On the eve of the Winter Olympics Warmongering USA: Vice President Pence: “The United States of America will soon unveil the toughest and most aggressive round of economic sanctions on North Korea ever — and we will continue to isolate North Korea until …” it does exactly what the USA tells it to do.

War and Menace: Donald Trump 2017: “Unless the regime of leader Kim Jong-un backs down we will have no choice than to totally destroy North Korea”. “They will be met with fire and fury and frankly power the likes of which the world has never seen before,”

Before our eyes we have clear growing evidence the Trump administration is gathering force to launch war against North Korea. And not just the visibility of carrier led battle fleets in Western Pacific seas offshore Korea, there are also other “world events” fitting into first strike preparation from the U.S. Either this or the most enormously dangerous threat driven brinkmanship.

First clear emphatic evidence is then North Korea select Foreign Ministers’ summit meeting in Vancouver Monday 15th Jan. This meeting notably not including The People’s Republic of China or the Russian Federation, let alone the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

The summit with single minded interest in using U.N. sanctions to blockade North Korea into increasingly deep economic, financial, and political isolation. This then to North Korea a declaration of war. Notably the summit included most of the Western supporting nations in the 1950-53 Korean War. A war in which the U.S. air-force with overwhelming air power, including napalm carpet bombing (as in Vietnam), destroyed North Korea with some 1.5 million Korean civilian deaths.

There is then the Hawaii nuclear strike alert terrifying the population of Hawaii Saturday 13th January – notably two days before the Vancouver summit. On all the evidence the alarm being set off would seem to be a mistake on the part of one operator. There again it is a feasible possibility alarm activation was a set-up from high levels in U.S. government to get the message across to the U.S. public a North Korea nuclear attack is a real and present danger. That then building justification for a U.S. preemptive strike.

For further evidence there is then White House termination of consideration of Professor Victor Cha of Georgetown University for U.S. South Korea Ambassador. His candidature abruptly ended as he had spoken out against a first strike preemptive attack on DPRK. This in itself deeply worrying and all the more so taking note on Korean issues the Professor is a well known “hardliner”. Although he opposes a preemptive strike, citing DPRK. retaliation and huge loss of life, in strikingly U.S. centric analysis he promotes the strongest of confrontational policies : “up-gunning alliances with Japan”, increasing “strike capability”, blockading DPRK with a “maritime coalition around North Korea”. Hardly peacemaking policies with focus on dialogue, communication, rapprochement, meetings of cultures and minds.

This then goes to show how deeply uncompromising combative policies are embedded in the Trump administration. Supporting international blockading of DPRK., in itself hugely provocative and controversial, is not strong enough for the administration and this then adding more evidence the White House is looking for unqualified support for a preemptive strike on North Korea. Risks will be faced down.

And to this is to be added the growing preemptive strike justification emulating the very same rationale for attacking Iraq 2003. The justification for mass bombing and invasion 2003 Weapons of Mass Destruction, including country wide stockpiles of chemical weapons, none of which existed. Blatant lies from U.S. and U.K.government to justify the war. And now for DPRK it is nuclear missiles. But then the defining war or peace issue does the U.S. truly believe that DPRK is going to launch an attack on the U.S. or, vastly more credible, the North has developed nuclear strike missiles for one and one only abundantly clear reason its own deterrent protection from the U.S. The U.S. which has post WW2 repeatedly attacked other countries.

US nuclear fire power – Ohio class Trident multi-nuclear warhead strike capacity.

The cost of one “superpower” Ohio submarine would fund ten thousand U.S. Korea student exchanges. That can be the only way the world will move forward.

Further evidence again for preparation could not be more evident in the build up of U.S. battle fleets in Western Pacific seas offshore Korea. Three carrier fleets complete with cruise missiles and stealth attack aircraft, who knows how many Trident multi-warhead delivery submarines close to Korean waters, along with nuclear strike squadrons of B-2 and B-52 bombers on Guam.

USS Ohio being converted from an SSBN to an SSGN in March 2004 (Source: U.S. Navy photo by Wendy Hallmark)

Each Ohio class submarine armed with 24 Trident missiles each carrying eight nuclear strike warheads. That is then from one submarine, out of a fleet of 18 U.S. Ohio class submarines, 192 nuclear strikes. Enough power to annihilate DPRK cities, major towns, and missile sites. Armageddon weaponry. Within US fleets the boats known as Doomsday submarines.

Match then this power of destruction with President Trump’s address to the United Nations 19th September 2017. Referring to the “Depraved regime in North Korea” he told gathered world leaders if the U.S. or allies were “threatened” then “the U.S. would have no choice but to totally destroy North Korea”. And this following the self same threats of annihilation in a speech in August in New Jersey telling the world “Threats from North Korea will be met with fire and fury the world has never seen”.

Belligerence and threat on an unprecedented scale never before known in the world since the U.S. and U.S.S.R. became nuclear powers in the 1940s and clearly backed up with the annihilation power to carry out these threats. And of course if the U.S. does strike that will be an enormous distraction away from the problems of a president who must be aware, from the disruption and huge dissent he is sowing world-wide, along with the Mueller FBI investigation, his own time may well be running out.

Brinkmanship – the mindset of a combative President : Mutual Assured Destruction.

“Donald Trump the Draft Dodger five times deferring the US draft for Vietnam”. Can anyone doubt if Trump had served in Vietnam, facing the full horror and terror of war, he would now (like the film director Oliver Stone and so many more Nam veterans) have a vastly different attitude to banging child-like war drums.

Who then is to say given an ego surge of self-preservation this president will not, with like minded neo-nationalists in his government, take the gamble of attacking North Korea ? The evidence is all too clear in a lifetime wheeler-dealing whatever else Donald Trump is he is certainly a gambler. A man set on winning at all costs and in that all but blind to the consequences of actions on others. Serial summary dismissal of so many high ranking White House and government staff (80 ambassadors in one abrupt sweep January 2017) a highly notable example, along with ripping up long held and hard worked for international agreements such as the Paris Climate Agreements.

And to keep in mind U.S.A. has 7,800 nuclear warheads with delivery by Trident, ICBMs, cruise missiles, and air force B-2s and B-52s – DPRK. has at most ten nuclear missiles. You would think then there must surely be those in U.S. government who grasp if North Korea is not threatened then there can be no rational why the North would ever think of attacking the U.S.A. or South Korea facing as they must know annihilation. It then surely stands to reason the North sees their nuclear option as deterrent for their country located as the systems are within their country. Not taken to the offshore seas of other countries far away as the U.S. is doing in the case of Korea.

Even if from the U.S. side the build of nuclear attack weapons as a warning is assessed by U.S. military to be a strategic end in itself, pressing by display of force the U.S. demand for DPRK denuclearisation, this is enormously heightening risk of precipitating war by “fear and terror of war”. All the more so U.S. forces on the borders of North Korea on land, at sea, and in air space, with large scale annual war drills including stealth bombers within minutes strike range of Pyongyang. Either side losing nerve and in panic going for an all out obliterating first strike. This huge U.S. military build up needs then to be roundy condemned by I would hope every thinking human being on the planet. But as it is, from the West, to a very large extent, blinding mass ignorance amplified through Western mass media.

Korean people building bridges – making progress.

“One of the great things about the Olympics is the way it brings people of different nations together, channelling political tensions into the glory of competition.”

In then considerable contrast to U.S. policy to strike fear into North Korea, which results in the same threats back, the people of Korea left to their own politics are as we now see finding their way. High level positive meetings have taken place. North Korea will bring athletes to the Winter Olympics led by Kim Yong Nam president of DPRK Presidium (DPRK Parliament) and, in accord with the spirit of the Olympics, have announced North and South will march together at the opening ceremony under one Korean flag. This then a huge boost for the Korean peninsular and people, and for world peace. A time of optimism and for building trust.

And more than this DPRK will contribute national bands to the Olympics. This will be the Sanjiyon Orchestra including members of the hugely popular Moranbong all female band. Internationally acclaimed performances from Korean musicians and singers. The best of Korea that is iron curtain shut out by Western propaganda. Not by the Koreans – the most welcoming and friendly and courteous of people, to those that show respect for their country and customs.

And indeed look further into DPRK culture and we find so many gems. I have never in a lifetime seen in the West a more deeply moving operatic drama than DPRK’s The Flower Girl. A powerfully moving drama with wonderful actors and actresses (leads from two young girls : Yong Hui Hong and Ren Rim Kim) expressing the oppression and struggles faced by so many in our world, East and West.

On all counts taking a sweep of modern 20th century history North Korean people are some of the bravest in the world. Truly heroic. They took as much horror U.S. bombing and possibly more than even Vietnam and survived and to their huge credit, grounded in their founding philosophy Juche, self-reliance and independence, rebuilt their U.S. annihilated country. Beautiful clean modern working cities. A huge credit to any nation.

Why not nuclear armed DPRK – there are sound universal deterrent reasons as promoted by the U.S. for the U.S. and held by seven other nations.

“The Department of Defense’s enduring mission is to provide combat-credible military forces needed to deter war and protect the security of our nation.” The U.S. considers it has an unequivocal right to nuclear deterrent weapons but DPRK which the U.S. bombed flat 1950-53 does not.

Why then should DPRK not have nuclear defence to protect their country ? Look what the U.S. and West do to countries that have no nuclear defence : Vietnam, Cambodia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria – bombed to shreds, millions die, countries set back decades, when it suits the West. But the U.S. thinks twice and twice again when it’s the Russian Federation, or the People’s Republic of China, with nuclear deterrents.

The West needs to pay close and focussed attention and quickly before we have nuclear war on the planet led by an ultra nationalist Western leader who casts large sections of the rest of the world as “rogue states” or “axes of evil”. There are balancing reports from the White House that senior staff generals, foremost Secretary of Defence Jim Mattis, warn against “catastrophic consequences” of a preemptive attack on North Korea. But then how many ardent nationalist in the Trump administration will be tempted to such a strike ? The fact is time and again post WW2 the U.S. has determined war is the solution : Vietnam, Afghanistan, “Mission Accomplished” Iraq. In each case hugely destructive wars with no benefit to any country including and specifically the U.S.

So do we now face yet another U.S. lead high technology bomb delivery war, on yet again another country far from the U.S.A. ? How many then in the U.S. military all ranks will be excited ? New generations immersed in violent attack gaming have forgotten Vietnam and the Korean War that was in any case disregarded long ago hence its epitaph “The Forgotten War”. No matter that one and a half million Korean civilians men women and children died in the war, in their own towns and homes. As I would say to anyone planning war, to grasp the enormity of destruction of human life in warfare, get a sledgehammer and high octane burner and go to work on your nearest and dearest, including your children.

That is the true horror of warfare all the more horrific when it is phosphorus high octane napalm bombing of civilian cities as in North Korea 1950-53. Many U.S. service men and women will know this universal warfare suffering and trauma well enough from more recent service in Iraq and Afghanistan. And not just trauma in and during war but whole lifetimes of mental trauma (PTSD) as is becoming more evident every generation. But no less lessons are not learnt – “the world well knows yet none knows well” – except they have been in warfare – and so it is new young generations are drawn into the adventurism of war.

In all consideration the deepest of deep tragedies for humanity the West cannot see how, in conflict, belligerents mirror each other’s behaviour. It is the U.S. that brings huge military armadas to the Sea of Japan and the Yellow Sea offshore North Korea. Wouldn’t any country be terrified with such enormous destructive fire power on their doorstep, from a U.S.A. that seven decades ago bombed their country flat ?

Give the Korean people the space to reconcile north and south.

“Our greatest enemy in the end our own deep ignorance – belligerence in conflict mirrored back time and time again. The U.S. and many in the West forever condemning socialism and communism without any effort to try and understand different political ideologies”

In huge contrast what we see in the East is what has been lost from all sight in our mass consumption West and that is the Wisdom of the East. They have the wisdom to understand that small scale shared positive experience, as in engaging jointly in the Winter Olympics, is the way that people one to one begin to get to know one-another. And from that you quietly build. Not on world stages shouting one another down : from Donald Trump “Fire and Fury” with the even more juvenile “Mine’s bigger than yours”. No different to Bush’s “Shock and Awe” in 2003 prior to the U.S. led Iraq invasion which has then spawned wars and turmoil to this day throughout the Middle East.

All the Western propaganda from the 1950s that Communism was sweeping South Asia refused to recognise the fact that vast numbers in Asia did and still do hold to socialist and communist values. Not least for Korean people and many world wide sweeping away feudal landlord power systems. Now then seven decades later the U.S. needs to step back and leave the Korean people to assess their different political systems and work out how best to make this work for Korea. Parallel nations at peace, or integration of the best of systems both sides of the 38th parallel. If Western U.S. led market capitalism is so superior to centralised communism it will speak for itself. Not need enormous battle fleets and militarisation to enforce one political ideology on another.

That such massive forces are in play with potential planet destroying consequences with millions of lives destroyed only goes to show the huge lack of belief in dialogue and world peace on the part of U.S. leadership. It is Korea’s huge misfortune at the end of WW2 – following decades of brutal Japanese occupation – to end up on a world tectonic plate between Capitalism and Communism. We now have an absolute duty to help this country build safety and security into the 21st century. Korea in history has never invaded any of its neighbours. It is the Japanese, Europeans, and in the course of history post WW2 the U.S.A. that have time and again been the belligerents. Invading, colonising, exploiting, demanding subservience to Western capital markets.

Anyone with doubts on these issues might like to look at the latest U.S. National Defence Strategy from Defence Secretary retired Marine Corp General Mattis : The Pentagon’s Plan for Never Ending War. Secretary Mattis speaks of catastrophic consequences of a war with North Korea but then all the evidence is of huge military buildup. Which in the end goes to show the whole self-defeating logic of threat driven foreign policy. Threat turns to counter threat : high level brinkmanship when then at any time one small unpredictable event (one gun shot) and events run out of all control. We have seen this time and again in history : one assassination in Sarajevo 1914 and we have the 1st World War with Europe in ruin and 37 million dead.

Our greatest enemy in the end our own deep ignorance – belligerence in conflict mirrored back time and time again. In this case The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea no more and no less emulating the example set by the U.S.A. Might is Right. All that President Eisenhower warned against after World War Two, the U.S. industrial military complex taking over USA government, as it has now done with eight generals in Donald Trump’s cabinet, apart from the power of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. National Defence budget $800 billion dwarfing all other U.S. domestic budgets. The royal road to rack and ruin.

This then can be compared with the world lead from China Roads for Peace and Prosperity : Xi Jinping 2018 China Focus “A Community with a Shared Future for all Mankind”. The US promotes a world of weapons and warfare; China promotes a world of connectivity and peace.

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Sources

The Korean War 1950-53 – Forgotten when we need to remember. Over 1.5 million Korean civilian deaths. Korean people do not forget : May 2017

Looming war – Is US preparing for first strike on DPRK : February 2018

Professor Victor Cha : speaking against a preemptive attack : “Force will be necessary to deal with North Korea if it attacks first, but not through a preventative strike that could start a nuclear war,” A preemptive military strike with North Korea retaliation “would likely kill tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of Americans.” The direst of warnings but then notably, with focus on U.S. citizens, a U.S. centric analysis (what about North Korea families men women and children and in the South ?). In any case Professor Cha not supporting a preemptive strike, for the soberest of sound rational reasons, ended it seems his candidature for Ambassador for South Korea.

US National Strategic “Defence” Policy – the Pentagon’s Plan for Never Ending War : “The Department of Defense’s enduring mission is to provide combat-credible military forces needed to deter war and protect the security of our nation”. “We are emerging from a period of strategic atrophy, aware that our competitive military advantage has been eroding. As well, North Korea’s outlaw actions and reckless rhetoric continue …” And the Commander in Chief of the US is not daily broadcasting the most “reckless rhetoric” the world has ever heard. And this from a Commander with more nuclear destruction power than the rest of the world put together.

The rational to attack North Korea following the same script as attack on Iraq 2003 : “North Korea accused the United States of planning to launch a “bloody nose” military strike against the country while promoting the threat of Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons – much like it did before invading Iraq.” If the U.S. does carry out a preemptive attack that will mean with absolute certainty war in the Far East with high probability involving China and Russia. If the U.S. does not carry out a preemptive strike then states will continue to coexist with the door open for negotiations. Peace always has risks of war but then War is absolute – once started chaos death and destruction follow.

Professor Bruce Cumings – distinguished US Historian : A Murderous History of Korea : “This April [2017], Kim In-ryong, a North Korean diplomat at the UN, warned of ‘a dangerous situation in which a thermonuclear war may break out at any moment’. A few days later, President Trump told Reuters that ‘we could end up having a major, major conflict with North Korea.’ American atmospheric scientists have shown that even a relatively contained nuclear war would throw up enough [radioactive] soot and debris to threaten the global population: How is it possible that we have come to this?” ….

“The [French] filmmaker Chris Marker visited the country in 1957, four years after US carpet-bombing ended, and wrote:‘Extermination passed over this land. Who could count what burned with the houses? … When a country is split in two by an artificial border and irreconcilable propaganda is exercised on each side, it’s naive to ask where the war comes from: the border is the war.”

There’s a long history of US aggression against the North which we forget at our peril : “January 2016, the North Koreans must be astonished to discover that US leaders never seem to grasp the import of their history-related provocations. Even more infuriating is Washington’s implacable refusal ever to investigate our 72-year history of conflict with the North; all of our media appear to live in an eternal present, with each new crisis treated as sui generis”.

“We never put ourselves in the shoes of the enemy and attempted to see the world as they did”.

“North Korea is the only country in the world to have been systematically blackmailed by US nuclear weapons going back to the 1950s, when hundreds of nukes were installed in South Korea.”

Americans once carpet-bombed North Korea. It’s time to remember that past : “The US air force subjected North Koreans to three years of ‘rain and ruin’. It was a living nightmare – one that still haunts the country to this day.” US Trump administration believes with supreme certainty in US superpower power. That is then brute military power, far from the power of leadership : world leadership – John Kennedy 1963 : “All men breathe the same air. All men are mortal”. The power of understanding as in understanding the common needs of difference people around the world. The cost of one “superpower” Ohio submarine would fund ten thousand US Korea student exchanges. That can be the only way the world will move forward.

The USS Pueblo Incident January 23rd 1968 : It is now (January 2018) 50 years since North Korea captured the USS Pueblo intelligence vessel in or close to North Korea offshore waters. The US claimed a “hydrographic survey vessel” in “international waters”, DPRK claiming a spy ship in DPRK national waters. The facts in history stand with DPRK, as accepted by the US a year later : the vessel was carrying encryption equipment and intelligence documents and, in any case, what would the US say if a DPRK “survey ship” popped up off-shore Los Angeles. As ever from the US vapid double standards.

Hawaii Missile Alert 13th January : This would seem to be a matter of a mix-up on the part of one operator not hearing the full incoming activation message. This may be the case. There again it is entirely feasible that it was a set-up from higher levels. The motive, to get the message across to the US public a North Korea attack is a real and present danger and in that justification for a US preemptive strike. Notably the alarm took place 2 days before the Vancouver North Korea ultimatum summit. For those in Washington supporting a first strike, even if the alert was no more than an accident, a most convenient coincidence.

Trump vows to “totally destroy North Korea” if it threatens USA : This in his address to the United Nations Tuesday 19th September 2017. Not off the cuff. The statement made as part of his speech. Juvenile personal insults from a world leader :

“Rocket man is on a suicide mission for himself and his regime.”

“Unless the regime of leader Kim Jong-un backs down we will have no choice than to totally destroy North Korea”. No choice ? There are of course always choices. It’s okay for the US to bring nuclear armageddon fleets into off-shore Korean seas but it’s not okay for DPRK to defend itself. And to keep in mind always the US 1950-53 mercilessly carpet bombed this small Asian country utterly destroying their land and towns and cities with some two million Koreans killed in the war. This US mass carpet-bombing of civilian populations repeated less than 15 years later (for eight years) in Vietnam.

“It is an outrage that some nations would not only trade with such a regime but would arm, supply and financially support a country that imperils the world with nuclear conflict.” – says President Trump with a world stockpile of 8,000 nuclear weapons many hundreds of which carried by battle carrier aircraft and in nuclear submarines all over the world. And that is USA the only country in the world that has released nuclear weapons – and on civilian cities : Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Trump : “If the righteous many don’t confront the wicked few, then evil will triumph,” Rooted in our Western Judeo-Christian culture are beliefs in Good and Evil. But then in a modern age we surely should not be thinking of these as supernatural forces. There is good and bad but then there is perspective, from one person or nation to another. It takes us nowhere if a world leader such as Donald Trump labels another nation “evil” if we make no effort to understand their point-of-view. Understanding is not “appeasement”.

A regime may be bloody and ruthless and there have been many in the world. But communist North Korea has made huge progress in civil society for their people and if we want to look at “evil” – horrendous damage against others – what then does the U.S. have to say about 1950-53 carpet bombing a small country into near oblivion ? And since installing hugely threatening nuclear weapons on North Korea’s doorstep.

Trump threatens North Korea will be met with “fire and fury like the world has never seen” – August 2017 New Jersey: The US can stockpile many hundreds of nuclear weapons with more attack fire-power than the rest of the world put together (11 nuclear strike carrier fleets – 42 multi-nuclear armed submarines) but a small country, that has been bombed flat by the USA in living memory, and is still daily threatened by US military forces on its borders, will be annihilated if it continues to develop its own nuclear defence system. This then is US world democracy (hypocrisy) 2017. No-one has a right to defend their country except the USA and select allies that conform to US market systems.

Pyongyang Times : DPRK English language news : North survey team visits South Korea : 22nd January : “Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un said in his New Year Address that a climate favourable for national reconciliation and reunification should be established. It is a firm will of the DPRK to ease the acute tension between the north and the south and achieve a breakthrough for improved relations and independent reunification this year.” Why would anyone want to disagree with that ? How could that more positively call for peacemaking. The beginning of work to end the ideological gulfs between North and South. Gulfs that can blow away in the wind as the troops in WW1 on the front line Christmas Day 1914 walked away from “ideological commands” finding friendship with their “enemy” in their common humanity.

Peacemaking – Korea was a united kingdom – until riven apart by outside intervention most powerfully from the USA. But no less western minds in government will be blind and deaf to Kim Jong Un’s call for reconciliation. Impossible for many in the West to understand that socialism, and communism, for many countries is their choice. Western thinking 2017 a universe away from that of President Kennedy 1963 :

“What sort of peace do we seek ? NOT PAX AMERICANA forced on the world by American weapons of war. If we cannot end now our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity. For, in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children’s future. And we are all mortal.”

What an enormous degeneration 1963 to 2017 in US power. 1963 the power of world leadership : 2017 brute military power. But then notably President Kennedy’s 1963 call for world peace and unity is now 2017 half a century later being powerfully promoted by Chinese leadership : President Xi Jinping.

Arirang News – South Korea January 16th : Samjiyon Orchestra will be playing at the Winter Olympics. “The group, consisting of 140 members, is rather unknown compared to North Korea’s other musicians and performing groups, such as the Moranbong Band.” The item includes reference to “northern propaganda”. And the south is not saturated with its own propaganda ? And this all grounded in mutual fear. We can then follow the lead from President Kennedy in 1963 for world peace, the call from Kim Jong Un for Korean reconciliation, and the lead from world leader Xi Jinping calling for the world to build a “shared future for all mankind”. Or we get drawn further and further into destructive fear driven propaganda.

North Korea culture – bands music and much more : A rare glimpse informative and fascinating review of modern North Korea music, drama, and art performance. With focus on missiles and warfare so much that is never seen or heard in the West. “One of the great things about the Olympics is the way it brings people of different nations together, channelling political tensions into the glory of competition”.

Moranbong Band 2016 – Let’s go to Mount Pektu : the people of North Korea have their culture – bands, music, celebration – as the world over. In this case the hugely popular all female Moranbong band. The West fixating on missiles gives a distorting view of the country and people as would fixation on the current US president and US ballistic systems as if a country has no other dynamics at play. As if Korean families and children don’t enjoy and value their lives every bit as much as people from all nations world-wide.

Moranbong Band 2013 – a military performance : and why not ? The people are hugely proud of what they have achieved. This will appear incongruous to many in the West, musical performance to a backdrop of tanks and military field guns. But then look at equivalence from the USA and UK and all the more so with Trump announcing that the US will have annual grand military parades in Washington.

Trump’s vision for grand military parades : “President Trump wants to celebrate the troops with a big, beautiful military parade through Washington, DC. The Pentagon and White House officials are in discussions to hold a grand event this year featuring soldiers marching and tanks rolling down the streets of the nation’s capital to highlight America’s armed forces,” Time and again we are minded of President Eisenhower’s dire warnings of the US military-industrial complex taking over the US. And this now with an all powerful Caesar commander.

Spirit of America Concert 2011 : with bomb explosion and machine gunning in opening clip. Parading military demonstrating bayonet rifle drills to band music. Is this performing in principle so very different to DPRK performance ? All countries are proud of their military.

US celebrating military tanks and fighting vehicles : the 11th Army Cavalry Regiment parading through Torrance California. Part of the US military – annual budget $800 billion. President Eisenhower warned long ago against the dangers of an expansionist US industrial-military complex dominating US civil society. The difference to DPRK parading and honouring their military ? DPRK is defending their country from within their country; the US is expanding ever outwards to dominate the world. Classic hegemony – races and countries persuade themselves they are superior (White Supremacism) and it is then to the greater good they subordinate and govern all countries in their own image.

From UK Royal Albert Hall the Navy Gun Carriage Race : to the theme “Hearts of Oak” – the tournament having opened with “Rule Britannia – Britannia Rules the Waves”. How then should it be different that DPRK celebrates the same military prowess with an exciting all female band to a backdrop of military guns ? And Britannia Rules the Waves : “Britons never never will be slaves” – the very theme of oppression in DPRK The Flower Girl. But then the Koreans have had to stand against invading oppression and brutality for decades. In the case of the UK we have of course been one of the world’s great invading and colonising perpetrators : The Imperial British Empire including the world’s leading slave trading nation (North Atlantic slave trade) for over two centuries.

DPRK The Flower Girl : I’ve not seen in a lifetime a film so powerful and deeply moving. If more leaders in the West took note – the history of Korea – the West might take a very different view to why DPRK is so heavily armed. The country north to south suffered hugely under Japanese occupation 1910-1945. This is the backdrop to the film with lead from two young girls, Koppun and Choi Yong. The film is then about the many millions of Koppuns and Cho Yongs in our world to this day struggling with oppression and exploitation.

Japanese Occupation of Korea and China – 20th Century Japanese barbarism matched only by the German Waffen SS :

Nanking Massacre – the Rape of Nanking – December 1937 : “Nanjing (Nanking) then the capital of the Republic of China. The massacre occurred over a period of six weeks starting on December 13, 1937, the day that the Japanese captured Nanjing. During this period soldiers of the Imperial Japanese Army murdered Chinese civilians and disarmed combatants who numbered an estimated 40,000 to over 300,000 and perpetrated widespread rape and looting. The International Military Tribunal for the Far East estimated in 1946 that over 200,000 Chinese were killed in the incident.” And to be noted WW2 – world war against world fascism East and West – began in 1937 with the Japanese invasion of China. Not in 1939 with German occupation of Poland.

In Nanking December 1937 shear terror for the Chinese population. It is then, taking into account Japanese brutal occupation of Korea from 1910 with then US carpet bombing of North Korea 1950-53, impossible to understand how anyone in the West with any understanding of Korean history cannot understand why the people of North Korea are hugely militarised including nuclear deterrents. Just look at the US reaction to Pearl Harbour 1941, and the 9/11 attack on New York 2001. We are all mortified when another country does huge damage to our country and people. As John Kennedy said long ago : “We all breathe the same air”.

Nanking (2007 documentary film) : Enacted testimony from Westerners who were in Nanking December 1937. On all the evidence from all the sources over many decades War Crime barbarism and brutality from the Japanese Imperial Army. Mass murder and rape of defenceless civilians. Infants and babies bayoneted and this in the 20th century, not the Middle Ages. For China and Korea, North and South, this is still living memory. Imperial fascist Japan 1941 joined with fascist Germany, then attacking the USA and occupying large parts of Southeast Asia, yet staggering any sense of World Justice at the end of the war Japan is supported by the US in rebuilding whilst Korea, who attacked no other country, ends up with a severed nation the north demonised and walled off behind the 38th parallel.

Japanese WW2 occupation enforced prostitution : Known by the Japanese Imperial Army as “Comfort Women” : “comfort” for the Japanese troops : terror and horror for Korean, Chinese, and Filipino women. Estimate of the number of women enslaved would seem to be 200,000. Clearly the practice acceptable in the highest levels in the Japanese military and government. Young women in countries under occupation lured and abducted from their homes. Japanese brutality well known from WW2 treatment of UK and other prisoners of war yet to this day Japanese government cannot bring themselves to make, in the words of independent UN Human Rights experts, “An unequivocal official apology [for enforced prostitution] recognizing the full responsibility of the then Japanese Government and military …”

Again and again the evidence from modern history is overwhelming why DPRK has put huge national investment into military defence. I do not see how it could be more staggeringly obvious DPRK is defending itself from in living memory the horrors of Japanese occupation followed by the horrors of US carpet bombing. On any semblance of Nuremberg War Crimes Justice, on all the 20th century evidence, both Japan and the USA stand indicted for Crimes Against Humanity : brutal mass murder of Korean people men women and children in their own country.

The world needs to speak up and open dialogue and communication with the people’s government of DPRK and as a matter of highest urgency. We should remember it was US China “ping pong” (table tennis) detente in the early 1970s that after a 25 year freeze opened up US China relationships. And to keep in mind that was by then a nuclear armed China. And so too now the turn of North Korea to be brought into the international community. A world of trade and exchange the future of our species : ideas, understanding, values, beliefs, aspirations. Our common humanity – in different phases of development.