean people's statement to the four nations of the Korean Peninsula Peace Forum relating to the peace agreement
2008/07/21
* Related blog*
http://nobasestorieskorea.blogspot.com/2009/03/text-fwd-korea-in-some-context.html
Saturday, March 28, 2009
Text Fwd: KOREA IN SOME CONTEXT
Towards a New Korea Policy for the United States
Recommendations by the June 15th Korean American Committee
for Peace and Unification of Korea, March 6, 2009
I. Introduction
“And so to all other peoples and governments who are watching …….know that America is a friend of each nation and every man, woman, and child who seeks a future of peace and dignity.”
As concerned Americans of Korean descent working for greater friendship between the United States and Korea as well as for a peaceful unification of Korea, we are deeply moved by President Obama’s above message in his inaugural address.
We, Koreans came to the US, and became citizens of this newly adopted land, thereby becoming Korean Americans. We were educated and disciplined in Korea and have been tempered and nurtured in the US. We suffered from painful internecine war, have been living through agonies and sadness of ten million separated family members (many of us still are separated from family members in North Korea) and struggle for unification of the divided Korea. Therefore, Korean Americans have first-hand experience and sentiments of the motherland people, and have deeper understanding of its past and recent history and aspirations.
We would like to present our honest and sincere opinion, and recommendations for the US and peace in East Asia to the Obama Administration and the US Congress. As historical background, we are also attaching three essays of a Korean American’s observations and insights on the US-Korea relations and two ‘Korea Policy Recommendation’ submitted to the Clinton Administration in1999.
II. Three Essential Considerations
1) New Perspectives on North Korea
After over half a century, it is time to realize that disregard, malign neglect, belligerent isolation, ambivalent engagement and regime change policy of the US toward North Korea have all failed. What is needed at this time is a fundamental change in the US leaders’ perception on and approach to North Korea, and deal with it as is. A specialist on Korean peninsula wrote, “North Korea’s negative image as ‘uncooperative,’ ‘untrustworthy,’ or ‘deceitful’ is a devil of America’s own creation. The US became a victim to the devil of its own creation.”
From North Korea’s perspective, North Koreans have been living in their divided half of Korea with the South defining the North as the main enemy and under military and nuclear threat of the US for over half a century. Hundreds of thousands of North Koreans have died of famine; millions more suffer poverty and despair out of isolation. It can be said that US policy of animosity has in a way brought out a nuclear North Korea.
The US leaders may need to look back why the 1994 Framework Agreement with North Korea did not materialize. The Obama administration should be ready to reaffirm the spirit of the US-DPRK Joint Communiqué of October 12, 2000, in which both governments pledged “to make every effort in the future to build a new relationship free from past enmity.” The US is now at a crossroad of opportunity to reformulate a fundamental change in its policy and alter the underlying nature of US-North Korean relations: from confrontation to dialogue and engagement, from regime change to mutual respect and recognition.
2) Ending the Korean War
Since 1974 North Korea had proposed a peace treaty and normalize its relationship with the US. The US, however maintained policy of disregard and neglect to North Korea’s plea. It was only when North Korea was suspected of pursuing nuclear weapons programs that the US could no longer afford to ignore it. This situation led the US to sign the 1994 Agreed Framework.
As agreed, North Korea froze its nuclear reactors. However, construction of the LWR power plants that the US pledged had not progressed on schedule. The US did not move toward normalization of political and economic relations either. North Korea meanwhile did not collapse, as anticipated by US officials, and the Clinton administration changed its containment to an engagement policy belatedly in late1999.
The year 2000 saw significant progresses: the first ever North-South Korea Summit meeting on June 15 and the US-DPRK Communiqué of October 12. Secretary of State M. Albright made a historic visit to Pyongyang and paved the path for a summit meeting between Bill Clinton and Kim Jong Il. With George W. Bush as the next president however, fledgling engagement policy backpedaled to harsh containment policy thereafter.
The Agreed Framework was scrapped after James Kelly of the State Dept. visited Pyongyang in October 2002, a month after Japan’s Pyongyang Declaration envisioning normalization with North Korea. Pyongyang restarted its plutonium program in 2003 and test launched a long range missile and did nuclear test in 2006. This repercussions by North Korea has been partly the result of measly US implementation of the agreed items in the September 19, 2005 Joint Statement of the Six-Party Talks. Subsequently the Bush administration had changed its policy of regime change to bilateral dialogue in the last two years of his second term.
From the North Korean perspectives, in view of their past dealings with the US, it may be impossible for them to give up their weapons of deterrence, in the absence of a peace treaty ending the Korean War formally. It is about time the US plays a leadership role in negotiating a peace treaty so that a new era of peace, disarmament, reconciliation and cooperation can begin in earnest on the Korean peninsula. A peace treaty is one of the provisions in the Sept. 19, 2005 Joint Statement, not to mention the 1953 Korean War Armistice Agreement.
3) Source of Problems: Division of Korea
The source of all the problems arising form the Korean peninsula is the division of the country . Overcoming the division and achieving unification is a civic religion to Koreans of both sides and overseas. The South Korean public will support a bold effort of the US to engage the North. South Korean President Lee Myung-bak is likely to pursue close relations with the US over confrontation with the North. On the contrary, if the US coerces North Korea to the brink of military attack, the South Korean public sentiment will be against the US, as shown in the case of former South Korean President Kim Young-Sam during the Clinton era, when a war nearly broke out.
Amid the crisis in Iraq and Afghanistan, the US still has 28,000 troops stationed in South Korea. The American military presence - at an annual cost of billions of dollars for the US taxpayers -- is a drain in US defense spending. Phased withdrawal of US troops should be a part of the disarmament process in the Korean peninsula. The US may need to sidestep so that South and the North can revert to their own process of reconciliation and cooperation, without the direct involvement of the US confounding triangulation of problems.
III. Recommended Policy Measures
1. Diplomatic Relation with North Korea
President Obama should send an envoy of the highest level to Pyongyang soon to pursue direct negotiations with North Korea, in a step towards a comprehensive new deal covering the resolution of security, political, economic issues on the Korean peninsula that underlie nuclear issue. It should start with a simple step: an unconditional offer to exchange liaison offices and end the Korean War formally. The envoy should discuss earliest possible summit meeting with Kim Jong Il. It will install trust between the parties and insure the prospect for future roadmap of relations between the two countries.
In return for a new political, economic, and strategic relationship with Washington, Pyongyang needs to agree to satisfy international norms of behavior regarding proliferation matters along with nuclear and missile tests, and then move to eliminate such programs of international concern. Fostering sufficient mutual trust between the two will encourage North Korea to forgo its nuclear arsenal pursuant to the will of the late Kim Il Sung on the eventual denuclearization.
The North Korea nuclear issue already has agreed-on solution formula that it can attain a rather immediate achievement. The Obama administration has a chance to make history by ending the 60-year conflict that divides the Korean peninsula, and reversing an isolated nation from the global community thereby fostering peace in the US, East Asia and for the Korean people of the North-South and including over 2 million Korean Americans.
2. Signing of Peace Treaty
Both countries should initiate process of ending the Korean War. A declaration of ending Korean War should be signed by the US, North and South Korea, and China. An agreement should be worked out among North Korea, South Korea and the U.S. for mutual arms reductions in the Korean peninsula. The U.S. objective of dismantling North Korean nuclear and chemical weapons programs and missile system can also be attained within the scope of this measure.
To reduce tensions on the Korean peninsula and to improve the atmosphere for further diplomatic talks aimed for a negotiated settlement towards signing a peace treaty, it is suggested that all parties concerned – DPRK, ROK and the US -- suspend all military-related activities that are seen by the others as being provocative and threatening.
3. US-DPRK Summit Meeting
The earliest possible summit meeting with Kim Jong Il is highly desirable in view of the unique North Korean political system. At the summit, an agreement on the road map can be concluded, which would then be subject to Six-Party approval. There should be a commitment on the establishment of full diplomatic relations as Pyongyang dismantles its fuel-fabrication plant, reprocessing facility and reactor at Yongbyon. Korean peace treaty and abandonment of nuclear weapon program before the end of Obama's first term should also be committed.
Discussion on the United Nations human rights issue should also be addressed at the meeting.
President Obama can also encourage dialogue between the North and South in tandem with the inter-Korea 1992 Basic Agreement, June15, 2000 and October.4, 2007 Joint Declarations. The US should also encourage bilateral talks with Japan to implement the 2002 Pyongyang Declaration on normalization of relations between Japan and North Korea.
4. Strict Implementation by Action for Action
All the agreed items in the previous Joint Statements at the Six-Party Talks and any other future agreements should be carried out by “action for action” principle, such as the beginning of construction of conventional power plants as North Korea dismantles its nuclear programs and begins to turn over its nuclear material and weapons. North Korea should finalize the process of dismantling all nuclear facilities and materials and clear histories of produced plutonium, HEU and Syrian connection matters.
5. A Regional Security Organization
There should be a conference among the U.S., North Korea, South Korea, China, Russia, Japan for the purpose of establishing a North East Asia Security Organization as envisaged in the September 19, 2005 Joint Statement. The new organization can be assigned to facilitate international arrangements commensurate with the Korean unification and further to stipulate principles and procedures for the maintenance of peace in Northeast Asia.
IV. Conclusion
The 60-year-old division of Korea has been inflicting immeasurable inhumane tribulations to the Korean people. Yet it is the Koreans themselves who have to strive to achieve unification. In view of closely tangled tripartite relations, an earnest full engagement with North Korea by the US is the elixir of solution. From the start a comprehensive engagement, embracing the direct bilateral dialogue while coordinating the 6-Party Talks members, will lead to fruitful outcome. The Obama administration should invest serious resources for the goal, and not repeat the mistakes of the preceding administrations.
The US steps could be withheld or reversed if Pyongyang does not follow through on its commitments. Between the US and North Korea, which would be able to take risks without significantly jeopardizing their national security? The US would be with a much greater margin of safety. For the North, it is a matter of survival or extinction. Even in pursuing our own national interest, if it is not based on the international justice and moral value, it will quickly lose respect and support of other countries as it did in the immediate past administration.
We all saw our demise in Vietnam because we failed to understand Vietnamese history and nationalism. So are the Iraq of today and possibly Afghanistan. Deeper understanding of Korea's history and the nature of its national sentiment would lead the US to enjoy a genuinely beneficial relationship with the Korean people. President Obama and Vice President Biden have the opportunity to usher in a new chapter in the history of Northeast Asia. As president Obama said: “We are ready to lead once more,” and yes, we can!
* Related article*
http://www.spark946.org/bugsboard/index.php?BBS=eng_2&action=viewForm&uid=30&page=1
The Korean people's statement to the four nations of the Korean Peninsula Peace Forum relating to the peace agreement
2008/07/21
* Related blog*
http://nobasestorieskorea.blogspot.com/2009/03/text-fwd-korea-in-some-context.html
Saturday, March 28, 2009
Text Fwd: KOREA IN SOME CONTEXT
US Military Chief Addresses 'Space As Contested Environment'
* Text fwd from StopNATO*
US Military Chief Addresses 'Space As Contested Environment'
http://www.maxwell.af.mil/news/story.asp?id=123142025
Maxwell-Gunter Air Force Base
March 30, 2009
'Space as a contested environment' debuts
by Capt. Ben Sakrisson
Air University Public Affairs
-"We have to think about what we would do if our systems in space were attacked.
How we determine attribution for the attack, and respond in appropriate manner.
We also must consider how to create a strategic environment that makes attacks
and their consequences unacceptable - a new thinking on deterrence."
-"[A]bove all other communities, the military needs to understand implications
of space as a contested environment and how to protect America's interests."
-Air University's NSSC and AWC, in concert with the Air Force Space Command
chair to AU, and the National Security Space Institute worked for the past year
with military educators and the Joint Staff at the Pentagon to introduce a
space-focused SAE into military education programs; eventually leading to the
issuance of "Space as a Contested Environment."
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. - A new Special Area of Emphasis topic titled "Space as
a Contested Environment," was introduced by U.S. military officials here March
30 at the 25th National Space Symposium.
Special Areas of Emphasis are established by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of
Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen, to address areas of great importance to the joint
military community. This SAE highlights the space domain's emergence as an
environment where U.S. operations and superiority may be challenged.
"America's way of life is dependent on space," said the director of Air
University's National Space Studies Center, Col. Sean D. McClung. "Many decades
ago space was thought of as a sanctuary, we are entering into a new era where
space is a contested environment."
The forum introduced the SAE which is expected to impact Joint Professional
Military Education curricula and teachings at military education institutions
across the entire Department of Defense.
"We have to think about what we would do if our systems in space were attacked,"
Colonel McClung said. "How we determine attribution for the attack, and respond
in appropriate manner. We also must consider how to create a strategic
environment that makes attacks and their consequences unacceptable - a new
thinking on deterrence."
....
The scope of the SAE reaches beyond the Department of Defense seeking to
catalyze thought on the effect of space operations on the interdependent trio of
civil, commercial and military end users.
"Not only the military needs to understand the implications of space as a
contested environment, but civil and commercial organizations as well need to
understand the impact on their ability to do business as usual," Colonel McClung
said. "But, above all other communities, the military needs to understand
implications of space as a contested environment and how to protect America's
interests."
The nominal level of attention by the U.S. military to the nation's dependencies
upon and vulnerability of space capabilities drew congressional attention in
2006. This led to Air University's self-examination on space education in 2007;
which noted internal deficiencies requiring revisions of space curricula in Air
Force Professional Military Education. Similar deficiencies were found in space
education across the Department of Defense by an Air War College study. This
disturbing trend culminated with the NSSC initiating the effort to have CJCS
establish an SAE on space in 2008.
Air University's NSSC and AWC, in concert with the Air Force Space Command chair
to AU, and the National Security Space Institute worked for the past year with
military educators and the Joint Staff at the Pentagon to introduce a
space-focused SAE into military education programs; eventually leading to the
issuance of "Space as a Contested Environment."
The forum was attended by individuals across the space spectrum from members of
the DoD and space industry to educators and government officials. Attendance at
the presentation was limited at 100 people and due to heavy interest and seating
considerations many interested people were turned away.
This event leads into an Air Force Research Institute Symposium on "Space as a
Contested Environment," at Maxwell Air Force Base, Ala., in November.
(Editor's Note: This is the first article in a series of reports from the 25th
National Space Symposium in Colorado Springs.)
===========================
Stop NATO
US Military Chief Addresses 'Space As Contested Environment'
http://www.maxwell.af.mil/news/story.asp?id=123142025
Maxwell-Gunter Air Force Base
March 30, 2009
'Space as a contested environment' debuts
by Capt. Ben Sakrisson
Air University Public Affairs
-"We have to think about what we would do if our systems in space were attacked.
How we determine attribution for the attack, and respond in appropriate manner.
We also must consider how to create a strategic environment that makes attacks
and their consequences unacceptable - a new thinking on deterrence."
-"[A]bove all other communities, the military needs to understand implications
of space as a contested environment and how to protect America's interests."
-Air University's NSSC and AWC, in concert with the Air Force Space Command
chair to AU, and the National Security Space Institute worked for the past year
with military educators and the Joint Staff at the Pentagon to introduce a
space-focused SAE into military education programs; eventually leading to the
issuance of "Space as a Contested Environment."
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. - A new Special Area of Emphasis topic titled "Space as
a Contested Environment," was introduced by U.S. military officials here March
30 at the 25th National Space Symposium.
Special Areas of Emphasis are established by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of
Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen, to address areas of great importance to the joint
military community. This SAE highlights the space domain's emergence as an
environment where U.S. operations and superiority may be challenged.
"America's way of life is dependent on space," said the director of Air
University's National Space Studies Center, Col. Sean D. McClung. "Many decades
ago space was thought of as a sanctuary, we are entering into a new era where
space is a contested environment."
The forum introduced the SAE which is expected to impact Joint Professional
Military Education curricula and teachings at military education institutions
across the entire Department of Defense.
"We have to think about what we would do if our systems in space were attacked,"
Colonel McClung said. "How we determine attribution for the attack, and respond
in appropriate manner. We also must consider how to create a strategic
environment that makes attacks and their consequences unacceptable - a new
thinking on deterrence."
....
The scope of the SAE reaches beyond the Department of Defense seeking to
catalyze thought on the effect of space operations on the interdependent trio of
civil, commercial and military end users.
"Not only the military needs to understand the implications of space as a
contested environment, but civil and commercial organizations as well need to
understand the impact on their ability to do business as usual," Colonel McClung
said. "But, above all other communities, the military needs to understand
implications of space as a contested environment and how to protect America's
interests."
The nominal level of attention by the U.S. military to the nation's dependencies
upon and vulnerability of space capabilities drew congressional attention in
2006. This led to Air University's self-examination on space education in 2007;
which noted internal deficiencies requiring revisions of space curricula in Air
Force Professional Military Education. Similar deficiencies were found in space
education across the Department of Defense by an Air War College study. This
disturbing trend culminated with the NSSC initiating the effort to have CJCS
establish an SAE on space in 2008.
Air University's NSSC and AWC, in concert with the Air Force Space Command chair
to AU, and the National Security Space Institute worked for the past year with
military educators and the Joint Staff at the Pentagon to introduce a
space-focused SAE into military education programs; eventually leading to the
issuance of "Space as a Contested Environment."
The forum was attended by individuals across the space spectrum from members of
the DoD and space industry to educators and government officials. Attendance at
the presentation was limited at 100 people and due to heavy interest and seating
considerations many interested people were turned away.
This event leads into an Air Force Research Institute Symposium on "Space as a
Contested Environment," at Maxwell Air Force Base, Ala., in November.
(Editor's Note: This is the first article in a series of reports from the 25th
National Space Symposium in Colorado Springs.)
===========================
Stop NATO
Text Fwd: NATO Proceeds With Missile Shield Regardless Of US
* Image source*
Same as the article as below
Text fwd StopNATO
http://www.aviationweek.com/aw/generic/story.jsp?id=news/NATO033009.xml&headline=Europe%20Warms%20to%20Missile%20Defense%20as%20US%20Cools&channel=defense
Aviation Week, March 30, 2009
Europe Warms to Missile Defense as US Cools
By Michael A Taverna, Robert Wall, Douglas Barrie and Andy Nativi
-[W]orking groups would be asked to study architectures for expanding the
alliance’s current emphasis on theater missile defense into a network covering
all of Europe, and to begin cooperatively developing key new components such as
early warning systems and interceptors..... French President Nicolas Sarkozy has
made missile defense a priority. The 2009-13 military spending plan, now before
parliament, includes a number of items earmarked for this area.
-The cornerstone of territorial BMD will be NATO’s Active Layered Theater
Ballistic Missile Defense (ALTBMD) and notably its Air Command and Control
System (ACCS), which is being supplied by Thales Raytheon Systems. ALTBMD is
effectively the backbone to link NATO’s disparate systems, ranging from
Patriot and Meads batteries to ships and potentially a U.S. interceptor site in
Poland....NATO is preparing to deploy the ACCS at 15 sites in 13 countries....
-[M]issile defense activities in the Netherlands also are ramping up. A
demonstration test shot of the Raytheon SM-3 ballistic missile interceptor off
of a Dutch ship is planned this year, a senior U.S. official notes.
This week’s NATO summit was supposed to serve as a catalyst to drive missile
defense activities forward in Europe. But with Washington still defining its
policy stance, the brakes are being put on expectations.
In another key area of alliance concern—Afghanistan—U.S. efforts to enlist
greater European force commitments are also not likely to materialize, says
Robert Hunter, a former U.S. ambassador to NATO and senior adviser at the Rand
Corp. The Apr. 3-4 summit in Germany and France comes about six months too early
for the Obama administration to have worked out a number of issues, he
indicates.
Arms control and disarmament constitute a concern that the alliance’s
strategic concept needs to address, says German defense minister Franz Josef
Young. “We need new initiatives for conventional arms control,” he argues.
But for European missile defense efforts, the summit had been regarded as a key
venue in which to urge members to embrace the concept of continental defense.
The Pentagon’s push for a European site for the ground-based midcourse
system—with a radar in the Czech Republic and interceptors in Poland—would
be the centerpiece. But the Obama administration has yet to articulate a clear
path forward on the third site, which Russia has strenuously opposed. As a
result, the Czech government this month decided not to seek parliamentary
endorsement for the radar construction.
In addition, it was hoped that working groups would be asked to study
architectures for expanding the alliance’s current emphasis on theater missile
defense into a network covering all of Europe, and to begin cooperatively
developing key new components such as early warning systems and interceptors. A
German military official has warned that without U.S. sites in Europe, there
would be no missile defense shield built on the continent.
However, not everyone shares that assessment. “Dropping the third site would
have no impact from a capability standpoint; there are other solutions
available,” says Richard Deakin, senior vice president of Thales Air Systems
Div., although he concedes there would be political repercussions from the
U.S.’s backing away from the so-called third site (augmenting those in Alaska
and California).
“We think BMD [ballistic missile defense] will be less important in Strasbourg
than initially expected,” says MBDA CEO Antoine Bouvier. “The likely
result,” he notes, is that there will be more of a focus on expanding air
defense capability to cover a range of new threats, using a building-block
approach, rather than a pure BMD program. MBDA is pursuing a dual-track
approach, with the Aster 30 Block 1 for the SAMP/T system providing a capability
against short-range ballistic threats. The Aster Block 2 design, with its high
endoatmospheric-intercept capability, would be able to counter medium-range
weapons.
Bouvier suggests that Aster Block 2 would be capable of engaging weapons such as
the SS-26, which follows a flattened trajectory and can begin terminal maneuvers
at altitudes of roughly 25,000 meters (82,000 ft.).
The Block 2 missile is intended to be compatible with both land and naval
launchers for the Aster 30.
France, which is expected to fully return into the NATO structure, is stepping
up its interest in missile defense. In contrast, European efforts are largely
fractured, with countries having been unable to agree on a common approach. That
leaves European governments charting different courses.
For example, at the end of the development period for the Medium Extended Air
Defense System (Meads) lower-tier anti-missile program, the Italian air force
will decide whether to acquire 2-4 batteries. The country’s navy is more
committed to missile defense but hasn’t yet determined whether to embrace a
European or U.S. interceptor.
Meanwhile, French President Nicolas Sarkozy has made missile defense a priority.
The 2009-13 military spending plan, now before parliament, includes a number of
items earmarked for this area. The most notable are an early warning
satellite/radar network and a Block 2 Aster air defense system that are supposed
to be operational by 2020.
Further funding is expected to come from a 2.3-billion euros ($3.1-billion)
French government economic stimulus package for aerospace and defense projects
approved last year, says Bouvier. With President Barack Obama willing to give
U.S. allies a more equitable role in common defense, “it’s an opportunity
for Europe to make its voice heard and contribute in kind, not just with
funding,” he says.
....
The cornerstone of territorial BMD will be NATO’s Active Layered Theater
Ballistic Missile Defense (ALTBMD) and notably its Air Command and Control
System (ACCS), which is being supplied by Thales Raytheon Systems. ALTBMD is
effectively the backbone to link NATO’s disparate systems, ranging from
Patriot and Meads batteries to ships and potentially a U.S. interceptor site in
Poland.
After a long development period that ended with factory acceptance testing last
year, NATO is preparing to deploy the ACCS at 15 sites in 13 countries, although
the system’s full functionality remains to be further enhanced. A framework
contract for the deployment phase, known as Replication, will be issued in June
and contracts let in batches, starting in November and continuing through 2012.
The initial operating capability will be reached in 2010 or 2011, depending on
which software version (factory acceptance or Block 1 upgrade) is used, says
Mathieu. Upgrade 1 renders the system compatible with NATO’s latest
planning/tasking requirements and provides new automation, interactivity and
real-time data features, as well as the ability to interface with existing
hardware. Full operating lower-tier capability will be reached in 2013 and full
upper tier in 2014-16.
The same architecture will be retained for territorial missile defense,
according to Mathieu, although specific new functions, such as the full air
picture, will be added.
Work on the Block 2 Aster, which will expand the defense capability to counter
ballistic and cruise missiles, is already underway under a French technology
development program, says Bruno Delacour, vice president of advanced weapon
solutions at Thales’s Air Systems Div. Block 2 will feature a long-range radar
to be derived from France’s M3R demonstrator.
The M3R—a fully distributed derivative of Thales’s new Ground Master 400
S-band active-array radar family—will begin tracking trials this year. Block 2
also will include a Ka- rather than a Ku-band seeker. It will be able to handle
the faster speeds and smaller radar cross sections of longer-range missiles.
This seeker is also set to start trials in 2009.
In the meantime, budget lines for operational geostationary early warning
satellite and radar systems are ready and awaiting approval in the multiyear
French defense spending plan. The objective is for technology to be mature
enough for development to begin around 2013. France says it is prepared to go
ahead with the undertaking, whether or not it lines up with other European
partners. The system, comprising one satellite initially, will draw on
experience from a twin-microsatellite demonstrator called Spirale, launched
early this year. It would cost 1-2 billion euros.
Mathieu says the very-long-range early warning ground radar will be based, like
the M3R, on the GM 400. However, its parallel architecture will require a
significantly greater scale than the M3R, which he admits will pose a challenge.
“The GM 400 was a hardware breakthrough; now we have to operate a software
breakthrough,” he quips.
Meanwhile, missile defense activities in the Netherlands also are ramping up. A
demonstration test shot of the Raytheon SM-3 ballistic missile interceptor off
of a Dutch ship is planned this year, a senior U.S. official notes.
===========================
Stop NATO
Text Fwd: US Senators Push New Generation Nuclear Stealth Bomber
StopNATO
http://www.defensenews.com/story.php?i=4010959&c=AIR&s=TOP
March 28, 2009
Senators Push for Next-Generation Bomber
By William Matthews
-They envision future wars in "heavily defended airspace" where bombers will
confront "extremely sophisticated and deadly air defense systems."
The "next-generation bomber" is the latest weapon to acquire its very own
congressional delegation.
Six U.S. senators have sent a letter urging President Barack Obama not to kill
the bomber, which for now is little more than a notion in the minds of some Air
Force planners.
But the senators - all of whom represent states where future bombers might be
based - say the need for a new bomber is "urgent."
The bomber is expected to cost $10 billion to design and could be ready by 2018,
according to the Congressional Research Service.
However, recent news reports suggest that the bomber may be a casualty in the
2010 budget.
So the senators wrote to the president, "We believe termination of the Next
Generation Bomber would do tremendous damage to our nation's future ability to
project power abroad."
They envision future wars in "heavily defended airspace" where bombers will
confront "extremely sophisticated and deadly air defense systems."
Of existing bombers, B-52s and B-1s lack the stealth technology needed to evade
modern air defense systems. B-2s are stealthy, but there are only 16 of them,
the senators said March 26.
The senators are John Thune and Tim Johnson of South Dakota, David Vitter and
Mary Landrieu of Louisiana and John Cornyn and Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas.
They represent Ellsworth, Barksdale and Dyess Air Force bases, respectively.
The bomber joins the F-22 (44 senators), ground-based midcourse missile defense
(the Alaska delegation), Virginia-class submarines (Virginia and Connecticut
lawmakers) among the weapons with congressional custodians.
===========================
Stop NATO
http://www.defensenews.com/story.php?i=4010959&c=AIR&s=TOP
March 28, 2009
Senators Push for Next-Generation Bomber
By William Matthews
-They envision future wars in "heavily defended airspace" where bombers will
confront "extremely sophisticated and deadly air defense systems."
The "next-generation bomber" is the latest weapon to acquire its very own
congressional delegation.
Six U.S. senators have sent a letter urging President Barack Obama not to kill
the bomber, which for now is little more than a notion in the minds of some Air
Force planners.
But the senators - all of whom represent states where future bombers might be
based - say the need for a new bomber is "urgent."
The bomber is expected to cost $10 billion to design and could be ready by 2018,
according to the Congressional Research Service.
However, recent news reports suggest that the bomber may be a casualty in the
2010 budget.
So the senators wrote to the president, "We believe termination of the Next
Generation Bomber would do tremendous damage to our nation's future ability to
project power abroad."
They envision future wars in "heavily defended airspace" where bombers will
confront "extremely sophisticated and deadly air defense systems."
Of existing bombers, B-52s and B-1s lack the stealth technology needed to evade
modern air defense systems. B-2s are stealthy, but there are only 16 of them,
the senators said March 26.
The senators are John Thune and Tim Johnson of South Dakota, David Vitter and
Mary Landrieu of Louisiana and John Cornyn and Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas.
They represent Ellsworth, Barksdale and Dyess Air Force bases, respectively.
The bomber joins the F-22 (44 senators), ground-based midcourse missile defense
(the Alaska delegation), Virginia-class submarines (Virginia and Connecticut
lawmakers) among the weapons with congressional custodians.
===========================
Stop NATO
Text Fwd: Pacific Freeze: Arms Race in Asia
Part of the Text Pac Freeze New Letter Issue 1, March 2009
fwd from Bruce Gagnon
http://pacificfreeze.ips-dc.org/call-to-action/
Call to Action
The Asia-Pacific Freeze Campaign: A Call for a Safer, Greener Future
With multiple crises affecting our world – global economy, climate change, resource depletion – we must urgently redirect the hundreds of billions of dollars spent on preparing for war. The United States, Russia, China, Japan, South Korea, and North Korea spent about $970 billion in 2008 on the military. That figure, alarmingly, is on the rise. For about one-tenth of this near-trillion dollar amount – about $90 billion a year – we can achieve more genuine security by eliminating global starvation and malnutrition, educating every child on earth, making clean water and sanitation accessible for all, and reversing the global spread of AIDS and malaria.
With the Asia-Pacific Freeze campaign, we the people of this region call on our governments to freeze military spending and then reduce these budgets on an equitable basis. The savings must be put toward achieving genuine security and a sustainable economy for the future of our planet.
Why these six nations? In Northeast Asia, the largest militaries in the world confront each other. Yet, these countries have also begun to create a peace and security system through the Six Party Talks. In the Joint Statement of September 19, 2005, the countries agreed to the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula, the normalization of relations with North Korea, and joint efforts for regional peace and stability. But these efforts, which we endorse, cannot achieve genuine peace in a climate of ever-increasing military budgets. Engaged citizens and social movements must now put military spending on the global agenda and make real our common vision of a peaceful world.
The Asia-Pacific Freeze would not only play an essential role in defusing tensions on the Korean peninsula. It would also be the first step in drawing down mounting tensions between the United States and China. A deep divide is opening up between continental powers (Russia, China, Central Asia) and maritime powers (United States, Japan, Australia). By cooperating on freezing and then reducing military spending, the six countries can help bridge this divide and turn Northeast Asia into a model of peace and sustainable development.
The Freeze and reduction of military spending will also greatly improve the lives and welfare of millions of people in the larger Pacific region who have suffered so much from war, violence, and the social and environmental hazards caused by U.S. military bases.
A regional Freeze and reduction will have global impact, too. The six countries account for 65% of global military spending, with the United States responsible for nearly 50% of the total. In the last five years, every country but Japan has dramatically increased its military spending, and even Japan faces a powerful political movement to abandon its “peace constitution.” The United States and Russia are the top arms exporters in the world, while China is in the top 10. China and South Korea are also leading importers, and Japan’s military budget – though still less than 1% of its GNP – is still among the top five in the world. North Korea devotes a considerable share of its budget to the military. By redirecting the budgets of the leading arms-producing, exporting, and importing nations, an Asia-Pacific Freeze is essential to shrinking the global military-industrial complex.
A freeze on military spending is just the start. Reducing military budgets – as well as freezing arms exports and imports to the region, stopping the construction of new military bases, and halting the construction of new weapons systems – will also be critical components of a collective peace and security system for the region. As the leading military spender, the United States must lead the way with military reductions. We recommend that a portion of the savings go into an Asian Green Fund to help countries in the region address global warming.
As individual countries and as an international community, we have a choice. We can continue on a dangerous path seeking ever-elusive “security” through military might. Or we can choose to address the pressing problems facing us all – global economic crisis, climate change, nuclear proliferation – by no longer wasting our precious resources on preparations for war.
We the undersigned ask you to sign our petition.
fwd from Bruce Gagnon
http://pacificfreeze.ips-dc.org/call-to-action/
Call to Action
The Asia-Pacific Freeze Campaign: A Call for a Safer, Greener Future
With multiple crises affecting our world – global economy, climate change, resource depletion – we must urgently redirect the hundreds of billions of dollars spent on preparing for war. The United States, Russia, China, Japan, South Korea, and North Korea spent about $970 billion in 2008 on the military. That figure, alarmingly, is on the rise. For about one-tenth of this near-trillion dollar amount – about $90 billion a year – we can achieve more genuine security by eliminating global starvation and malnutrition, educating every child on earth, making clean water and sanitation accessible for all, and reversing the global spread of AIDS and malaria.
With the Asia-Pacific Freeze campaign, we the people of this region call on our governments to freeze military spending and then reduce these budgets on an equitable basis. The savings must be put toward achieving genuine security and a sustainable economy for the future of our planet.
Why these six nations? In Northeast Asia, the largest militaries in the world confront each other. Yet, these countries have also begun to create a peace and security system through the Six Party Talks. In the Joint Statement of September 19, 2005, the countries agreed to the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula, the normalization of relations with North Korea, and joint efforts for regional peace and stability. But these efforts, which we endorse, cannot achieve genuine peace in a climate of ever-increasing military budgets. Engaged citizens and social movements must now put military spending on the global agenda and make real our common vision of a peaceful world.
The Asia-Pacific Freeze would not only play an essential role in defusing tensions on the Korean peninsula. It would also be the first step in drawing down mounting tensions between the United States and China. A deep divide is opening up between continental powers (Russia, China, Central Asia) and maritime powers (United States, Japan, Australia). By cooperating on freezing and then reducing military spending, the six countries can help bridge this divide and turn Northeast Asia into a model of peace and sustainable development.
The Freeze and reduction of military spending will also greatly improve the lives and welfare of millions of people in the larger Pacific region who have suffered so much from war, violence, and the social and environmental hazards caused by U.S. military bases.
A regional Freeze and reduction will have global impact, too. The six countries account for 65% of global military spending, with the United States responsible for nearly 50% of the total. In the last five years, every country but Japan has dramatically increased its military spending, and even Japan faces a powerful political movement to abandon its “peace constitution.” The United States and Russia are the top arms exporters in the world, while China is in the top 10. China and South Korea are also leading importers, and Japan’s military budget – though still less than 1% of its GNP – is still among the top five in the world. North Korea devotes a considerable share of its budget to the military. By redirecting the budgets of the leading arms-producing, exporting, and importing nations, an Asia-Pacific Freeze is essential to shrinking the global military-industrial complex.
A freeze on military spending is just the start. Reducing military budgets – as well as freezing arms exports and imports to the region, stopping the construction of new military bases, and halting the construction of new weapons systems – will also be critical components of a collective peace and security system for the region. As the leading military spender, the United States must lead the way with military reductions. We recommend that a portion of the savings go into an Asian Green Fund to help countries in the region address global warming.
As individual countries and as an international community, we have a choice. We can continue on a dangerous path seeking ever-elusive “security” through military might. Or we can choose to address the pressing problems facing us all – global economic crisis, climate change, nuclear proliferation – by no longer wasting our precious resources on preparations for war.
We the undersigned ask you to sign our petition.
Text Fwd: Dear Secretary Gates
Text fwd from Bruce Gagnon on March 31, 2009
http://www.missiledefenseadvocacy.org/news.aspx?news_id=1654
Missile Defense in the News
Dear Secretary Gates
March 20, 2009
Dear Members and Friends,
Today, I delivered on behalf of our membership, a letter to the United States Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates urging the use of all available missile defense assets to the maximum capability to prepare in the face of the uncertainties of the North Korea "Space Launch" that might pose a threat to Alaska, Hawaii and other regions of the United States.
One of the United States most valuable assets and the best discriminating and tracking sensor for ballistic missile defense, the Sea-Based X-Band Radar (SBX) has not been deployed and has been docked for the past several months at Ford Island, Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. The SBX was the main sensor in the recent successful long-range ballistic missile intercept on December 5, 2008 providing the primary targeting information for the Ground Based Interceptor (GBI) out of Vandenberg Air Force Base, CA. that successfully intercepted a long-range ballistic missile from Kodiak Island, Alaska.
The December 5th, 2008 test simulated a North Korean long-range missile threat using the current U.S. missile defense deployed assets designed for a long range ballistic missile intercept. The SBX was also successfully deployed and used with the Aegis Sea-Based Missile Defense System for the February 21, 2008 successful NRO satellite shoot down which had a 1 in 45 chance of harming human life if not intercepted. The SBX is a self propelled X-band radar and has a sea speed of up to 10 knots per hour.
If deployed the SBX can begin to emit its sensor 50 or so miles from Hawaii and can become effective by providing sensoring information to the deployed long-range missile defense system in place today. The SBX cost $950 million dollars to build and costs additional tens of millions of dollars to maintain and operate annually.
The azimuth or launch direction for an ideal space orbital launch from North Korea using optimal rotation of the earth is in the mid-80s which over flies the country of Japan and heads east towards the Pacific Ocean. The azimuth for a long-range ballistic missile from North Korea to Hawaii is in the similar 80s degree range. North Korea has declared two "clear zones" on either side of Japan for the first and second rocket stages accounting for the debris falling from their rocket or missile launch. The North Korea trajectory following that flight path would terminate close to Hawaii if the rocket failed to achieve orbit or was a long range ballistic missile launch.
The SBX is the most powerful and most capable sensor to discriminate the debris, payload and a possible reentry vehicle in detail from a North Korean long range missile or rocket launch traveling at extreme high speeds across the Pacific Ocean.
Below is the text of the letter sent to Secretary Robert M. Gates:
Dear Secretary Gates,
As Chairman of the Missile Defense Advocacy Alliance representing 10,000 members nationwide with a 7 year consistent record of promoting the development and deployment of a robust missile defense capability for the United States, I am compelled to write to you regarding my concern for America's actions in the face of the growing North Korean missile threat. While I recognize the right of every sovereign nation to pursue a peaceful space program, I believe you would agree that the upcoming North Korean "space launch" could very well have military implications for the future and in the near term, threaten Alaska, Hawaii or other regions of the United States. Therefore, I urge that you consider activating all available missile defense assets to the Pacific to protect against an errant space launch attempt or a ballistic missile launch that threatens the United Stares or our allies. By way of reference, I understand that the assets deployed for the successful intercept of a long range ballistic missile target this past December 5, 2008 can put the United States in the most effective posture to counter any North Korean action in the next few weeks.
On a personal level and by the full support of my membership, I encourage you to place all of our Missile Defense assets in the Pacific region in the best position to counter the ambiguity that North Korea has historically demonstrated.
Respectfully,
Riki Ellison
Chairman and Founder
Missile Defense Advocacy Alliance
Text Fwd: Toxic Rocket Fuel Problem Being Ignored
Text Fwd from Bruce Gagnon on March 31, 2009
http://www.wisn.com/health/19040768/detail.html
Outrage Growing Over Perchlorate Contamination Of Food
Group Says Government Must To More To Protect Public
March 30, 2009
MILWAUKEE -- An environmental group is accusing the government of not doing enough to protect people and the nation’s food from potentially dangerous levels of a rocket fuel ingredient.
It’s called perchlorate, and it’s a key component in rocket fuel.
"We don't think people realize how widespread of a contaminant it is," Environmental Working Group Dr. Anila Jacob said.
The group says that 20 million to 40 million Americans may be exposed to the chemical.
"We know that the CDC has found perchlorate in 100 percent of the people they've tested, so there's widespread exposure, through contaminated drinking water and also through contaminated food," Jacob said.
The concern is that the fuel additive has seeped into the ground and water in dozens of states -- usually from old military bases or NASA sites. That's how the group said how perchlorate has ended up in the drinking water and the food supply.
For most people, perchlorate contamination poses almost no health risk at all.
But it can be a serious concern for certain groups. It can affect thyroid hormone levels, which in a fetus or newborn baby can inhibit brain development -- which is why advocacy groups said pregnant women and nursing moms need to be made aware.
They have called for better education and stricter food and water guidelines. Congress even held hearings into the matter but not much was happening.
"We made very little progress, we may have even taken a step backward," Jacob said.
Five months ago, the EPA reached a decision -- to do nothing. It would not regulate perchlorate in drinking water at all.
The decision surprised many, and the resulting public outcry led the agency to re-think its position in early January, calling for more investigation.
The EWG says that's not good enough.
"We consider it to be a delay tactic -- every day that we delay in regulating this chemical, millions of people continue to be exposed," Jacob said.
Perchlorate has not shown up in Wisconsin’s groundwater.
The EWG said it is concerned about food that comes from states such as California and Texas, where there is contamination.
The group is also currently urging the FDA to increase its research into perchlorate contamination in the food supply, and search for news ways to reduce the risk.
The FDA said, so far testing has turned up no need for any new guidelines or warnings about perchlorate levels in food. But the testing has been limited to small samples -- and the agency said much more needs to be done, to know how widespread the contamination may be.
Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space
PO Box 652
Brunswick, ME 04011
(207) 443-9502
http://www.space4peace.org
globalnet@mindspring.com
http://space4peace.blogspot.com (Blog)
http://www.wisn.com/health/19040768/detail.html
Outrage Growing Over Perchlorate Contamination Of Food
Group Says Government Must To More To Protect Public
March 30, 2009
MILWAUKEE -- An environmental group is accusing the government of not doing enough to protect people and the nation’s food from potentially dangerous levels of a rocket fuel ingredient.
It’s called perchlorate, and it’s a key component in rocket fuel.
"We don't think people realize how widespread of a contaminant it is," Environmental Working Group Dr. Anila Jacob said.
The group says that 20 million to 40 million Americans may be exposed to the chemical.
"We know that the CDC has found perchlorate in 100 percent of the people they've tested, so there's widespread exposure, through contaminated drinking water and also through contaminated food," Jacob said.
The concern is that the fuel additive has seeped into the ground and water in dozens of states -- usually from old military bases or NASA sites. That's how the group said how perchlorate has ended up in the drinking water and the food supply.
For most people, perchlorate contamination poses almost no health risk at all.
But it can be a serious concern for certain groups. It can affect thyroid hormone levels, which in a fetus or newborn baby can inhibit brain development -- which is why advocacy groups said pregnant women and nursing moms need to be made aware.
They have called for better education and stricter food and water guidelines. Congress even held hearings into the matter but not much was happening.
"We made very little progress, we may have even taken a step backward," Jacob said.
Five months ago, the EPA reached a decision -- to do nothing. It would not regulate perchlorate in drinking water at all.
The decision surprised many, and the resulting public outcry led the agency to re-think its position in early January, calling for more investigation.
The EWG says that's not good enough.
"We consider it to be a delay tactic -- every day that we delay in regulating this chemical, millions of people continue to be exposed," Jacob said.
Perchlorate has not shown up in Wisconsin’s groundwater.
The EWG said it is concerned about food that comes from states such as California and Texas, where there is contamination.
The group is also currently urging the FDA to increase its research into perchlorate contamination in the food supply, and search for news ways to reduce the risk.
The FDA said, so far testing has turned up no need for any new guidelines or warnings about perchlorate levels in food. But the testing has been limited to small samples -- and the agency said much more needs to be done, to know how widespread the contamination may be.
Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space
PO Box 652
Brunswick, ME 04011
(207) 443-9502
http://www.space4peace.org
globalnet@mindspring.com
http://space4peace.blogspot.com (Blog)
Video fwd: Resist Africom
* Video informed in Bruce Gagnon's blog, Space4Peace
Monday, March 30, 2009
PREDICTIONS FROM A POLITICAL REALIST
* The video linked site from the blog above is Resist Africom
" Resist AFRICOM is a campaign comprised of concerned U.S. and Africa-based organizations and individuals opposed to the new U.S. military command for Africa (AFRICOM).
* Related article *
StopNATO
US Congress Gives African Command What It Wants
March 30, 2009
* Related blog*
http://nobasestorieskorea.blogspot.com/2009/03/text-fwd-global-energy-war-washingtons.html
Monday, March 30, 2009
Text Fwd: Global Energy War: Washington's New Kissinger
Monday, March 30, 2009
PREDICTIONS FROM A POLITICAL REALIST
* The video linked site from the blog above is Resist Africom
" Resist AFRICOM is a campaign comprised of concerned U.S. and Africa-based organizations and individuals opposed to the new U.S. military command for Africa (AFRICOM).
With the establishment of AFRICOM, the Pentagon attempts to increase access to Africa's oil and to wage a new front in the Global War on Terror without regard for the needs or desires of African people. Enabled by oil companies and private military contractors, AFRICOM serves as the latest frontier in military expansionism, violating the human rights and civil liberties of Africans who have voiced a strong "no" to U.S. military presence. We reject this militarization of foreign engagement. Instead, our vision is a comprehensive U.S. foreign policy grounded in true partnership with the African Union, African governments, and civil society on peace, justice, security, and development."
* Related article *
StopNATO
US Congress Gives African Command What It Wants
March 30, 2009
* Related blog*
http://nobasestorieskorea.blogspot.com/2009/03/text-fwd-global-energy-war-washingtons.html
Monday, March 30, 2009
Text Fwd: Global Energy War: Washington's New Kissinger
Poster Fwd: International No-War Joint Action, April 4
* Image fwd from the Solidarity for Peace And Reunification of Korea
Stop the War and Occupation!
No Military Spending but People's Welfare!
Joined by more than 36 organizations, Seoul, April 4, 3PM
Text fwd: Text Fwd: A Return of Right-Wing Terror in South Korea?
http://koreareport2.blogspot.com/2009/03/return-of-right-wing-terror-in-south.html
March 30, 2009
A Return of Right-Wing Terror in South Korea?
A civilian "Patriotic Mobile Force" [photo and article in Korean from OhMyNews] was created recently by ultra-conservatives in South Korea to "physically repel leftist protesters." What is disturbing is that the founders of this group, mostly ex-soldiers, are non-apologetic to the right-wing terror that was rampant in the post-liberation period of 1945 to 1950 when extreme violence and political assassinations were used to intimidate leftist and even moderate political forces. Presence of this group as counter-demonstrators in public protests will likely inflame the situation that is already tense due to stepped-up police crack-down of protesters.
Monday, March 30, 2009
Text Fwd: S. Korea-U.S.-Japan step up their joint response against N. Korea’s imminent “satellite” launch
* Image Source*
Same as article below
"Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force‘s (JMSDF) ballistic missile defense ships Chokai (R) and Kongou leave from a port of JMSDF Sasebo Base in Sasebo, southwestern Japan, March 28, 2009. Japan ordered its military on Friday to prepare to intercept any dangerous debris that might fall on its territory if a missile launch planned by North Korea goes wrong. (REUTERS/Kyodo)"
http://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_northkorea/346942.html
S. Korea-U.S.-Japan step up their joint response against N. Korea’s imminent “satellite” launch:
However, with China and Russia opposing sanctions against Pyongyang, coordinated responses to North Korea are in question
Posted on : Mar.30,2009 12:42 KST Modified on : Mar.30,2009 16:53 KST
With North Korea‘s “satellite” launch imminent, South Korea, the U.S. and Japan are stepping up their efforts to determine a joint response to what they suspect is a cover to test-fire a long-range missile. However experts worry differences in opinion with China and Russia indicates that the five powers face hurdles in developing a coordinated strategy.
Emerging from a two-hour long meeting with Stephen Bosworth, U.S. special envoy to North Korea, and his assistant Sung Kim on March 27 (local time), South Korea’s top negotiator Wi Sung-lac said, “We discussed the issues of referring (the launch) to the (U.N.) Security Council and resuming the six-party talks.” He added, “A satellite launch by North Korea would be found in violation of the 1718 U.N. resolution, and we will respond accordingly.”
On the same day, Akitaka Saiki, Japan‘s chief delegate for the six-party talks, held a bilateral meeting with his U.S counterparts. “(If the North goes ahead with the launch), we will immediately refer it to the U.N. Security Council. I believe there is no discord (among the three nations) on this matter.”
These remarks by the top negotiators from South Korea, Japan and the U.S. offer no more than a reconfirmation of earlier statements. A coordinated front on countermeasures proves difficult, however, as China and Russia remain lukewarm regarding deploying sanctions. Meanwhile both China and Russia have tried to dissuade the North from proceeding with the satellite launch.
Indeed, the Russian government reportedly concluded that it would not violate the 1718 resolution if the North launches a satellite. The Chinese foreign ministry has called for Japan to remain calm in relation to Pyongyang’s move to launch a rocket, according to the Mainichi Shinbun newspaper. China reportedly says that they agree to issue an U.N. chairman’s statement in response to North Korea’s launch and opposes taking any action beyond that.
Meanwhile, Pyongyang and Washington are busy seeing who can maintain the upper hand. Bosworth told the Washington Post on March 28 that he wishes to meet North Korean National Defense Commission Chairman Kim Jong-il, during the six-party talks, he will focus to develop more comprehensive policies regarding disarmament, that include bilateral talks with Pyongyang.
However, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton recently told Fox News that it will be tough for North Korea to receive energy and food aid if it goes ahead with the missile launch.
The North remains recalcitrant. On March 26, a North Korean foreign ministry spokesman said, “There will be no six-party talks should this matter (of the launch) be referred to the U.N. Security Council.” Two days later, the Chosun Shinbo, a newspaper published by the General Association of North Korean Residents in Japan, reiterated that Pyongyang is aiming to launch a “satellite” for peaceful space-development purposes.
Please direct questions or comments to [englishhani@hani.co.kr]
© 2006 The Hankyoreh Media Company.
* Related article*
StopNATO
Russian General: West Practices Double Standards On N. Korea, Iran
March 28, 2009
* Related blog*
http://nobasestorieskorea.blogspot.com/2009/03/text-fwd-solidarity-email-from-japan_29.html
Sunday, March 29, 2009
Text Fwd: Solidarity Email from Japan & an Appeal for Peace
http://nobasestorieskorea.blogspot.com/2009/03/text-fwd-korea-in-some-context.html
Saturday, March 28, 2009
Text Fwd: KOREA IN SOME CONTEXT
http://nobasestorieskorea.blogspot.com/2009/03/text-fwd-for-warm-solidarity-with.html
Saturday, March 28, 2009
Text fwd: For warm solidarity with the friends in the Czech and against the propaganda against the North Korea
http://nobasestorieskorea.blogspot.com/2009/03/text-fwd-north-koreas-satellite-versus.html
Thursday, March 12, 2009
Text fwd: North Korea’s Satellite versus US-ROK Joint Military Exercise
* This blog thankfully loaded on StopNATO
No Bases:S. Korea-US-Japan Step Up Joint Response To N. Korea Launch,
March 30, 2009
Text Fwd: [nousbases] Empire of bases - Bulletin of Atomic Scientists article
Text Fwd from Stephanie Westbrook, Agatha Haun on March 29, 2009
http://tinyurl.com/aqq4zu
Empire of bases
By Hugh Gusterson | 10 March 2009
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
Before reading this article, try to answer this question: How many military
bases does the United States have in other countries: a) 100; b) 300; c)
700; or d) 1,000.
According to the Pentagon's own list PDF, the answer is around 865, but if
you include the new bases in Iraq and Afghanistan it is over a thousand.
These thousand bases constitute 95 percent of all the military bases any
country in the world maintains on any other country's territory. In other
words, the United States is to military bases as Heinz is to ketchup.
The old way of doing colonialism, practiced by the Europeans, was to take
over entire countries and administer them. But this was clumsy. The United
States has pioneered a leaner approach to global empire. As historian
Chalmers Johnson says, "America's version of the colony is the military
base." The United States, says Johnson, has an "empire of bases."
Its 'empire of bases' gives the United States global reach, but the shape of
this empire, insofar as it tilts toward Europe, is a bloated and anachronistic
holdover from the Cold War."These bases do not come cheap. Excluding
U.S. bases in Afghanistan and Iraq, the United States spends about $102
billion a year to run its overseas bases, according to Miriam Pemberton of
the Institute for Policy Studies. And in many cases you have to ask what
purpose they serve. For example, the United States has 227 bases in
Germany. Maybe this made sense during the Cold War, when Germany
was split in two by the iron curtain and U.S. policy makers sought to
persuade the Soviets that the American people would see an attack on
Europe as an attack on itself. But in a new era when Germany is reunited
and the United States is concerned about flashpoints of conflict in Asia,
Africa, and the Middle East, it makes as much sense for the Pentagon to
hold onto 227 military bases in Germany as it would for the post office to
maintain a fleet of horses and buggies.
Drowning in red ink, the White House is desperate to cut unnecessary
costs in the federal budget, and Massachusetts Cong. Barney Frank, a
Democrat, has suggested that the Pentagon budget could be cut by 25
percent. Whether or not one thinks Frank's number is politically realistic,
foreign bases are surely a lucrative target for the budget cutter's axe. In
2004 Donald Rumsfeld estimated that the United States could save $12
billion by closing 200 or so foreign bases. This would also be relatively cost-
free politically since the locals who may have become economically
dependent upon the bases are foreigners and cannot vote retribution in
U.S. elections.
Yet those foreign bases seem invisible as budget cutters squint at the
Pentagon's $664 billion proposed budget. Take the March 1st editorial in
the New York Times, "The Pentagon Meets the Real World." The Times's
editorialists called for "political courage" from the White House in cutting the
defense budget. Their suggestions? Cut the air force's F-22 fighter and the
navy's DDG-1000 destroyer and scale back missile defense and the army's
Future Combat System to save $10 billion plus a year. All good
suggestions, but what about those foreign bases?
Even if politicians and media pundits seem oblivious to these bases,
treating the stationing of U.S. troops all over the world as a natural fact, the
U.S. empire of bases is attracting increasing attention from academics and
activists--as evidenced by a conference on U.S. foreign bases at American
University in late February. NYU Press just published Catherine Lutz's
Bases of Empire, a book that brings together academics who study U.S.
military bases and activists against the bases. Rutgers University Press has
published Kate McCaffrey's Military Power and Popular Protest, a study of
the U.S. base at Vieques, Puerto Rico, which was closed in the face of
massive protests from the local population. And Princeton University Press
is about to publish David Vine's Island of Shame--a book that tells the story
of how the United States and Britain secretly agreed to deport the
Chagossian inhabitants of Diego Garcia to Mauritius and the Seychelles so
their island could be turned into a military base. The Americans were so
thorough that they even gassed all the Chagossian dogs. The Chagossians
have been denied their day in court in the United States but won their case
against the British government in three trials, only to have the judgment
overturned by the highest court in the land, the House of Lords. They are
now appealing to the European Court of Human Rights.
American leaders speak of foreign bases as cementing alliances with
foreign nations, largely through the trade and aid agreements that often
accompany base leases. Yet, U.S. soldiers live in a sort of cocooned
simulacrum of America in their bases, watching American TV, listening to
American rap and heavy metal, and eating American fast food, so that the
transplanted farm boys and street kids have little exposure to another way
of life. Meanwhile, on the other side of the barbed-wire fence, local residents
and businesses often become economically dependent on the soldiers and
have a stake in their staying.
These bases can become flashpoints for conflict. Military bases invariably
discharge toxic waste into local ecosystems, as in Guam where military
bases have led to no fewer than 19 superfund sites. Such contamination
generates resentment and sometimes, as in Vieques in the 1990s, full-
blown social movements against the bases. The United States used
Vieques for live-bombing practice 180 days a year, and by the time the
United States withdrew in 2003, the landscape was littered with exploded
and unexploded ordinance, depleted uranium rounds, heavy metals, oil,
lubricants, solvents, and acids. According to local activists, the cancer rate
on Vieques was 30 percent higher than on the rest of Puerto Rico.
It is also inevitable that, from time to time, U.S. soldiers--often drunk--
commit crimes. The resentment these crimes cause is only exacerbated by
the U.S. government's frequent insistence that such crimes not be
prosecuted in local courts. In 2002, two U.S. soldiers killed two teenage
girls in Korea as they walked to a birthday party. Korean campaigners claim
this was one of 52,000 crimes committed by U.S. soldiers in Korea between
1967 and 2002. The two U.S. soldiers were immediately repatriated to the
United States so they could escape prosecution in Korea. In 1998, a
marine pilot sliced through the cable of a ski gondola in Italy, killing 20
people, but U.S. officials slapped him on the wrist and refused to allow
Italian authorities to try him. These and other similar incidents injured U.S.
relations with important allies.
The 9/11 attacks are arguably the most spectacular example of the kind of
blowback that can be generated from local resentment against U.S. bases.
In the 1990s, the presence of U.S. military bases near the holiest sites of
Sunni Islam in Saudi Arabia angered Osama bin Laden and provided Al
Qaeda with a potent recruitment tool. The United States wisely closed its
largest bases in Saudi Arabia, but it opened additional bases in Iraq and
Afghanistan that are rapidly becoming new sources of friction in the
relationship between the United States and the peoples of the Middle East.
Its "empire of bases" gives the United States global reach, but the shape of
this empire, insofar as it tilts toward Europe, is a bloated and anachronistic
holdover from the Cold War. Many of these bases are a luxury the United
States can no longer afford at a time of record budget deficits. Moreover,
U.S. foreign bases have a double edge: they project American power
across the globe, but they also inflame U.S. foreign relations, generating
resentment against the prostitution, environmental damage, petty crime,
and everyday ethnocentrism that are their inevitable corollaries. Such
resentments have recently forced the closure of U.S. bases in Ecuador,
Puerto Rico, and Kyrgyzstan, and if past is prologue, more movements
against U.S. bases can be expected in the future. Over the next 50 years, I
believe we will witness the emergence of a new international norm
according to which foreign military bases will be as indefensible as the
colonial occupation of another country has become during the last 50 years.
The Declaration of Independence criticizes the British "for quartering large
bodies of armed troops among us" and "for protecting them, by a mock trial,
from punishment for any murders which they should commit on the
inhabitants of these States." Fine words! The United States should start
taking them to heart.
http://tinyurl.com/aqq4zu
Empire of bases
By Hugh Gusterson | 10 March 2009
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
Before reading this article, try to answer this question: How many military
bases does the United States have in other countries: a) 100; b) 300; c)
700; or d) 1,000.
According to the Pentagon's own list PDF, the answer is around 865, but if
you include the new bases in Iraq and Afghanistan it is over a thousand.
These thousand bases constitute 95 percent of all the military bases any
country in the world maintains on any other country's territory. In other
words, the United States is to military bases as Heinz is to ketchup.
The old way of doing colonialism, practiced by the Europeans, was to take
over entire countries and administer them. But this was clumsy. The United
States has pioneered a leaner approach to global empire. As historian
Chalmers Johnson says, "America's version of the colony is the military
base." The United States, says Johnson, has an "empire of bases."
Its 'empire of bases' gives the United States global reach, but the shape of
this empire, insofar as it tilts toward Europe, is a bloated and anachronistic
holdover from the Cold War."These bases do not come cheap. Excluding
U.S. bases in Afghanistan and Iraq, the United States spends about $102
billion a year to run its overseas bases, according to Miriam Pemberton of
the Institute for Policy Studies. And in many cases you have to ask what
purpose they serve. For example, the United States has 227 bases in
Germany. Maybe this made sense during the Cold War, when Germany
was split in two by the iron curtain and U.S. policy makers sought to
persuade the Soviets that the American people would see an attack on
Europe as an attack on itself. But in a new era when Germany is reunited
and the United States is concerned about flashpoints of conflict in Asia,
Africa, and the Middle East, it makes as much sense for the Pentagon to
hold onto 227 military bases in Germany as it would for the post office to
maintain a fleet of horses and buggies.
Drowning in red ink, the White House is desperate to cut unnecessary
costs in the federal budget, and Massachusetts Cong. Barney Frank, a
Democrat, has suggested that the Pentagon budget could be cut by 25
percent. Whether or not one thinks Frank's number is politically realistic,
foreign bases are surely a lucrative target for the budget cutter's axe. In
2004 Donald Rumsfeld estimated that the United States could save $12
billion by closing 200 or so foreign bases. This would also be relatively cost-
free politically since the locals who may have become economically
dependent upon the bases are foreigners and cannot vote retribution in
U.S. elections.
Yet those foreign bases seem invisible as budget cutters squint at the
Pentagon's $664 billion proposed budget. Take the March 1st editorial in
the New York Times, "The Pentagon Meets the Real World." The Times's
editorialists called for "political courage" from the White House in cutting the
defense budget. Their suggestions? Cut the air force's F-22 fighter and the
navy's DDG-1000 destroyer and scale back missile defense and the army's
Future Combat System to save $10 billion plus a year. All good
suggestions, but what about those foreign bases?
Even if politicians and media pundits seem oblivious to these bases,
treating the stationing of U.S. troops all over the world as a natural fact, the
U.S. empire of bases is attracting increasing attention from academics and
activists--as evidenced by a conference on U.S. foreign bases at American
University in late February. NYU Press just published Catherine Lutz's
Bases of Empire, a book that brings together academics who study U.S.
military bases and activists against the bases. Rutgers University Press has
published Kate McCaffrey's Military Power and Popular Protest, a study of
the U.S. base at Vieques, Puerto Rico, which was closed in the face of
massive protests from the local population. And Princeton University Press
is about to publish David Vine's Island of Shame--a book that tells the story
of how the United States and Britain secretly agreed to deport the
Chagossian inhabitants of Diego Garcia to Mauritius and the Seychelles so
their island could be turned into a military base. The Americans were so
thorough that they even gassed all the Chagossian dogs. The Chagossians
have been denied their day in court in the United States but won their case
against the British government in three trials, only to have the judgment
overturned by the highest court in the land, the House of Lords. They are
now appealing to the European Court of Human Rights.
American leaders speak of foreign bases as cementing alliances with
foreign nations, largely through the trade and aid agreements that often
accompany base leases. Yet, U.S. soldiers live in a sort of cocooned
simulacrum of America in their bases, watching American TV, listening to
American rap and heavy metal, and eating American fast food, so that the
transplanted farm boys and street kids have little exposure to another way
of life. Meanwhile, on the other side of the barbed-wire fence, local residents
and businesses often become economically dependent on the soldiers and
have a stake in their staying.
These bases can become flashpoints for conflict. Military bases invariably
discharge toxic waste into local ecosystems, as in Guam where military
bases have led to no fewer than 19 superfund sites. Such contamination
generates resentment and sometimes, as in Vieques in the 1990s, full-
blown social movements against the bases. The United States used
Vieques for live-bombing practice 180 days a year, and by the time the
United States withdrew in 2003, the landscape was littered with exploded
and unexploded ordinance, depleted uranium rounds, heavy metals, oil,
lubricants, solvents, and acids. According to local activists, the cancer rate
on Vieques was 30 percent higher than on the rest of Puerto Rico.
It is also inevitable that, from time to time, U.S. soldiers--often drunk--
commit crimes. The resentment these crimes cause is only exacerbated by
the U.S. government's frequent insistence that such crimes not be
prosecuted in local courts. In 2002, two U.S. soldiers killed two teenage
girls in Korea as they walked to a birthday party. Korean campaigners claim
this was one of 52,000 crimes committed by U.S. soldiers in Korea between
1967 and 2002. The two U.S. soldiers were immediately repatriated to the
United States so they could escape prosecution in Korea. In 1998, a
marine pilot sliced through the cable of a ski gondola in Italy, killing 20
people, but U.S. officials slapped him on the wrist and refused to allow
Italian authorities to try him. These and other similar incidents injured U.S.
relations with important allies.
The 9/11 attacks are arguably the most spectacular example of the kind of
blowback that can be generated from local resentment against U.S. bases.
In the 1990s, the presence of U.S. military bases near the holiest sites of
Sunni Islam in Saudi Arabia angered Osama bin Laden and provided Al
Qaeda with a potent recruitment tool. The United States wisely closed its
largest bases in Saudi Arabia, but it opened additional bases in Iraq and
Afghanistan that are rapidly becoming new sources of friction in the
relationship between the United States and the peoples of the Middle East.
Its "empire of bases" gives the United States global reach, but the shape of
this empire, insofar as it tilts toward Europe, is a bloated and anachronistic
holdover from the Cold War. Many of these bases are a luxury the United
States can no longer afford at a time of record budget deficits. Moreover,
U.S. foreign bases have a double edge: they project American power
across the globe, but they also inflame U.S. foreign relations, generating
resentment against the prostitution, environmental damage, petty crime,
and everyday ethnocentrism that are their inevitable corollaries. Such
resentments have recently forced the closure of U.S. bases in Ecuador,
Puerto Rico, and Kyrgyzstan, and if past is prologue, more movements
against U.S. bases can be expected in the future. Over the next 50 years, I
believe we will witness the emergence of a new international norm
according to which foreign military bases will be as indefensible as the
colonial occupation of another country has become during the last 50 years.
The Declaration of Independence criticizes the British "for quartering large
bodies of armed troops among us" and "for protecting them, by a mock trial,
from punishment for any murders which they should commit on the
inhabitants of these States." Fine words! The United States should start
taking them to heart.
Text Fwd: 21st Century Star Wars And NATO's 60th Anniversary
Stop NATO
21st Century Star Wars And NATO's 60th Anniversary
Summit
Rick Rozoff
January 15, 2009
Regular contentions by US civilian and military officials that the installation of projected third position interceptor missile facilities in Poland and the Czech Republic are aimed at so-called rogue states like Iran and North Korea are a geographical, geometrical and geopolitical absurdity.
In fact such plans are entirely aggressive in nature and present the potentially most dangerous threat the world has known.
Missile deployments in Poland and the linked missile radar site in the Czech Republic are an integral, indeed the central, component of a global (and more than global) US-dominated system to neutralize targeted nations' deterrence and retaliation capabilities, both before and after the fact, for uses of blackmail and actual implementation.
It's worthy of note that the two affected countries, Poland and the Czech Republic, are two of the three first nations incorporated into NATO since the end of the Cold War, at the Alliance's 50th anniversary summit in Washington in 1999 in an event that occurred as NATO was launching its first war (in or out of area), against Yugoslavia.
The third member inducted at the same time was Hungary, where protests have halted the construction of a projected NATO radar station.
In fact the American missile shield outposts in Eastern Europe are an overt effort to implement the Reagan era Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), infamously known as Star Wars.
The X-Band radar that is to be installed in the Czech Republic will be shifted from the US Marshall Islands where it is linked with the Reagan Test Site, and the missile center, at the Vandenberg Air Force Base, from which US (and allied) interceptor tests have been regularly conducted in conjunction with a Sea-Based X-Band Radar off the coast of Alaska and more interceptor missiles at Fort Greely in the Alaskan mainland is named the Ronald Reagan Ballistic Missile Defense Site.
The floating X-Band Radar periodically moved off the shores of Alaska for these exercises weighs 2,000 tons and is 30 stories high.
Its permanent base is in Hawaii where a local newspaper wrote, referring to the sea-based Aegis component of the system, in June of 2008:
"The Missile Defense Agency co-manages the Navy's Aegis program, partners with the Army on its ground-based Patriot missiles and has primary responsibility for other, developing anti-ballistic missile technologies. It's an evolution of the Strategic Defense Initiative begun by President Reagan and has an $8.7 billion budget this year."
Similarly, the US Missile Defense Agency (MDA) is based in Huntsville, Alabama, where the Pentagon employed former German missile scientists in the 1950s for its own Cold War programs and where last year the MDA completed its Von Braun III building, a $240-million, 900,000-square-foot facility.
The center is named, of course, after the founder of Nazi Germany's missile program.
Upon completion of the Von Braun III building in April of last year Alabama Senator Richard Shelby said that naming the complex after Dr. Wernher von Braun was "fitting."
"His spirit is with us here today," Shelby said, "and certainly his vision continues because of the work started here."
Despite the regular disclaimers that the current US global missile shield program is not a so-called Son of Star Wars, an Alabama newspaper reported in 2006 upon the completion of the earlier Von Braun II building in Huntsville that:
"On the back wall of the lobby area are five pages, hand-edited with scribbled notes and revisions, in a simple wooden frame. It is the Star Wars speech given by President Ronald Reagan on March 23, 1983...."
And as Reuters reported in the same month, "The Bush administration and Republican allies in Congress are again pushing for seed money to explore options for putting a multibillion-dollar layer of ballistic-missile interceptors in space [which was] first floated in the 1980s as part of then-President Ronald Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative."
Time Magazine echoed that observation in November of last year, stating that "President George W. Bush promised to build a 'Star Wars' missile shield, and he has kept that promise...."
With the above in mind, the extension of revamped US Stars Wars installations to Eastern Europe, in the case of Poland within immediate striking distance of Russia, takes on ominous dimensions.
As the Russian Novosti agency's chief military commentator remarked last November:
"[T]he strategic importance of these interceptor missiles would increase were the U.S. to deliver a first nuclear strike against Russia.
"In this scenario, interceptor missiles would have to take on the limited number of missiles surviving the first strike, which would allow the U.S. to hope for success and, for the first time since the 1950s, for a victory in a nuclear war."
And the official Chinese party newspaper People's Daily reported in May of 2007:
"[T]he U.S. is seeking to deploy bases within [the territory] of its European allies [and], if it succeeds, in building interceptor bases and radar bases.
"Then, its missile defense system takes the shape with its homeland as its center and East Asia and Europe as the two wings.
"[T]he existing layout is...targeted directly and entirely at both Russia and China, and this is
precisely the reason to arouse strong the opposition of Russia."
That is, the missiles in Poland have to be seen as part of a first strike strategy in two respects in
which, if the threat doesn't work, the actual use remains.
The ground-based missiles themselves can hit Russia's two largest cities, Moscow and St. Petersburg, within minutes.
Whether such missiles contain conventional or nuclear warheads, a fact only the Pentagon would know, is a distinction Russian air defenses and strategic forces wouldn't have the time or luxury to evaluate.
Even to take the US at its word and to assume that missiles with non-nuclear payloads would be used against 'rogue states,' they could produce the following results, in the words of the the Chief of the Russian General Staff Yury Baluyevsky and Ukrainian Defence Minister Anatoly Gritsenko, respectively:
"Within a radius of 500 to 600 kilometers, depending on the size of the interceptor's nuclear charge, an electro-magnetic impulse will be generated and cause a total power blackout, shutting down computers, generating plants, gas works, water-pump stations, radio and television, and dispatcher's offices in airports and at railroad stations.
"A shock wave will destroy many buildings and structures, while radioactive fallout will contaminate the terrain for years. The Chernobyl disaster would look like a child's prank." (December 2005)
�Nobody knows what can be inside these fragments [of alleged intercepted missiles]. If it is not nuclear bomb or nuclear warhead in a literal sense, it can be a dirty bomb, for example, with radioactive agents that in addition to the effects from Chernobyl nuclear may pollute our territory much more. It can be also any virus or biological weapon.� (March 2007)
The first addition to the missiles in Poland, even before their deployment, is the US's commitment to station a Patriot battery with 96 warheads to Poland, within striking distance of Russia's Kaliningrad enclave and Belarus now that the Pentagon has developed a Patriot Advanced Capability-3 (PAC-3) system with a range of 120 kilometers.
And all of the above is only a small portion of the integrated full spectrum global and space system the US and its allies have already successfully tested and are preparing to deploy, which include:
-Ground-Based Midcourse Defense (GMD)
-Exoatmospheric Kill Vehicle (EKV)
-Ground Based Interceptor (GBI)
-Forward Based X-Band Radars (FBXB)
-Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD)
These permit the destruction of other nations' missiles in the launch, boost, midcourse and terminal phases and in theory in the silo.
The global missile system also includes - in addition to ground-based interceptor missiles - air, sea and space components.
The sea-based element is the Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense System, increasingly being deployed on US and allied NATO and what has recently been termed Asian NATO warships. Linked with the Pentagon's plans for a "1,000-ship navy" and a complementary US/NATO/Asia-Pacific NATO "3,000-ship navy," this would provide Washington and its military allies the ability to patrol all the world's waterways and shipping lanes with missile killer capacities.
The spaced-based components include kinetic-energy weapons, space lasers, space-based conventional weapons space-based Interceptors, with the Exoatmospheric Kill Vehicle an 'amphibious' intermediate weapon.
Regarding the third leg of the US nuclear triad, not even in theory a defensive one, the B-2 stealth bomber is described by its proponents as being equipped with "sixteen 2,400 lb (1,100 kg) B83 nuclear bombs in a single pass through extremely dense anti-aircraft defenses."
The Pentagon and the B-2's manufacturer, Northrop Grumman, regularly boast that it can penetrate radar and air defenses and strike "deep in the interior" of a targeted state that possesses "strategic depth."
That description, given today's political reality, can only pertain to Russia and China.
As authors Keir A. Lieber and Daryl G. Press, referring to the general strategy of delivering
crippling first strikes, wrote in their paper "The Rise of U.S. Nuclear Primacy" in Foreign Affairs, a publication of the Council of Foreign Affairs, in its March/April 2006 edition:
"It will probably soon be possible for the United States to destroy the long-range nuclear arsenals of Russia or China with a first strike.
"The U.S. Air Force has finished equipping its B-52 bombers with nuclear-armed cruise missiles, which are probably invisible to Russian and Chinese air-defense radar. And the air force has also enhanced the avionics on its B-2 stealth bombers to permit them to
fly at extremely low altitudes in order to avoid even the most sophisticated radar."
On the general strategy of so-called missile defense, the Russian analyst Yury Rubtsov said late last September:
"The pending deployment of interceptor missiles in Poland is a link in the system of the global
anti-missile shield sweeping from Greenland to Alaska created by the United States that does not conceal its plans for setting up a fourth and a fifth position area for its anti-missile shield.
"The system that Americans are forming is to include offshore and on-land elements in Alaska, California, Japan, Greenland and a number of European countries. A naval base in the Aleutian Islands has been put back in service to support sea-based radar mounted on a re-built oil platform.
"The radar in turn will be a component of the integrated system of the anti-missile shield alongside the interceptor missiles deployed in Alaska.
"[M]ore than ten countries are involved in the formation of the US anti-missile shield, including Australia, Britain, Germany, the Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Japan, India, Israel, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Taiwan and Ukraine."
All of the above are NATO members or partners except for India and Taiwan - it would be too overt a challenge to China to formalize partnerships with them - but the latter two are also being progressively integrated into the US/NATO international nexus.
This past September the Pentagon began its first-ever permanent military deployment in Israel, to man an X-Band missile radar site with a range of 1,240 miles; that is, able to operate throughout the Middle East and into Southern Russia.
In addition, outgoing US Missile Defense Agency director Lt Gen Henry Obering has over the past eighteen months either alluded to or been accused of laying plans for deploying Star Wars missile and radar bases in Azerbaijan, Georgia, Turkey and Ukraine.
At the last summit of NATO in Bucharest, Romania in April of last year, all 26 member states endorsed US missile system plans in Poland and the Czech Republic.
That support was reiterated at a NATO defense ministers meeting last November (with the attendance of the military chiefs of over sixty nations, over a third of the countries of the world) and the following month at a meeting of NATO foreign ministers, evoking this response from Russia Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov:
"The deployment of a U.S. missile shield in central Europe would disrupt the strategic balance
among the world's nuclear powers."
With the upcoming NATO sixtieth anniversary summit on April 3-4 of this year, and with the incoming Obama administration naming former Bush administration NATO Supreme Allied Commander James Jones as its National Security Adviser, all indications are that US and
allied missile plans for Europe may expand yet further.
While in Prague three weeks ago California Congresswoman Ellen Tauscher, chairwoman of the House of Representatives Strategic Forces Subcommittee, was described by the Czech News Agency as having "long been demanding that the system protecting the USA and its allies against possible hostile missiles be fully included in the NATO complex of defence."
The same agency reported the previous month that "Czech Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek..said the approval of the treaties would crucially influence the defence capability of NATO."
And Polish Minister of Defense Radoslav Sikorski said that the elements of the air defense shield which will be deployed in Poland will become part of the air defense shield of the entire NATO bloc.
A sentiment shared by NATO Spokesman James Appathurai last April in also calling for the integration and expansion of the US interceptor sites into a broader, continent-wide Alliance system.
Even more ominously, last month current NATO Supreme Allied Commander General John Bantz Craddock affirmed:
"[T]he fact is there is strategic need and advantage for nuclear weapons....The alliance has made the decision to have them. There has been no debate to retrograde them out."
And in reference to the 400 U.S. B-61 tactical nuclear bombs stored at bases in several NATO countries, including Germany, Italy, Turkey and the United Kingdom, a Pentagon report released on December 8, 2008 stated:
"The presence of U.S. nuclear weapons in Europe remains a pillar of NATO unity."
The combination of US nuclear warheads in Europe and the expansion of the NATO Alliance and US missile interceptor sites to encircle Russia on its eastern, southern and western borders is a far more threatening development than anything that occurred during the Cold War.
Recent surveys show two-thirds of Czech opposed to the US missile radar site with 71% demanding a referendum on the issue and 54% of Poles in opposition to having their nation turned into a potential ground zero in a cataclysmic missile war.
Czechs and Poles clearly realize the danger that most of the rest of the world has been oblivious but can no longer remain indifferent to except at its own peril, perhaps at the risk of its very survival.
The half century long stationing of US nuclear warheads throughout Europe and current plans to deploy US missiles and missile radar sites on the continent's eastern perimeter would both be impossible, would be inconceivable, if the nations and peoples of Europe were not enchained by an increasingly ambitious and expansive military bloc that places bases, nuclear arms and missiles on their soil and sends their sons and daughters to kill and die in 21st Century colonial
wars of conquest and domination.
As self-styled global NATO prepares its 60th anniversary, first bi-national, summit in France and Germany this April, the abolition of this, history's first, attempt at an international aggressive military axis must be brought to an end.
===========================
Stop NATO
* Same article also in(Site provided by Rick Rozoff) *
http://www.opednews.com/populum/print_friendly.php?p=21st-Century-Star-Wars-And-by-Rick-Rozoff-090119-982.html
21st Century Star Wars And NATO's 60th Anniversary
Summit
Rick Rozoff
January 15, 2009
Regular contentions by US civilian and military officials that the installation of projected third position interceptor missile facilities in Poland and the Czech Republic are aimed at so-called rogue states like Iran and North Korea are a geographical, geometrical and geopolitical absurdity.
In fact such plans are entirely aggressive in nature and present the potentially most dangerous threat the world has known.
Missile deployments in Poland and the linked missile radar site in the Czech Republic are an integral, indeed the central, component of a global (and more than global) US-dominated system to neutralize targeted nations' deterrence and retaliation capabilities, both before and after the fact, for uses of blackmail and actual implementation.
It's worthy of note that the two affected countries, Poland and the Czech Republic, are two of the three first nations incorporated into NATO since the end of the Cold War, at the Alliance's 50th anniversary summit in Washington in 1999 in an event that occurred as NATO was launching its first war (in or out of area), against Yugoslavia.
The third member inducted at the same time was Hungary, where protests have halted the construction of a projected NATO radar station.
In fact the American missile shield outposts in Eastern Europe are an overt effort to implement the Reagan era Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), infamously known as Star Wars.
The X-Band radar that is to be installed in the Czech Republic will be shifted from the US Marshall Islands where it is linked with the Reagan Test Site, and the missile center, at the Vandenberg Air Force Base, from which US (and allied) interceptor tests have been regularly conducted in conjunction with a Sea-Based X-Band Radar off the coast of Alaska and more interceptor missiles at Fort Greely in the Alaskan mainland is named the Ronald Reagan Ballistic Missile Defense Site.
The floating X-Band Radar periodically moved off the shores of Alaska for these exercises weighs 2,000 tons and is 30 stories high.
Its permanent base is in Hawaii where a local newspaper wrote, referring to the sea-based Aegis component of the system, in June of 2008:
"The Missile Defense Agency co-manages the Navy's Aegis program, partners with the Army on its ground-based Patriot missiles and has primary responsibility for other, developing anti-ballistic missile technologies. It's an evolution of the Strategic Defense Initiative begun by President Reagan and has an $8.7 billion budget this year."
Similarly, the US Missile Defense Agency (MDA) is based in Huntsville, Alabama, where the Pentagon employed former German missile scientists in the 1950s for its own Cold War programs and where last year the MDA completed its Von Braun III building, a $240-million, 900,000-square-foot facility.
The center is named, of course, after the founder of Nazi Germany's missile program.
Upon completion of the Von Braun III building in April of last year Alabama Senator Richard Shelby said that naming the complex after Dr. Wernher von Braun was "fitting."
"His spirit is with us here today," Shelby said, "and certainly his vision continues because of the work started here."
Despite the regular disclaimers that the current US global missile shield program is not a so-called Son of Star Wars, an Alabama newspaper reported in 2006 upon the completion of the earlier Von Braun II building in Huntsville that:
"On the back wall of the lobby area are five pages, hand-edited with scribbled notes and revisions, in a simple wooden frame. It is the Star Wars speech given by President Ronald Reagan on March 23, 1983...."
And as Reuters reported in the same month, "The Bush administration and Republican allies in Congress are again pushing for seed money to explore options for putting a multibillion-dollar layer of ballistic-missile interceptors in space [which was] first floated in the 1980s as part of then-President Ronald Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative."
Time Magazine echoed that observation in November of last year, stating that "President George W. Bush promised to build a 'Star Wars' missile shield, and he has kept that promise...."
With the above in mind, the extension of revamped US Stars Wars installations to Eastern Europe, in the case of Poland within immediate striking distance of Russia, takes on ominous dimensions.
As the Russian Novosti agency's chief military commentator remarked last November:
"[T]he strategic importance of these interceptor missiles would increase were the U.S. to deliver a first nuclear strike against Russia.
"In this scenario, interceptor missiles would have to take on the limited number of missiles surviving the first strike, which would allow the U.S. to hope for success and, for the first time since the 1950s, for a victory in a nuclear war."
And the official Chinese party newspaper People's Daily reported in May of 2007:
"[T]he U.S. is seeking to deploy bases within [the territory] of its European allies [and], if it succeeds, in building interceptor bases and radar bases.
"Then, its missile defense system takes the shape with its homeland as its center and East Asia and Europe as the two wings.
"[T]he existing layout is...targeted directly and entirely at both Russia and China, and this is
precisely the reason to arouse strong the opposition of Russia."
That is, the missiles in Poland have to be seen as part of a first strike strategy in two respects in
which, if the threat doesn't work, the actual use remains.
The ground-based missiles themselves can hit Russia's two largest cities, Moscow and St. Petersburg, within minutes.
Whether such missiles contain conventional or nuclear warheads, a fact only the Pentagon would know, is a distinction Russian air defenses and strategic forces wouldn't have the time or luxury to evaluate.
Even to take the US at its word and to assume that missiles with non-nuclear payloads would be used against 'rogue states,' they could produce the following results, in the words of the the Chief of the Russian General Staff Yury Baluyevsky and Ukrainian Defence Minister Anatoly Gritsenko, respectively:
"Within a radius of 500 to 600 kilometers, depending on the size of the interceptor's nuclear charge, an electro-magnetic impulse will be generated and cause a total power blackout, shutting down computers, generating plants, gas works, water-pump stations, radio and television, and dispatcher's offices in airports and at railroad stations.
"A shock wave will destroy many buildings and structures, while radioactive fallout will contaminate the terrain for years. The Chernobyl disaster would look like a child's prank." (December 2005)
�Nobody knows what can be inside these fragments [of alleged intercepted missiles]. If it is not nuclear bomb or nuclear warhead in a literal sense, it can be a dirty bomb, for example, with radioactive agents that in addition to the effects from Chernobyl nuclear may pollute our territory much more. It can be also any virus or biological weapon.� (March 2007)
The first addition to the missiles in Poland, even before their deployment, is the US's commitment to station a Patriot battery with 96 warheads to Poland, within striking distance of Russia's Kaliningrad enclave and Belarus now that the Pentagon has developed a Patriot Advanced Capability-3 (PAC-3) system with a range of 120 kilometers.
And all of the above is only a small portion of the integrated full spectrum global and space system the US and its allies have already successfully tested and are preparing to deploy, which include:
-Ground-Based Midcourse Defense (GMD)
-Exoatmospheric Kill Vehicle (EKV)
-Ground Based Interceptor (GBI)
-Forward Based X-Band Radars (FBXB)
-Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD)
These permit the destruction of other nations' missiles in the launch, boost, midcourse and terminal phases and in theory in the silo.
The global missile system also includes - in addition to ground-based interceptor missiles - air, sea and space components.
The sea-based element is the Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense System, increasingly being deployed on US and allied NATO and what has recently been termed Asian NATO warships. Linked with the Pentagon's plans for a "1,000-ship navy" and a complementary US/NATO/Asia-Pacific NATO "3,000-ship navy," this would provide Washington and its military allies the ability to patrol all the world's waterways and shipping lanes with missile killer capacities.
The spaced-based components include kinetic-energy weapons, space lasers, space-based conventional weapons space-based Interceptors, with the Exoatmospheric Kill Vehicle an 'amphibious' intermediate weapon.
Regarding the third leg of the US nuclear triad, not even in theory a defensive one, the B-2 stealth bomber is described by its proponents as being equipped with "sixteen 2,400 lb (1,100 kg) B83 nuclear bombs in a single pass through extremely dense anti-aircraft defenses."
The Pentagon and the B-2's manufacturer, Northrop Grumman, regularly boast that it can penetrate radar and air defenses and strike "deep in the interior" of a targeted state that possesses "strategic depth."
That description, given today's political reality, can only pertain to Russia and China.
As authors Keir A. Lieber and Daryl G. Press, referring to the general strategy of delivering
crippling first strikes, wrote in their paper "The Rise of U.S. Nuclear Primacy" in Foreign Affairs, a publication of the Council of Foreign Affairs, in its March/April 2006 edition:
"It will probably soon be possible for the United States to destroy the long-range nuclear arsenals of Russia or China with a first strike.
"The U.S. Air Force has finished equipping its B-52 bombers with nuclear-armed cruise missiles, which are probably invisible to Russian and Chinese air-defense radar. And the air force has also enhanced the avionics on its B-2 stealth bombers to permit them to
fly at extremely low altitudes in order to avoid even the most sophisticated radar."
On the general strategy of so-called missile defense, the Russian analyst Yury Rubtsov said late last September:
"The pending deployment of interceptor missiles in Poland is a link in the system of the global
anti-missile shield sweeping from Greenland to Alaska created by the United States that does not conceal its plans for setting up a fourth and a fifth position area for its anti-missile shield.
"The system that Americans are forming is to include offshore and on-land elements in Alaska, California, Japan, Greenland and a number of European countries. A naval base in the Aleutian Islands has been put back in service to support sea-based radar mounted on a re-built oil platform.
"The radar in turn will be a component of the integrated system of the anti-missile shield alongside the interceptor missiles deployed in Alaska.
"[M]ore than ten countries are involved in the formation of the US anti-missile shield, including Australia, Britain, Germany, the Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Japan, India, Israel, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Taiwan and Ukraine."
All of the above are NATO members or partners except for India and Taiwan - it would be too overt a challenge to China to formalize partnerships with them - but the latter two are also being progressively integrated into the US/NATO international nexus.
This past September the Pentagon began its first-ever permanent military deployment in Israel, to man an X-Band missile radar site with a range of 1,240 miles; that is, able to operate throughout the Middle East and into Southern Russia.
In addition, outgoing US Missile Defense Agency director Lt Gen Henry Obering has over the past eighteen months either alluded to or been accused of laying plans for deploying Star Wars missile and radar bases in Azerbaijan, Georgia, Turkey and Ukraine.
At the last summit of NATO in Bucharest, Romania in April of last year, all 26 member states endorsed US missile system plans in Poland and the Czech Republic.
That support was reiterated at a NATO defense ministers meeting last November (with the attendance of the military chiefs of over sixty nations, over a third of the countries of the world) and the following month at a meeting of NATO foreign ministers, evoking this response from Russia Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov:
"The deployment of a U.S. missile shield in central Europe would disrupt the strategic balance
among the world's nuclear powers."
With the upcoming NATO sixtieth anniversary summit on April 3-4 of this year, and with the incoming Obama administration naming former Bush administration NATO Supreme Allied Commander James Jones as its National Security Adviser, all indications are that US and
allied missile plans for Europe may expand yet further.
While in Prague three weeks ago California Congresswoman Ellen Tauscher, chairwoman of the House of Representatives Strategic Forces Subcommittee, was described by the Czech News Agency as having "long been demanding that the system protecting the USA and its allies against possible hostile missiles be fully included in the NATO complex of defence."
The same agency reported the previous month that "Czech Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek..said the approval of the treaties would crucially influence the defence capability of NATO."
And Polish Minister of Defense Radoslav Sikorski said that the elements of the air defense shield which will be deployed in Poland will become part of the air defense shield of the entire NATO bloc.
A sentiment shared by NATO Spokesman James Appathurai last April in also calling for the integration and expansion of the US interceptor sites into a broader, continent-wide Alliance system.
Even more ominously, last month current NATO Supreme Allied Commander General John Bantz Craddock affirmed:
"[T]he fact is there is strategic need and advantage for nuclear weapons....The alliance has made the decision to have them. There has been no debate to retrograde them out."
And in reference to the 400 U.S. B-61 tactical nuclear bombs stored at bases in several NATO countries, including Germany, Italy, Turkey and the United Kingdom, a Pentagon report released on December 8, 2008 stated:
"The presence of U.S. nuclear weapons in Europe remains a pillar of NATO unity."
The combination of US nuclear warheads in Europe and the expansion of the NATO Alliance and US missile interceptor sites to encircle Russia on its eastern, southern and western borders is a far more threatening development than anything that occurred during the Cold War.
Recent surveys show two-thirds of Czech opposed to the US missile radar site with 71% demanding a referendum on the issue and 54% of Poles in opposition to having their nation turned into a potential ground zero in a cataclysmic missile war.
Czechs and Poles clearly realize the danger that most of the rest of the world has been oblivious but can no longer remain indifferent to except at its own peril, perhaps at the risk of its very survival.
The half century long stationing of US nuclear warheads throughout Europe and current plans to deploy US missiles and missile radar sites on the continent's eastern perimeter would both be impossible, would be inconceivable, if the nations and peoples of Europe were not enchained by an increasingly ambitious and expansive military bloc that places bases, nuclear arms and missiles on their soil and sends their sons and daughters to kill and die in 21st Century colonial
wars of conquest and domination.
As self-styled global NATO prepares its 60th anniversary, first bi-national, summit in France and Germany this April, the abolition of this, history's first, attempt at an international aggressive military axis must be brought to an end.
===========================
Stop NATO
* Same article also in(Site provided by Rick Rozoff) *
http://www.opednews.com/
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
![[URGENT PLEA: In Update] EMERGENCY in GANGJEONG Since AUG. 24, 2011](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQvpaNf6EePZVucu97_JphYsFS5IgumnSiA4YAmen1PZcim6vMmW7XjZ7J6nLh-Cu36mwBN5n1evrA3ey0vYMpwlAGsgnSFggv6a1w4Qx9BvvqOB0hy0BIcBkL2Exfs3zIxBsBuDGa1kzg/s227/jejusit.jpg)
![[Solidarity from Japan for the Jeju] 253 individuals and 16 groups/organizations](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivji7100kBkr0hzvqYfh4IBBilkZ6XgDIg89jOxS6kTssxsVKC6Wm-fZbKOEsiy3zcO-9gW6GHspD5R_2C9WsGx5S1Z5VPj_OVRF7H6dxdaT0S-2H1eqsDsYvIwOV26VscxTHnKmP5iZmh/s227/jeju_12_10j.jpg)
![[Translation] Korean organizations' statement: Immediately cancel the joint ROK-US drill Nov 26](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfKDMo-qyEjm5asUtHlREyJY_5Ou-2tyB8SH6aUxiViRbbKR-8W_rirFiGp5DYSoD_KaeNOPMWR0af0ZPUIbJKmR89ImDvADHsGAIqsJVBvJNBEIl5wLd3G_zhPDW3Z2SxsHXadOsXe8st/s227/1.jpg)
![HOT! [Hankyoreh Hani TV] Beneath the Surface: the investigation into the sinking of the Cheonan](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh80rL3Qv9GnfHSqbYMfivdqX5gZN-1O_VQj3A_Gk3yjWdybHwJCsprA3l6cEQB0cYCP2oNeaLo2ohLGIy0Uqqkv_fRkBevGJ2f-qkKD5eP1ZGsKeQ-r-jHUUb79WvucIN7hpEtXza4xXCL/s227/HaniTV+Cheonan.gif)
![[Translation]Statement against illegal inspection and unjust lay-off by the Kunsan USAFK!(Nov_2010)](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3JlQ-lreusCIJo5Yv2e3ZrRwrSMUE7UQxlrDVjmBehl0Pa24QZIAbZ5vUpgnnExbkKL9PdCwxVYSHWJkr_XK0FM4EhU3CMFhqfborVNu_p4v3bEFpNm3ia-aEHnvMMuEBI27aB7_BETuJ/s227/gunsan+protest.gif)
![[Translation] Korean organizations' statement against dispatching special force to the UAE on Nov.](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiU7TNhTDLLwZkKP0Z78JsCZKp6je-QSFll3_ThmLES_y_nPLXEzeakrsZXoNxhN5blopEhy6xGV2tneJrniPdTR-JvOQMmSLr_HhlucxFvbusxk4oKvvMO2laBOHSIkB9OOeOxrQlqCA0O/s227/antiwarpeace.jpg)
![[Translation] Stop, Joining MD!: South Korean activists' statement and writing on Oct. 25, 2010](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggGIHVei8j7LCJPJB5HIrspd942q436daNTquP-pFd45Cl70Ml_1JFiFDHgKu6FcoqNgFVKIFqjeuSPau2k_BwGHhx0cqFFL2-4ybZSTlmua0_AsERBtKYQa7jZk7uNj41LX6rj2vksHbo/s227/StopMD.jpg)
![[In Update] People First, NO G-20 (Nov. 6 to 12, Korea)](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZl8VTqeL7o2ndliGIE-sZFCikbTgfB9KCc3AtZvDaYijBBEhdfultMEOpyrCaD5gzpH8mqfWjU20KXMbSUl-5KM7yQeHU6z3BWV8tiOy4UKaCudz9VKWoi5x58xdC_gQpJTjkR5u7O9xf/s227/left21_G20.jpg)
![[International Petition] Stop US helipad plan in Okinawa to save great nature](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihgYmdb0N8ViPvTFC_5i-Psbt4eX_LnAUEOtZkUngv_pGvRyWag1r6W60NicLLyTgWq-sPT1hBxLY5SadEIVv5McfZQ5uIhe-W0VoflQNqojsYZjFW6AH-gB1jsmSDGnGuKIFk2UkvNbFG/s227/yanbaru_w.jpg)
![[Global Network] against the first launch of Quasi-Zenith Satellite, Japan, on Sept. 11, 2010](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2sYpfodDDMIA7qXwuda0DmKapxXFB479fDnn8RKy7QNZqz0VEvWucNd-DleZ37hWNXC-Z8QtaqtM37VuPwac5SgclJ9_khBBSWOedvm19MRXIP1j1kcWrK6EW5IFjQdEEY2h7E6xuyNvC/s227/Qzss-45-0_09.jpg)
![[In update] Some collections on the Koreans’ protests against the sanction & war on Iran](http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_gnM5QlRx-4c/TJMvke6t8zI/AAAAAAAAFO4/tamQ8LUnOOA/S227/No+Sanction+on+Iran.jpg)
![[Three International Petitions] to End the Korean war and peace treaty(or peace resolution)](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlohLVYtpCg7iMsZhNYY4hBbhTi2dIheHMHWLDph9X2y78cjgZV1LeSfUJeu80elhJm70Q9E059q72lK-spSPvsRG4bPuCDIytltJB9IH3mWt9OG98HqhnTsPakwhvNeoCFUgF1xoxQ2EZ/s227/border.jpg)
![[Collection of Documents] No Base Learning and Solidarity Program_Korea(June 14 to 20, 2010)](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEix_HzjToh3nNGHBc-_5gasq-ykcaZ6GInLixILmZVyRJ5xoeHCxWOyYd9fSM7bmnuFsjSrYOGEPnQOwB1Dcyo-sN4Pw0cFPhUtKig_qlVnGL1Wi82ClvPqbEPWYhJiqdNF0DyzLIBETMB9/s227/No-Base-banner.jpg)
![Site Fwd:[John Hines] A U.S. Debate coach’s research trip on the Issues of Korea](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8yRra0zNhKHN74Auqhd3Nx9tZ7BWCGflRJHGH4CfzBT_yjhZ8Nl9b3OZuLpYWJ2exsjmR0oVl-Qq_cf832p2VdmOZhUi-lCFzCNeDSyVtweX1lWZPC-RlHmDMLtilHwHjNFTenBiM4Fk4/s227/Jeju-Peace-Tour.jpg)
![[News Update] Struggle Against the Jeju Naval Base since Jan. 18, 2010](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKfSTRC5QKBBSFIq_m7QIqXdlbL4-gF5GJYn9Q-pN__k7sV7uxGDcLY5L8xmU7QuWuUhBT_GhG-URBPO80RT3AfWfDrWJr06h1hFuZC6ZBVKe4U6PS1Cd7Kr6olO8TYQtk13Drox7IS6ea/s226/scrum1.jpg)
![[Urgent] Please spread the Letter!: There was no Explosion! There was no Torpedo! (May 26, 2010)](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSd2yWZ3xGwnJQXB73z5FgXCqSosAoB9_33-GLYprOmLqjmvgSAQp1BYI7e4slK1FDxHRi9KK4um-OpDaj8QOkXwAScVAgvvq6-ehbDA-hbkr96wT9oHNNmWnBPv8GU4hoZp9X8F9AZBX4/s227/grounded.jpg)
![Text Fwd: [Stephen Gowans]The sinking of the Cheonan: Another Gulf of Tonkin incident](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_L6hB3RZ1MovTXHe0A8yn_RfgMALGR0kM6poBuGp809xwvHtB_-PGWtS_WpyPWatyd9lB2pPqL2gOLc4dTCEdJ9sMvxJWEdapl-mMLm7WHAsV-jVpgqarVh8XBtdz_0c-Vohdh3HtJahD/s227/lee-myung-bak.jpg)
![[Japan Focus]Politics in Command: The "International" Investigation into the Sinking of the Cheonan](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHmTo8v-uCJnabRhMdnBAkC9J3s5bb2JsDKiT5leJHwbK8IDJHxfJmqQ_C0Is_bPC6UGMf05CA0exF2y4r2x9RhFUHT0kjsKviaME_MZXKnq775UyYAdb7w2SAzE75XvBfHp1al2q6i3cf/s227/wen_jiabao_and_lee_myungbak.png)
![[Japan Focus] Who Sank the SK Warship Cheonan? A New Stage in the US-Korean War and US-China](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKSS5ULT5QBaMGYpXXqBMX9jtwLwMLuK469b6Ku72GTJYKUObzTANaPjZqvvpPzYMJgPF53sjhvhK3DVa88ipYlggsJageykXlkxY6s8TW05xcU-_vfhf-pACUoaWuFbT-fsU1qEhm_yIi/s227/buoy_map.gif)
![[Updated on 12/13/10] [Translation Project] Overseas Proofs on the Damages by the Military Bases](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikADE6JovUNspQyZUWVMTLAQg7yQNqXpVUbqZPk8f4uc_1723_xm1Cco6WAmstQXVPnaJAcb1mZA8Ny_3xONT_f5uh8MNLPnUhtqdGgy3HCtC1Vbbz4Q0ZY1Cssu-4cJEVNdrvznbS5UzO/s227/missile.jpg)
![[International Petition] Close the Bases in Okinawa](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNpQiHklwFbWVlFK7GDFXnBSOOSFEj3Il-We-N3uTDldKiidL2NGZs7X_LtTnatzTo_r8CexRkFe8NhfxYqmgp1knEEslROTfNjI5_mSb57cdbhPkftvanveYBaevAD9xuKDGoIxiTwoSb/s227/2.jpg)
![[In Update]Blog Collection: No Korean Troops in Afghanistan](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjEmCRXSNAG7_QBxKWbdksmxoWR4nyAovQTTdR1G2AuXh0jxtqNkI9OmYgYWRoLAJShvtBvE840QXuBWSVh3u3zMYqkNAFX6OWy3m5Nur4HM7uNK-pKT1ycyApJp-VLyhIFRRcoisYAh0E/s226/No-Troops-to--Afghanistan.jpg)
