Jill Stein de voormalige presidentskandidaat van de Green Party in de VS, heeft in een paar punten duidelijk gemaakt dat het de VS niet gaat om ‘mensenrechtenschendingen’ of de armoede in Venezuela, dit door te wijzen op andere situaties waar de VS totaal geen problemen heeft met deze schendingen, zelfs als ze uitmonden in massamoorden……
Wat betreft armoede moet de VS zich al helemaal stilhouden, gezien de enorme armoede in dat gestolen land, waar 29 miljoen van de 40 miljoen arme mensen* niet eens een gezondheidsverzekering hebben…….
Jammer dat Stein alleen terzijde in een Twitterbericht wijst op het feit dat het de VS gaat om olie, terwijl Venezuela de op één na grootste olievoorraad ter wereld bezit, waar Venezuela ook nog eens de beschikking over heeft over een grote hoeveelheid coltan, een grondstof die wordt gebruikt in de smartphone….. Beiden zaken waar de VS de beschikking over wil hebben…….
Als voorbeelden voor het geen probleem hebben met (fascistische) dictaturen of andere rechtse regimes, noemt Stein Colombia en Honduras, die worden gesteund door de VS (waar de VS zelfs verantwoordelijk is voor de coup van 2009 in Honduras….)…. Weer een misser, waarom niet wijzen op het feit dat de VS de Saoedische terreurcoalitie steunt bij het uitvoeren van een genocide in Jemen?? Een zaak waar de wereld echt van op de kop zou moeten staan, i.p.v. de gebeurtenissen in Venezuela, NB één op één het gevolg van de economische oorlog die de VS al jaren voert tegen dit land!!!
Wel een goed voorbeeld van Stein is het met enorm veel geweld neerslaan van protesten tegen het neoliberalisme door arme Venezolanen in 1989…… Protesten die de naam Caracazo meekregen, protesten waarbij het destijds fascistische regime een enorme slachting heeft aangericht, waarvan de naar schatting 300 tot 3.000 slachtoffers in massagraven werden gedumpt…… Caracazo was de aanloop naar de grootste slachting uit de Venezolaanse geschiedenis, aldus de schrijver Ed Sykes van het hieronder opgenomen artikel van The Canary.
Stein zegt dat de VS totaal geen moeite had met deze slachting 30 jaar geleden in Venezuela en de andere kant opkeek (vergelijk dit eens met de houding van de VS nu…), terwijl Stein stelt dat de VS rechtse (en ronduit fascistische, Ap) regimes steunt, ziet ze blijkbaar niet dat de VS ook voor deze slachting in Venezuela haar toestemming en wellicht zelfs advies heeft gegeven aan de dictatuur hoe e.e.a. aan te pakken……
Stein slaat de plank nog eens mis, door te wijzen op de arme Venezolanen die geen eten zouden hebben en in het vuilnis naar voedsel zoeken, iets waar ze terecht over zegt dat dit in de VS veelvuldig gebeurt….. De beelden over honger en andere ellende in Venezuela zijn onderdeel van de anti-Maduro propaganda…… Uiteraard zijn er zware tekorten, echter al een paar maanden zijn het Rode Kruis en de VN bezig met humanitaire hulp in Venezuela, dit met een hoeveelheid humanitaire hulpgoederen die bewezen niet in de schaduw kan staan van wat de VS klaar heeft staan over de grens van Venezuela en Brazilië……. (20 keer zoveel!)
Terecht stelt Stein dat de VS de grote tekorten in Venezuela heeft veroorzaakt, waar ze wijst op de huidige sancties, intussen overgenomen door o.a. Canada en de EU……. Alweer jammer dat Stein niet meldt dat de VS al voor de sancties bezig was met een boycot van Venezuela wat betreft levensmiddelen en medicijnen, ook al was deze boycot niet officieel, is het al lang duidelijk dat e.e.a. heeft plaatsgevonden….. Zo heeft Hillary Clinton, als minister van BuZa onder ‘vredesduif’ Obama, de VS supermarktketens met winkels in Venezuela onder druk gezet de voorraden niet of anders mondjesmaat aan te vullen, waar ze de grote farmaceuten onder druk zette hetzelfde te doen met medicijnleveringen voor Venezuela……
Het Canary artikel is wel degelijk van belang daar op een aantal hypocriete zaken wordt gewezen, zoals het aanhalen van de opstand in 1989 en bijvoorbeeld de uitlating van de VN dat de VS sancties verantwoordelijk zijn voor de doden die in Venezuela zijn gevallen…… Jammer dat niet wordt aangegeven dat de doden door de sancties, de chronisch zieken en terminaal zieken zijn, aangevuld met heel jonge slachtoffers, alles door gebrek aan medicijnen…..
Wat een gemiste kans niet even te wijzen op het feit dat dezelfde VN en het Rode Kruis beiden de VS veroordeelden voor het tot een politiek drukmiddel maken van humanitaire hulp, terwijl deze organisaties zoals gezegd allang volop humanitaire hulp verstrekken binnen de grenzen van Venezuela……
Met haar pleidooi geeft Stein de anti-propaganda van de VS en de reguliere westerse massamedia deels gelijk, anders kan ik het niet zien….. Nogmaals: het artikel is verder belangrijk genoeg om te belichten, daar er wel degelijk wordt gewezen op het schunnige beleid van de VS (en andere westerse landen) tegen in feite het Venezolaanse volk……
Wel mooi dat Stein in feite in 2 punten weergeeft hoe hypocriet de VS bezig is.
Jill Stein clobbers US warhawks with a perfect takedown of their regime-change propaganda
Former US Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein has been on fire recently. In particular, she’s been putting the mainstream US left to shame with her vocal opposition to the US-backed coup attempt in Venezuela. This week, on the 30th anniversary of a notorious massacre by a US-backed government in the country, she had a perfect takedown of US warhawks. And we should all listen to her.
When the US turned a blind eye to Venezuela’s biggest massacre
As author George Ciccariello-Maher pointed out on 27 February:
30 years ago today in Venezuela: the mass rebellion against neoliberalism known as the Caracazo, which ended in the massacre of 300 to 3,000, most dumped in mass graves. Today, neoliberals claim the mantle of human rights as they try to do the same. Never forget!
And Stein spread that message. In particular, she stressed how Washington ignored the Caracazo (Venezuela’s biggest massacre in the 20th century) just like it ignores the dire situations in Colombia and Honduras today:
30 years ago Venezuela’s neoliberal gov’t brutally crushed a poor people’s uprising. US ignored it, just like it ignores political prisoners, targeted killings, & humanitarian crises in right-wing states like Colombia & Honduras. US cares about #Venezuela‘s oil, NOT human rights.
Colombia and Honduras, of course, are US allies. Venezuela, on the other hand, isn’t. And Washington has a long history of boosting far-right allies in Latin America while opposing anyone on the left.
Seriously, Washington? Stop taking the piss.
US political elites have been obsessing over Venezuela’s crisis for weeks now. They’ve also been tightening their chokehold on Venezuela’s economy with more and more sanctions. As a former UN expert toldThe Canary this week:
the sanctions are the direct cause of death… they constitute a crime against humanity
Stein isn’t falling for the warhawks’ propaganda and phoney concern, though. Instead, she’s been pointing out that these same elites have done precious nothing to end crises raging at home:
Isn’t it weird that Trump hasn’t done a thing to help 40M Americans in poverty, 29M without health insurance, 500K living on the streets, or entire cities without clean water… but suddenly he cares so much about humanitarian aid to #Venezuela that he’s willing to start a war?
Republicans seem concerned about a video of people in #Venezuela eating from the garbage. Strange – they’ve never done a thing to help over 500K homeless Americans! But if they really want to help Venezuelans, why not lift sanctions The Economist admitted will lead to starvation?
Isn’t it strange that Trump wants to ram through #Venezuela‘s border to “bring humanitarian aid to desperate people”, while his party wants to prosecute Americans who give water to refugees at our border? Almost like their “humanitarian aid” is just an excuse to incite a war.
Stein has brilliantly cut through the bullshit that US warhawks have been spewing for weeks now. And she’s exposed and stressed two key points:
That Washington picks and chooses which foreign crises to get angry about, usually depending on whether the local governments are allies or not.
That Washington waxes lyrical about poverty abroad, but does next to nothing to address the crisis of poverty and inequality at home.
They’re points that we all need to remember. And they’re points we need to be throwing back into the face of anyone who’s calling for illegal regime-change efforts in Venezuela.
=========================================== *Het aantal van 40 miljoen arme VS burgers aan de lage kant, gezien het aantal burgers in de VS dat afhankelijk is van voedselbonnen, dat waren er een paar jaar geleden nog rond de 50 miljoen en dit aantal is sindsdien allesbehalve gedaald…….
(de opgeblazen oorlogshitser en oorlogsmisdadiger Pompeo beweert dat Hezbollah werkzaam is in Venezuela en daar een leger heeft dat gezien zijn woorden amper onder doet voor de gezamenlijke NAVO troepen… ha! ha! ha! Ook hier is totaal geen bewijs voor deze belachelijke beschuldiging…)
Caitlin Johnstone heeft zich over de berichtgeving van de massamedia gebogen en zet een aantal feiten wat betreft de reguliere (massa-) media op een rij, waarbij ze tot verrassende inzichten komt.
Als eerste buigt Johnstone zich over de vraag waarom journalisten van de reguliere media in ‘vrije democratieën’ (‘een beetje dubbelop’) zich gedragen als hun collega’s van staatsmedia propagandisten. Waarom gedragen ze zich als betrouwbare vertegenwoordigers van de gevestigde orde en waarom wordt elk idee gemarginaliseerd dat niet past in wat op een bepaald moment als een correcte gedachte wordt gezien? (en dat kan op zeer grove manier gebeuren, zie de smerige en uiterst valse berichtgeving over de Britse Labour leider Jeremy Corbyn door de reguliere media waar ook de BBC deel van uitmaakt, al kan je die ‘onafhankelijke zendgemachtigde’ als staatsomroep onder een dictatuur zien)
Waarom worden mensen die de gevestigde orde bekritiseren altijd door de media veroordeeld? Waarom worden ‘fouten’ in een land dat buiten de invloedssfeer en de macht van de gecentraliseerde VS-alliantie valt, zo kritisch becommentarieerd door de reguliere (westerse) media, terwijl fouten binnen die alliantie worden vergeven, of veelal zelfs niet worden genoemd?
Volgens Johnstone zijn er maar twee verklaringen voor die unanieme instemming van de reguliere media op die onderwerpen:
Die instemming bestaat omdat die media altijd de waarheid zouden vertellen, of die instemming bestaat omdat er een systeem is ontstaan, waarin de journalisten van de reguliere media ons voorliegen en een vals beeld schetsen van wat er gebeurt in de wereld.
Volgens Johnstone zijn dit de enige mogelijkheden, waarbij ze de eerste uiteraard afwijst, immers als deze media altijd de waarheid vertellen, zouden deze media niet de leugens herhalen over bijvoorbeeld de oorlogen in Vietnam en Irak, ofwel dan zou het afslachten van miljoenen op grond van leugens niet zijn verdedigd in die media………
Eén en ander betekent overigens niet dat de grote reguliere media alleen maar liegen, immers dan zou men de klanten snel verliezen, nee men brengt natuurlijk ook echt nieuws, naast halve waarheden, verdraaide feiten en de al genoemde leugens.
Lees het artikel van Johnstone, zij legt deze zaak duidelijk uit, waarna de conclusie wordt getrokken dat de media inderdaad aan de leiband lopen van plutocraten of fondsen van aandeelhouders (oké dat was al bekend, maar Johnstone geeft het geheel handen en voeten). Voorts meldt Johnstone ten overvloede nog eens dat de CIA al sinds de 50er jaren van de vorige eeuw bemoeienis heeft met de reguliere (massa-) media in de VS…….
How Plutocratic Media Keeps Staff Aligned With Establishment Agendas
Why do mainstream media reporters within ostensibly free democracies act just like state media propagandists? Why are they so reliably pro-establishment, all throughout every mainstream outlet? Why do they so consistently marginalize any idea that doesn’t fit within the extremely narrow Overton window of acceptable opinion? Why does anyone who inconveniences western establishment power always find themselves on the losing end of a trial by media? Why are they so dependably adversarial toward anything that could be perceived as a flaw in any nation outside the US-centralized power alliance, and so dependably forgiving of the flaws of the nations within it?
The way I see it there are only two possible explanations for the unanimous consensus in mass media on these issues:
Explanation 1: The consensus exists because the mass media reporters are all telling the truth all the time.
OR
Explanation 2: The consensus exists because there is some kind of system in place which keeps all mass media reporters lying to us and painting a false picture about what’s going on in the world.
Those are the only two possibilities, and only one can be true, since any mixture of the two would result in the loss of consensus.
Most mainstream westerners harbor an unquestioned assumption that Explanation 1 is the only possibility. The things they see on CNN, the BBC and the ABC are all accurate descriptions of what’s really going on in the world, and the consensus in their descriptions exists because they’re all describing the same objective reality.
But what would that mean exactly? Well, for starters if the mainstream media reporters are telling us the truth all the time it would mean that the same power institutions which slaughtered millions in Vietnam and Iraq for no good reason are actually virtuous and honest. It would mean the positive, uncritical picture that is consistently painted of those same institutions which wage nonstop campaigns of bloodshed and oppression to ensure the profit of economic manipulators and war profiteers is due to those institutions possessing merits which are overall so positive that no criticism of them is needed. It would mean that the status quo of climate destruction, steadily growing wealth inequality, an increasingly Orwellian surveillance system, an increasingly militarized police force, increasing internet censorship, and crushing neoliberal austerity measures are all things people voted for using the excellent democratic political system the mainstream media defends, based on the accurate information the mainstream media gave them about what’s in their best interests.
Explanation 1 sounds improbable in that light. We know that the system is spectacularly screwed up, and we know that the political establishment which these mainstream outlets always defend does unforgivably evil things, so we should expect to see a lot more critical reporting and a lot less protecting of the status quo. But we don’t. We see war crimes ignored, oppression justified, the two-headed one-party system normalized, dissident narratives smeared as fake news conspiracy theories, and unproven assertions by government agencies with a known history of lying reported as unquestionable fact.
But that leaves only Explanation 2. How could that be right?
This partof a 1996 interviewbetween Noam Chomsky and the BBC’s Andrew Marr describes a foundational element of Explanation 2: that there is a system in place which ensures that all the reporters in positions of influence are there not to report factually on the news of the day, but to sell a particular narrative that is friendly to the state and the status quo. Chomsky describes a “filtering system” which ensures that only those loyal to power rise to the top within the plutocrat-owned media, to which Marr objects and insists that his peers are brave truth-tellers who hold power to account. Subsequently, the following exchange takes place:
”Chomsky: Well, I know some of the best, and best known investigative reporters in the United States, I won’t mention names, whose attitude towards the media is much more cynical than mine. In fact, they regard the media as a sham. And they know, and they consciously talk about how they try to play it like a violin. If they see a little opening, they’ll try to squeeze something in that ordinarily wouldn’t make it through. And it’s perfectly true that the majority – I’m sure you’re speaking for the majority of journalists who are trained, have it driven into their heads, that this is a crusading profession, adversarial, we stand up against power. A very self-serving view. On the other hand, in my opinion, I hate to make a value judgement but, the better journalists and in fact the ones who are often regarded as the best journalists have quite a different picture. And I think a very realistic one.
Marr: How can you know that I’m self-censoring? How can you know that journalists are..
Chomsky: I’m not saying your self censoring. I’m sure you believe everything you’re saying. But what I’m saying is that if you believed something different, you wouldn’t be sitting where you’re sitting”.
“If you believed something different, you wouldn’t be sitting where you’re sitting.”
It is an obvious fact that mainstream media outlets are owned by the extremely wealthy, as has been the case for a very long time. Owning media is in and of itself a profitable investment, “like having a license to print your own money” as Canadian television magnate Roy Thomson once put it. So when it comes to the news media outlets which form people’s perceptions of the world, what incentive would a powerful plutocrat have to platform anti-establishment voices on those outlets and help sow ideas which upset the status quo upon which said plutocrat has built his empire? It certainly wouldn’t make him any more money, and if anti-establishment ideas like socialism, anarchism, non-interventionism or skepticism of government agencies gained popular footing in public consciousness, it could upset the foundation of the plutocrat’s dynasty and cause him to lose everything.
Plutocrats have put a lot of energy into influencing government policy in order to create legislation which ensures the continued growth of their wealth and power. A whole lot of maneuvering has had to happen over the course of many years to create a political system wherein government bribery is legal in the form of campaign finance and corporate lobbying, wherein deregulation of corporations is the norm, wherein tax loopholes are abundant and tax burdens are shifted to the middle class, wherein money hemorrhages upward to the wealthiest of the wealthy while ordinary people grow poorer and poorer. What incentive would these powerful oligarchs have to risk upsetting that delicate balancing act by helping to circulate ideas which challenge the very governmental system they’ve worked so hard to manipulate to their extreme advantage? And how many incentives would they have to keep everyone supporting the status quo?
How hard would it be to simply decline to give anti-establishment voices a platform, and platform establishment loyalists instead? How easy would it be for a wealthy media owner or influential investor to ensure that only establishment loyalists are given the job of hiring and promoting editors and reporters in a mainstream media outlet?
Every blue-checkmark MSM journo on Twitter is auditioning for a job. All they’re actually tweeting is “Look at me, current or future employer! I will smear Julian Assange! I will help sell the Russia narrative! I’ll say Corbyn is an antisemite!” And the MSM bosses pay attention.
If you’ve ever wondered what motivates all those blue-checkmarked corporate media journalists to spend so much time on Twitter defending the powerful and attacking the disempowered, this is your answer. They spend their own free time smearing Jill Stein, calling Jeremy Corbyn an antisemite, attacking Julian Assange, supporting longtime neoconservative war agendas against Russia, Syria and Iran and uncritically reporting intelligence agency assertions as fact not because there’s a CIA officer hovering over their shoulder at all times telling them exactly what to tweet, but because they’re auditioning for a job. They’re creating a public record of their establishment loyalism which current and future employers will look at when weighing hiring and promotion decisions, which is why both journalism schools and journalism employers now encourage journalists to cultivate a social media presence to “build their brand”, i.e. their public resume.
So it’s very easy to fill mass media jobs with minds which are not predisposed toward rocking the boat. A pro-establishment consensus is artificially built, and now you’ve got an environment where someone who stands up and says “Uh, hey, so we still haven’t seen any actual hard evidence that Russia interfered in the US election in any meaningful way” or whatever is instantly greeted by a wall of shunning and shaming (observe Aaron Maté‘s interactions with other journalists on social media for a good example of this), which can be psychologically difficult to deal with.
Every blue-checkmark MSM journo on Twitter is auditioning for a job. All they’re actually tweeting is “Look at me, current or future employer! I will smear Julian Assange! I will help sell the Russia narrative! I’ll say Corbyn is an antisemite!” And the MSM bosses pay attention.
Anyone who’s ever gone to high school can understand how powerful the social pressures to seek peer approval and fit in can be, and anyone who’s ever worked a normal job anywhere can understand the natural incentives that are in place to behave in a way that is pleasing to one’s bosses. In any job with any kind of hierarchy, you quickly learn the written rules, and you pay close attention to social cues to learn the unwritten ones as well. You do this in order to learn how to avoid getting in trouble and how to win the approval of your superiors, to learn which sorts of behaviors can lead to raises and promotions, and which behaviors will lead to a career dead-end. You learn what will earn you a pat on the back from a leader, which can be extremely egoically gratifying and incentivizing in and of itself.
It works exactly the same way in news media. Reporters might not always be consciously aware of all the pro-establishment guidelines they’re expected to follow in order to advance their careers, but they know how the reporters who’ve ascended to the top of the media ladder conduct themselves, and they see how the journalists who win the accolades behave. With the help of editors and peers you quickly learn where all the third rails and sacred cows are, and when to shut your mouth about the elephant in the room. And for those rare times that all these filtration devices fail to adequately filter out dissident ideas, you see the example that gets made of those few who slip between the cracks, like CNN contributor Marc Lamont Hill for his defense of Palestinian human rights or Phil Donahue for his opposition to the Iraq invasion.
Last week, CNN contributor Marc Lamont Hill delivered a speech at the United Nations in support of Palestinian self-determination and equal rights. Less than 24 hours later, CNN was done with him. http://bit.ly/2RTa4La
The six words that got Marc Lamont Hill fired from CNN
Hill’s dismissal highlights how pro-Israel lobbying groups control the US discourse on Palestine and Israel
mg.co.za
So plutocrats own the mass media and platform status quo-friendly voices, which creates an environment full of peer pressure to conform and workplace pressure to advance establishment-friendly narratives. Add to this the phenomenon of access journalism, wherein journalists are incentivized to cozy up to power and pitch softball questions to officials in order to gain access to them, and things get even more slanted. It’s easy to understand how all this can create an environment of consensus which has nothing to do with facts or reality, but rather with what narratives favor the US-centralized empire and the plutocrats who control it. But all those dynamics aren’t the only factors going into making sure a consensus worldview is maintained. Remember that hypothetical CIA officer I mentioned earlier who isn’t actively leaning over every journalist’s shoulder and dictating what they tweet? Well, just because he’s not dictating every word produced by the mass media machine doesn’t mean he’s not involved.
Secretive and unaccountable government agencies have an extensive and well-documented record of involving themselves with news media outlets. It is a known and undisputed fact that the Central Intelligence Agency has been intimately involved in America’s news media since the 1950s, and it remains so to this day. In 2014 it was a scandal when reporter Ken Dilanian was caught collaborating with the CIA in his publications, but now veterans of the US intelligence community like John Brennan and James Clapper openly fill out the line-up of talking heads on MSNBC and CNN. Just recently the Guardian published a lie-filled smear piece on Julian Assange which was almost certainly the resultof the outlet’s collaboration with one or more intelligence and/or defense agencies, and when that article caused an outcry it was defended as the likely result of Russian disinformation in an evidence-free article by a CIA veteran who was permitted to publish anonymously in Politico. The Washington Post is solely owned by Jeff Bezos, who is a CIA contractor, and who we may be certain did not purchase the Post under the illusion that newspapers were about to make a lucrative comeback. Secretive government agencies are deeply involved in the workings of western news media, in many ways we know about, and in far more ways we don’t know about.
Taking all of these factors into consideration and revisiting Explanation 1 and Explanation 2 from the beginning of this article, it should be obvious to you that the most logical explanation for the uniform consensus of support for pro-establishment narratives in the mass media exists because there is indeed a system in place which keeps all mass media reporters lying to us and painting a false picture about what’s going on in the world.
This doesn’t mean that these news media outlets lie about everything all the time, it means they mostly provide half-truths, distortions and lies by omission whenever it benefits the agendas of the powerful, which is functionally the same as lying all the time. I sometimes get people telling me “Caitlin! The MSM lies all the time, and they say global warming is real! That means it’s false!” But it doesn’t work that way; if the TV tells you a celebrity has died then it’s probably true, and if they say it’s about to rain you should probably roll up your car windows. If they lied about everything all the time they would instantly lose all credibility, and their ability to propagandize effectively would be lost. Instead, they advance evidence-free narratives asserted by opaque government agencies, they avoid highlighting inconvenient truths, they ignore third parties and dissident ideas except to dismiss them, they harshly criticize the misdeeds of governments which oppose the US-centralized empire while sweeping the misdeeds of imperial members under the rug, and when there’s an opportunity to sabotage peace or support war, they seize it. They distort only when they have to, and only as much as they need to.
In this way the powerful have succeeded in controlling the people’s narratives about what’s happening in their country and their world. This is the system of narrative manipulation we are up against when we try to sow dissident ideas into public consciousness, and as the old adage goes, it is easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled.
And yet we are gaining ground. The manipulators have been losing control of the narrative, which is why the mass media have been acting so weird and desperate since 2016. The unelected power establishment failed to manufacture support for its would-be Syria invasion, it failed to get the publicto buy into the Russia hysteria, trust in the mass media is at an all-time low, and it’s continuing to plummet. More and more people are waking up to the fact that they are being lied to, which is good, because the only thing keeping them from pushing for real change is the fact that there are all these screens in everyone’s lives telling them that real change isn’t needed.
The liars are against the ropes, and they’re starting to look winded. A populist information revolutionis looking more winnable than ever.
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Drie dagen voordat Trump zich terugtrok van de onderhandelingen met Kim Yung-un, zei oorlogshitser en grootlobbyist van het militair-industrieel complex, Bolton dat de onderhandelingen met Noord-Korea van hetzelfde kaliber zijn als die met Libië, zo’n 13 jaar voordat het bewind van Khadaffi omver werd geworpen door de illegale oorlog die de VS en NAVO coalitie tegen Libië begon…… Des te opvallender de opmerking van het beest Trump, hij heeft het gesprek met Kim afgezegd vanwege de agressieve woorden die Noord-Korea zou hebben gebruikt…….. ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! Een enorm grote pot, verwijt een piepklein keteltje zwart te zien!
Leeghoofd Mike Pence probeerde de (agressieve) woorden van Bolton tevergeefs af te zwakken, met te stellen dat Noord-Korea hetzelfde lot te wachten staat als Libië, wanneer Noord-Korea niet akkoord zou gaan met de voorwaarden van de VS…. Ofwel: de besprekingen tussen Trump en Kim waren bedoeld voor de bühne en Kim werd alleen geacht z’n handtekening te zetten onder de voorwaarden zoals de VS die zou dicteren……..
Uiteraard heeft Noord-Korea daarop zelf voorwaarden gesteld……
Overigens werd gisteren, bekend gemaakt dat ondanks de afzegging van Trump, Noord-Korea bereid blijft te praten* (zo die kunnen de hufters Trump, Bolton en Pence in hun zak steken!). Vanmorgen werd bekend gemaakt dat Trump nu toch wil praten met Kim, al hoef je niet op te kijken als hij het uiteindelijk toch af laat weten….. Om te beginnen zal de VS van Noord-Korea opnieuw eisen de zaken te tekenen die de VS het land voorlegt, ofwel wat stelt het overleg tussen Trump en Kim dan nog voor??
Mensen lees het volgende prima de luxe en verhelderende artikel van Caitlin Johnstone over deze zaak:
Brilliant Strategy of Offering North Korea the ‘Libya Model’ Somehow Falls Through
Three days before President Trump announced him as the new National Security Advisor, deranged mutant death walrus John Bolton appeared on Radio Free Asia and said of negotiations with North Korea, “I think we should insist that if this meeting is going to take place, it will be similar to discussions we had with Libya 13 or 14 years ago.”
Bolton has been loudly and publicly advocating “the Libya model” with the DPRK ever since.
“I think we’re looking at the Libya model of 2003, 2004,” Bolton said on Face the Nation last month, and said the same on Fox News Sunday in case anyone failed to get the message.
Bolton never bothered to refine his message by saying, for example, “Without the part where we betray and invade them and get their leader mutilated to death in the streets.” He just said they’re doing Libya again.
This was what John Bolton was saying before he was hired, and this was what John Bolton continued to say after he was hired. This was what John Bolton was hired to do. He was hired to sabotage peace and facilitate death and destruction. That is what he does. That is what he is for. Can openers open cans, John Bolton starts wars. You don’t buy a can opener to rotate your tires, and you don’t hire John Bolton to facilitate peace.
It should have surprised no one, then, when the administration saw Bolton’s Libya comments and raised him a canceled peace talk.
“You know, there were some talk about the Libya model last week,” Vice President Pence told Fox News on Saturday. “And you know, as the president made clear, you know, this will only end like the Libya model ended if Kim Jong-un doesn’t make a deal.”
“Some people saw that as a threat,” Fox’s Martha MacCallum replied, because there is no other way it could possibly be interpreted.
Pence blathered something about it being “a fact”, not a threat, but that is because he is a fake plastic doll manufactured by Raytheon. It was an extremely obvious and blatant threat, so of course North Korea responded accordingly. Below is the full text of the response to Pence’s statement by North Korea’s Vice Foreign Minister Choe Son Hui, which reportedly was the basis for Trump’s cancellation of the scheduled summit in Singapore:
“At an interview with Fox News on May 21, US Vice-President Pence made unbridled and impudent remarks that North Korea might end like Libya, military option for North Korea never came off the table, the US needs complete, verifiable and irreversible denuclearisation, and so on.
As a person involved in the US affairs, I cannot suppress my surprise at such ignorant and stupid remarks gushing out from the mouth of the US vice-president.
If he is vice-president of “single superpower” as is in name, it will be proper for him to know even a little bit about the current state of global affairs and to sense to a certain degree the trends in dialogue and the climate of détente.
We could surmise more than enough what a political dummy he is as he is trying to compare the DPRK, a nuclear weapon state, to Libya that had simply installed a few items of equipment and fiddled around with them.
Soon after the White House National Security Adviser Bolton made the reckless remarks, Vice-President Pence has again spat out nonsense that the DPRK would follow in Libya’s footstep.
It is to be underlined, however, that in order not to follow in Libya’s footstep, we paid a heavy price to build up our powerful and reliable strength that can defend ourselves and safeguard peace and security in the Korean peninsula and the region.
In view of the remarks of the US high-ranking politicians who have not yet woken up to this stark reality and compare the DPRK to Libya that met a tragic fate, I come to think that they know too little about us.
To borrow their words, we can also make the US taste an appalling tragedy it has neither experienced nor even imagined up to now.
Before making such reckless threatening remarks without knowing exactly who he is facing, Pence should have seriously considered the terrible consequences of his words.
It is the US who has asked for dialogue, but now it is misleading the public opinion as if we have invited them to sit with us.
I only wonder what is the ulterior motive behind its move and what is it the US has calculated to gain from that.
We will neither beg the US for dialogue nor take the trouble to persuade them if they do not want to sit together with us.
Whether the US will meet us at a meeting room or encounter us at nuclear-to-nuclear showdown is entirely dependent upon the decision and behavior of the United States.
In case the US offends against our goodwill and clings to unlawful and outrageous acts, I will put forward a suggestion to our supreme leadership for reconsidering the DPRK-US summit.”
Trump cancels North Korea summit? Actually John Bolton already torpedoed it by telling North Korea to self destruct with the “Libya model”. This was perfect warmonger strategy to stop the threat of peace breaking out on the Peninsula. South Korea, please stay the course!
The message of Trump’s withdrawal couldn’t be more clear: we get to threaten you, you don’t get to threaten us. This extremely one-sided dynamic is not a style of negotiation that any sane person would go along with if they didn’t have to, and as Choe pointed out, North Korea doesn’t have to. Libya had only the barest rudiments of what could have eventually one day become a nuclear program. North Korea has a full arsenal, and thus a much bigger stack of bargaining chips. A negotiation at gunpoint can only be one-sided if the other side has no gun.
This negotiation was never meant to succeed. Publicly stating that North Korea gets “the Libya model” was like a hostage negotiator offering “the Waco model”. It was plainly designed to fail.
Of course the US-centralized empire has no intention of a mutually beneficial negotiation with a sovereign nation. That isn’t how imperialism works. You either join the mass of tightly allied nations which function in effective unison on foreign policy, or you are smashed like Libya. This policy of threatening nations to join the empire on pain of decimation is what is causing all nonconforming nations to form into a growing and increasingly close alliance of their own, and it is what is causing them to seek nuclear weapons so that they don’t end up like Libya.
If there’s a silver lining to be found in all of this, it was summed up by the Ron Paul Liberty Report’s Daniel McAdams:
“I think Trump is making America great again by making America irrelevant. We are irrelevant in the North and South peace talks right now. The ball is completely in [South Korea President] Moon’s court, what is he going to do next; we’ve basically recused ourselves from the whole process. Which is very, very good for us. So I feel rather upbeat. I think although it’s always better to talk to people, and it would be better to talk, but in the current environment, for us to get out of the way is really the non-interventionist position.”
America getting out of the way would be great for everyone, especially for the Americans whose resources are being relentlessly consumed by constant aggressive interventionism and an oligarchy whose vastly disproportionate wealth is propped up with the barrel of a gun. The natural drive of plutocratic smash-and-grab imperialism is in the exact opposite direction of non-interventionism, but as people continue to wake up from the madness and the rest of the world refuses to be consumed by the blob, it’s possible that the empire ends not with a bang but with a barely noticed fizzle. And that is my sincere prayer for all of us.
=================================== * Noord-Korea heeft de laatste jaren meermaals aangegeven te willen praten met de VS, een verzoek dat keer op keer door de VS werd afgewezen……..
Mijn excuus voor de vormgeving, krijg het niet op orde.
30 years ago today in Venezuela: the mass rebellion against neoliberalism known as the Caracazo, which ended in the massacre of 300 to 3,000, most dumped in mass graves. Today, neoliberals claim the mantle of human rights as they try to do the same. Never forget! 
