Scott explains his visit to N/Korea
By Moses Kuwema
Thu 25 July 2013, 14:01 CAT
VICE-President Dr Guy Scott says the Zambian government is not bound to break diplomatic relations with countries like North Korea just because the US and UN Security Council has imposed sanctions on them.
And Vice-President Scott says the Zambian Watchdog is a campaign tool for the UPND that deserves the blocking of its website by a 'well-wisher' because they have been promoting hate speech as opposed to free speech.
In an interview, in view of his visit to North Korea to mark the celebrations of the 60th anniversary of the victory in the fatherland liberation war of that country, Vice-President Scott said the Zambian government had a long relationship with North Korea.
"There are plenty of rogue states we don't have relationships with so…sometimes I think it is useful to bring people into the foe. We are not going to be told by…I mean the United States has a problem with North Korea and the UN Security Council has a problem with their North Korea military policy but that's not the reason for boycotting them in celebrations of a national day," he said.
Vice-President Scott said his visit to North Korea was not to endorse that country's military policy.
Asked about the concerns that the continued relationships with the so-called rogue states might result in the importation of the dictatorial tendencies practiced in those countries, Vice-President Scott responded: "Why should it be so? Is dictatorship an infectious disease? If I go to North Korea, does that mean I will come back from there as an authoritarian or a militarist? Do I come back and say we must have a military government? It is not infectious. These are countries that have their own history and their own point of view."
Vice-President Scott wondered whether the Zambian government should cut diplomatic ties with China because of the one party state.
He said the visit to North Korea was just a friendly diplomacy.
"If by some small chance it helps them to feel less isolated, then we have done good but I am not counting on that. That's not my purpose of going but to represent Zambia to say we are still here," he said.
Vice-President Scott said after the celebrations, he would also spend some time talking to construction and manufacturing companies that might be interested in investing in Zambia.
And commenting on the blocking of the Zambian Watchdog website, Vice-President Scott said the online blog has been promoting hate speech as opposed to free speech.
"The Post has always been a champion of free speech. We are champions of free speech, but not where invective is being applied to women. The government is being accused of Satanism. Mr Sata's death is announced every week, this is not free speech. This is hate speech, trying to create discontent. If you go for instance to Austria, you are allowed to say whatever you like except when you say the Jews were not murdered…there was no holocaust, they put you in jail because that is encouraging hatred of the Jews. The difference is very clear," said Vice-President Scott.
Vice-President Scott said the problem with the Watchdog was that they post anything on their website and hide in cyber space.
He advised that the Watchdog should come to Zambia and set up an office.
"All this hullabaloo from the Committee to Protect Journalist and so forth, we stand with them if it comes to free speech but if its hate speech, we don't stand by them. We welcome the end of the watchdog, if it dies of its own rabies, it is okay," he said.
Vice-President Scott said even British Prime Minister David Cameron had started conducting a war against pornographic materials being circulated on the internet.
He said throughout the western world, there was an attempt to control criminality on the internet.
"But the Watchdog when they are out there in cyber space barking, they don't seem to accept there are any restrictions of what they can say," he said.
Vice-President Scott said the Zambian government was not in any way trying to put up a firewall like the Chinese and block the outside world but that the government was more worried about the inside world.
He wondered why the government was being hammered left right and centre for blocking free speech when in actual sense, the Watchdog has been promoting hate speech.
"Let them be like Chanda Chimba and come to Zambia and speak whatever they want. We don't know who these people are. Even the Daily Nation we leave it alone because Richard Sakala is careful not to say things which are untrue. He attacks and is very anti-us but that's not the problem, the problem is inciting people to hatred. They thoroughly deserve whatever this well-wisher has done. It is well deserved because they are malicious, vicious and fictitious," said Vice-President Scott.
Labels: GUY SCOTT, NORTH KOREA
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Uncle Sam, the real dictator of the Korean Peninsula
Wednesday, 21 December 2011 00:00
One of the jokes that went viral pertains to a glutton who chances upon a funeral wake, and being the crafty character he is, soon hatches a plan to get a hefty helping of the food cooking on the fire in one corner of the homestead. Our man wails to high heaven, throwing his body on the ground, portraying a level of grief that leaves even the widowed green with envy.
He soon fakes fainting and is carried into the shade with the elders instructing varoora to ensure that he is among the first to be served once he comes to. On hearing this, our glutton quickly regains consciousness and is soon tucking into a plateful of sadza and meat that he devours in no time.
Having had his fill he reaches for a twig and begins plucking stubborn strands of meat wedged between his teeth, and asks the person nearest to him, ‘‘Nhai ndiyani afa pano (whose funeral wake is this?''
Well I was reminded of this joke after seeing flushed western correspondents and their grey haired analysts lampooning the late North Korean leader, Kim Jong Il as a ‘‘ruthless dictator''. The western packaging of the iconic North Korean leader, who succeeded his father in 1994 - a fact apparently unknown to one daily here that credited him with training the Fifth Brigade in the early 80s - was at variance with the outpouring of national grief in Pyongyang.
Even western media so given to lampooning those tarred and feathered by western governments could not help but acknowledge the outpouring of grief.
These duplicitous media could, however, not reconcile their packaging of Kim with the grief that engulfed his nation. The overriding question then becomes; why were only outsiders - westerners for that matter not even Diaspora Koreans - the ones labelling Kim a heartless dictator yet the Koreans themselves were so heartbroken over his death?
It was evident from the footage coming out of the DPRK that Kim was loved by his people even as outsiders who could not get their way in the Korean Peninsula sought to tar and feather him.
What gives westerners the arrogance to believe they know best what is good for everyone in this world? Why do they believe they are the be all and end all of all that is humane, democratic and good when many in the developing world had to fight gruelling wars to win basic freedoms from these same devils who dare preach sanctity today?
What is even more shocking is the tendency by some among us to adopt a monkey see monkey do mentality; that regurgitates whatever westerners say with sickening prurience.
Such people do not have minds of their own. To them; the world is what BBC and CNN say it is. They are like fetching dogs. All that westerners need to do is throw a stick and say fetch; and off they will go yapping happily.
A friend of mine had this to say, ‘‘if anyone knows where I can find grateful North Koreans happy at Cde Kim's death, I would be happy to see them.''
Kim Jong Il's death inspired a deluge of articles in western media that presented the DPRK government as a dangerous and crazed regime that posed a dire threat to the stability of not only the Korean Peninsula but North East Asia as a whole. Which threat called on the US and its allies to put their militaries on alert to save the ‘‘hapless'' Asians. For such is the "burden" the Anglo-Saxons foisted on themselves, to save all the dark and yellow-skinned people of this world from themselves!
Yet anyone who has followed events in the Korean Peninsula would know that it is Uncle Sam who has been at the heart of perennial tensions in the region due to his policies of destructive engagement that sought to destabilise the DPRK since the end of the Korean War in 1953. The Korean civil war itself was initiated by the US using its cat's paw regime in the South that sought to checkmate not only the DPRK but China as well.
The Anglo-Saxon driven war destroyed the DPRK scarred leaving three million people dead and many more maimed, and perpetuated Uncle Sam's division of the peninsula.
Kim Jong-Il assumed the reins after the death of his father Kim il-sung in 1994 amid tensions with the US.
Then US president George H W Bush and his successor, Bill Clinton, latched on to the DPRK's nuclear programs as a pretext for war and were only deterred from launching their usual impudent adventures by the DPRK's nuke deterrence.
In the wake of the collapse of the USSR, in 1991, the DPRK's key ally.
The DPRK found itself vulnerable and acceded to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, expecting in return that the US and its allies would ease the debilitating economic sanctions they had imposed and move toward diplomatic recognition.
In what has become a recurring pattern over the past two decades, the US bullied and pressured North Korea into agreements, but refused to make any moves to end Pyongyang's isolation.
Matters came to a head in 1994 over North Korea's experimental reactor at Yongbyon, which the Clinton administration claimed would provide plutonium for a nuclear bomb. Military action was only averted when Clinton, was warned by his military advisors of the catastrophic consequences of such an adventure. He backed off and sent Jimmy Carter to cut a deal with Pyongyang.
Kim Il-sung died shortly after Carter's trip. Kim Jong-il finalised what became known as the Agreed Framework, under which North Korea agreed to shut down and eventually dismantle its nuclear facilities in return for the supply of oil and power reactors and, most importantly, an end to diplomatic and economic isolation. The DPRK froze its nuclear programs, but Uncle Sam did not keep his end of the bargain.
The aggression, which was never about North Korea or its nuclear programs per se but was aimed at China, intensified with Bush declaring China "a strategic rival" during his election campaign.
By deliberately escalating tensions, Uncle Sam threatened the DPRK, China's traditional ally, strategically situated on its border. At the same time, the US spoiled plans by China, Russia and the European powers to open up North Korea as a transport and pipeline route to South Korea and Japan.
So far from the late Kim being the dictator that the US and its allies would want the world to believe he was, he stood by his people and ably bore the baton that was thrust in his hands following his father's death in 1994. Kim Jong Il survived insurmountable odds to keep the DPRK on its chosen development path in the face of US-engineered isolation and crippling economic sanctions.
The real dictator in the Korean Peninsula is the US through its intrusive policies of destructive engagement that cross oceans to destroy the livelihoods of a sovereign people. To this day those destructive policies seek to destroy even the legacy of a dead man.
Labels: CAESAR ZVAYI, NORTH KOREA
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Stephen Gowans
interview on Russia Today, on the sinking of the Cheonan.
Labels: COLD WAR, NORTH KOREA, SOUTH KOREA, STEPHEN GOWANS
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what’s left
Amnesty International botches blame for North Korea’s crumbling healthcare
Posted in Amnesty International, Imperialism, Sanctions, north Korea by gowans on July 20, 2010
“Economic sanctions are, at their core, a war against public health.”
–The New England Journal of Medicine [1]
By Stephen Gowans
Amnesty International has released a report condemning the North Korean government for failing to meet “its obligations to respect, protect and fulfil the right to health of its citizens”, citing “significant deprivation in (North Koreans’) enjoyment of the right to adequate care, in large part due to failed or counterproductive government policies.” The report documents rundown healthcare facilities which “operate with frequent power cuts and no heat” and medical personnel who “often do not receive salaries, and many hospitals (that) function without medicines and essentials.” Horrific stories are recounted of major operations carried out without anaesthesia. Blame for this is attributed solely to the North Korean government. [2] While unstated, the implication is that DPR Korea is a failed state, whose immediate demise can only be fervently wished for (or worked toward.)
The attack is joined by Barbara Demick, the Beijing bureau chief for the Los Angeles Times and author of Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea, writing in the British newspaper, The Guardian. She acknowledges the DPR Korea’s considerable social achievements – an acknowledgement that would never have been permitted in the pages of a major Western newspaper in the depths of the Cold War – but does so only in order to show how far the country has regressed.
If we recognize that “economic sanctions are, at their core, a war against public health” and acknowledge, as a former US president has, that North Korea is “the most sanctioned nation in the world,” it is difficult not to draw the obvious conclusion: that the crumbling of North Korea’s healthcare system is due to sanctions. How is it, then, that a new Amnesty International report blames Pyongyang’s “failed or counterproductive” policies, while saying not a word about sanctions?
“The country once had an enviable healthcare system,” Demick writes, “with a network of nearly 45,000 family practioners. Some 800 hospitals and 1,000 clinics were almost free of charge for patients. They still are, but you don’t get much at the hospital these days.” Demick continues: “The school system that once allowed North Korea’s founder Kim Il-Sung (father of the current leader) to boast his country was the first in Asia to eliminate illiteracy has now collapsed. Students have no books, no paper, no pencils.” [3]
Nowhere is the role of sanctions mentioned in Demick’s account of North Korea’s “giant leap backwards” [4] or in Amnesty’s condemnation of Pyongyang for failing to safeguard the basic healthcare rights of its citizens. Instead, Demick and Amnesty point to a botched currency reform, as if it alone accounts for the country’s deep descent into poverty. Neither mention that no country has been subjected to as long and determined a campaign of economic warfare as North Korea, or that in recent years, a UN sanctions regime little different from the one that destroyed the healthcare system of Iraq in the 1990s, and led to the deaths of half a million Iraqi children under the age of five from 1991 to 1998 [5], has been imposed on a country that has struggled with food shortages since the collapse of the Soviet-led socialist trading community and as a result of a series of natural calamities.
No mention either is made of Washington’s efforts to “squeeze North Korea with every financial sanction possible” with the aim of bringing about the collapse of the country’s economy, [6] and with it, its public healthcare and educational systems. What’s more, while Demick acknowledges that South Korea and other countries have sharply reduced food aid to the North, she blames North Korea’s leadership for refusing to dismantle its nuclear program and for “provocations” against the South, for inviting the aid reduction. (The provocations Demick refers to include the sinking of a South Korean corvette in March, attributed, with not a lot of evidence – and over the initial denials of the South Korean military [7] – to a North Korean submarine.) Demick and Amnesty could have condemned South Korea and the United States for using food as a weapon. Instead, Demick censures North Korea for putting itself in the position of being sanctioned, while Amnesty counsels major donors not to base food aid on political considerations, without acknowledging that this is exactly what major donors have done.
Both Amnesty and Demick operate within the framework of Western propaganda. As the North Korea specialist Tim Beal points out, Western propaganda invokes economic mismanagement as the explanation for North Korea’s collapsing economy, despite an obvious alternative explanation: sanctions. “The results — those malnourished babies,” Beal wrote prophetically three years ago, “can be blamed on the Koreans, which in turn is produced as evidence that the sanctions are desirable and necessary.” [8]
Sanctions of Mass Destruction
“In contrast to war’s easily observable casualties, the apparently nonviolent consequences of economic intervention seem like an acceptable alternative. However, recent reports suggest that economic sanctions can seriously harm the health of persons who live in targeted nations.” [9] This has been well established and widely accepted in the cases of Iraq in the 1990s and the ongoing US blockade of Cuba. Political scientists John Mueller and Karl Mueller wrote an important paper in Foreign Affairs, in which they showed that economic sanctions “may have contributed to more deaths during the post-Cold War era than all weapons of mass destruction throughout history.” [10]
While unstated, the implication of Amnesty International’s new report on North Korea’s healthcare is that DPR Korea is a failed state, whose immediate demise can only be fervently wished for (or worked toward.) The rights organization covers up the role played by the United States and its allies in undermining the conditions that would allow Pyongyang to fulfill the healthcare rights of North Koreans, and then blames the disaster on Pyongyang.
“The dangers posed today by such enfeebled, impoverished, and friendless states as Iraq and North Korea are minor indeed”, they wrote in 1999. It might be added that the dangers posed by North Korea to the physical safety of US citizens are not only minor but infinitesimally small. Notwithstanding the fevered fantasies of rightwing commentators, North Korea has neither the means, nor the required death wish, to strike the United States. However, the danger the country poses to the idea of US domination – and hence, to the banks, corporations, and major investors who dominate US policy-making – are admittedly somewhat greater.
“Severe economic sanctions”, the Muellers contend, ought to be “designated by the older label of ‘economic warfare’”. “In past wars economic embargoes caused huge numbers of deaths. Some 750,000 German civilians may have died because of the Allied naval blockade during World War I.” [11]
“So long as they can coordinate their efforts,” the two political scientists continue, “the big countries have at their disposal a credible, inexpensive and potent weapon for use against small and medium-sized foes. The dominant powers have shown that they can inflict enormous pain at remarkably little cost to themselves or the global economy. Indeed, in a matter of months or years whole economies can be devastated…” [12] And with devastated economies, come crumbling healthcare systems and failure to provide for the basic healthcare rights of the population.
Sixty Years of Sanctions
From the moment it imposed a total embargo on exports to North Korea three days after the Korean War began in June 1950, the United States has maintained an uninterrupted regime of economic, financial, and diplomatic sanctions against North Korea. [13] These include:
o Limits on the export of goods and services.
o Prohibition of most foreign aid and agricultural sales.
o A ban on Export-Import Bank funding.
o Denial of favourable trade terms.
o Prohibition of imports from North Korea.
o Blocking of any loan or funding through international financial institutions.
o Limits on export licensing of food and medicine for export to North Korea.
o A ban on government financing of food and medicine exports to North Korea.
o Prohibition on import and export transactions related to transportation.
o A ban on dual-use exports (i.e., civilian goods that could be adapted to military purposes.)
o Prohibition on certain commercial banking transactions. [14]
In recent years, US sanctions have been complemented by “efforts to freeze assets and cut off financial flows” [15] by blocking banks that deal with North Korean companies from access to the US banking system. The intended effect is to make North Korea a banking pariah that no bank in the world will touch. Former US President George W. Bush was “determined to squeeze North Korea with every financial sanction possible” until its economy collapsed. [16] The Obama administration has not departed from the Bush policies of financial strangulation.
Washington has also acted to broaden the bite of sanctions, pressing other countries to join its campaign of economic warfare against a country it faults for maintaining a Marxist-Leninist system and non-market economy. [17] This has included the sponsoring of a United Nations Security Council resolution compelling all nations to refrain for exporting dual-use items to North Korea (a repeat of the sanctions regime that led to the crumbling of Iraq’s healthcare system in the 1990s.) Washington has even gone so far as to pressure China (unsuccessfully) to cut off North Korea’s supply of oil. [18]
Dual-Use Sanctions: 1990s Iraq Redux
The Amnesty report blames Pyongyang for a shortage of syringes at hospitals. Yet in the 1990s Iraq suffered from a similar shortage, not due to failed government policies, but because “the importation of some desperately needed materials [had] been delayed or denied because of concerns that they might contribute to Iraq’s WMD programs. Supplies of syringes were held up for half a year because of fears they might be used in creating anthrax spores.” [19] Like Iraq in the 1990s, North Korea is under sanctions that ban dual use items – goods that have important civilian uses but might also be used in the production of weapons. “Medical diagnostic techniques that use radioactive particles, once common in Iraq, [were] banned under the sanctions, and plastic bags needed for blood transfusions [were] restricted.” [20] On October 14, 2006 the United Nations Security Council banned the export to DRP Korea of any goods, including those used for civilian purposes, which could contribute to WMD-related programs – the very same sanctions that led, at minimum, to hundreds of thousands of deaths in 1990s Iraq when the export of potentially weapons-related material, also essential to the maintenance of sanitation, water treatment and healthcare infrastructure, was held up or blocked. Not a word of the escalating sanctions regime against North Korea is mentioned in the Amnesty report, an omission so glaring as to resemble a report on the post-World War II devastation of Europe that says nothing of the string of Nazi aggressions that caused it.
Kaesong, the vast industrial park of South Korean factories employing North Korean workers situated near the South Korea-North Korea border, provides an example of how ridiculously wide the dual-use sanctions net can be cast. “U.S. officials blocked the installation of a South Korean switchboard system at Kaesong on grounds that the equipment contained components that could have been adapted for military use. As a result…the 15 companies operating at Kaesong share a single phone line, and messages must often be hand-delivered across the border.” [21] While dual-use sanctions may appear to be targeted, just about any item required for the provision of basic healthcare, sanitation, and educational rights – chlorine, syringes, x-ray equipment, medical isotopes, blood transfusion bags, even graphite for pencils – can be construed to have military uses and therefore banned for export.
Most of North Korea’s trade after the fall of the Soviet Union was with China, Japan and South Korea. In 2002, Japan banned the export of rice to North Korea and effectively prohibited North Korean ships from using Japanese ports. [22] In 2009, Tokyo went further, imposing a total ban on exports to the beleaguered country. [23] No wonder former US President George W. Bush called North Korea “the most sanctioned nation in the world”. [24]
Food as a Weapon
The Amnesty report recommends that “major donors and neighbouring countries…ensure that the provision of humanitarian assistance in North Korea is based on need and is not subject to political conditions”. In making this recommendation, the rights organization tacitly acknowledges that humanitarian assistance has indeed been subject to political conditions. (If this practice was unheard of, why make the recommendation?) In fact, the United States, Japan and South Korea have used food aid as a weapon. “After Pyongyang test-fired missiles in July (2006), South Korea announced plans to eliminate the 500,000 tons in annual food aid it provides directly to North Korea.” At the same time, food aid from China dropped one-third. [25] And in 2005, the Bush administration cut off all food aid to North Korea. [26] In all instances, humanitarian assistance was withheld to exact concessions from Pyongyang.
Amnesty International and Imperialism
The United Nations Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights recognized in 1997 that sanctions “often cause significant disruptions in the distribution of food, pharmaceuticals and sanitation supplies, jeopardize the quality of food and the availability of clean drinking water, severely interfere with the functioning of basic health and educational systems, and undermine the right to work.” [27] These disruptions were evident in Iraq in the 1990s, and led to the crumbling of the country’s healthcare system, contributing to what the UN Humanitarian Coordinator in Iraq, Denis Halliday, called “a de facto genocide.” [28] Additionally, the deleterious effects of US economic warfare on the Cuban healthcare system are uncontested except by anti-Castro émigrés and the US government. [29] If we recognize that “economic sanctions are, at their core, a war against public health” and acknowledge, as a former US president has, that North Korea is “the most sanctioned nation in the world,” it is difficult not to draw the obvious conclusion: that North Korea’s crumbling healthcare system and “great leap backwards” are not due in large measure to Pyongyang’s “failed or counterproductive” policies, but to the inhumane policies of the United States, Japan and South Korea.
Amnesty International’s contributions to US imperialism are not unprecedented. In 1991 the rights organization claimed that Iraqi soldiers had thrown Kuwaiti babies from incubators, a hoax, perpetrated by the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to the United States. When US President George H.W. Bush appeared on television to announce that he was readying for war on Iraq, he had a copy of the Amnesty report in his hands.
Amnesty’s failure to point to the role played by the United States and its allies in undermining the conditions that would allow Pyongyang to fulfill the healthcare and other rights of North Koreans, and its willingness to play a part in legitimizing Washington’s foreign policy agenda, is not without precedent. While Amnesty was critical of the human rights record of apartheid South Africa, it alone among human rights organizations refused to denounce apartheid itself. [30] The organization also refused to condemn the 1999 NATO bombing of Yugoslavia [31], even though it was an exercise in imperial predation that denied the rights of many innocent Yugoslavs to life, security of the person and employment. Amnesty excused its inaction on grounds that it is not an antiwar organization, as if war and human rights are not often inextricably bound. The war on Yugoslavia certainly was, at least rhetorically, since NATO invoked the language of human rights to justify its attack. But Amnesty’s most egregious service to the propaganda requirements of US foreign policy came in 1991, when the rights group released a report in the run-up to the Gulf War claiming that Iraqi soldiers had thrown Kuwaiti babies from incubators. This was a hoax, perpetrated by the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to the United States, orchestrated by the public relations firm Hill & Knowlton, which had been hired to launch a propaganda campaign to galvanize public support for a US war on Iraq. When US President George H.W. Bush appeared on television to announce that he was readying for war on Iraq, he had a copy of the Amnesty report in his hands. [32]
Conclusion
A Western-based organization, Amnesty has proven itself time and again to be incapable of operating outside the propaganda system of Western governments, and at times has acted to justify the imperialism of dominant powers or turned a blind eye to it. In its latest North Korea report it has made an invaluable contribution to the campaign of the United States and its East Asian allies to bring down one of the world’s few remaining top-to-bottom alternatives to capitalism and Third World dependency on the United States and former colonial powers. It has done so by fulfilling the two requirements needed for an anti-North Korea propaganda campaign to work: First, to cover up the role played by the United States, Japan and South Korea in starving the country’s healthcare and educational systems of necessary inputs, and second, to blame the ensuing chaos on the North Korean government. The action of Amnesty in misdirecting responsibility for this tragedy is no less shameful than that of the governments that have perpetrated it.
1. Eisenberg L, “The sleep of reason produces monsters—human costs of economic sanctions,” New England Journal of Medicine, 1997; 336:1248-50. http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/short/336/17/1247
2. Amnesty International, “The crumbling state of health care in North Korea”, July 2010. http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/asset/ASA24/001/2010/en/13a097fc-4bda-4119-aae5-73e0dd446193/asa240012010en.pdf
3. Barbara Demick, “North Korea’s giant leap backwards”, The Guardian (UK), July 17, 2010. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jul/17/north-korea-famine-fears
4. Ibid.
5. “Iraq surveys show ‘humanitarian emergency’”, UNICEF.org, August 12, 1999. http://www.unicef.org/newsline/99pr29.htm
6. The New York Times, September 13, 2006.
7. Stephen Gowans, “The sinking of the Cheonan”, PSLweb.org, May 27, 2010. http://www.pslweb.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=14044&news_iv_ctrl=2801
8. Tim Beal, “Invisible WMD- the effect of sanctions”, Pyongyang Report, Volume 9, Number 4, October 2007. http://www.vuw.ac.nz/~caplabtb/dprk/pyr9_4.mht
9. Karine Morin and Steven H. Miles, “Position paper: The health effects of economic sanctions and embargoes: The role of health professionals”, Annals of Internal Medicine, Volume 132, Number 2, 18 January 2000. http://www.annals.org/content/132/2/158.abstract
10. John Mueller and Karl Mueller, “Sanctions of mass destruction”, Foreign Affairs, Volume 78, Number 3, May/June 1999.
11. Ibid.
12. Ibid.
13. Dianne E. Rennack, “North Korea: Economic sanctions”, Congressional Research Service, October 17, 2006. http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/crs/rl31696.pdf
14. Ibid.
15. Mark Landler, “Envoy to coordinate North Korea sanctions”, The New York Times, June 27, 2009. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/27/world/americas/27diplo.html?partner=rss&emc=rss
16. The New York Times, September 13, 2006.
17. According to Rennack, the following US sanctions have been imposed on North Korea for reasons listed as either “communism”, “non-market economy” or “communism and market disruption”: prohibition on foreign aid; prohibition on Export-Import Bank funding; limits on the exports or goods and services; denial of favorable trade terms.
18. The Washington Post, June 24, 2005.
19. Mueller and Mueller.
20. Ibid.
21. The Washington Post, November 16, 2005.
22. Rennack.
23. “KCNA dismisses Japan’s frantic anti-DPRK racket”, KCNA, June 23, 2009.
24. U.S. News & World Report, June 26, 2008; The New York Times, July 6, 2008.
25. The Los Angeles Times, October 25, 2006.
26. The Washington Post, May 16, 2008.
27. United Nations Economic and Social Council, “The relationship between economic sanctions and respect for economic, social and cultural rights”, December 12, 1997. http://www.unhchr.ch/tbs/doc.nsf/0/974080d2db3ec66d802565c5003b2f57?Opendocument
28. Denis J. Halliday, “The Deadly and Illegal Consequences of Economic Sanctions on the People of Iraq”, Brown Journal of World Affairs, Winter/Spring 2000 – Volume VII, Issue 1. http://www.watsoninstitute.org/bjwa/archive/7.1/Essays/Halliday.pdf
29. Richard Garfield and Sarah Santana, “The Impact of the Economic Crisis and US Embargo on Health in Cuba”, American Journal of Public Health, January 19997, Volume 87, Number 1. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1380757/
30. Francis A. Boyle and Dennis Bernstein, “Interview with Francis Boyle. Amnesty on Jenin”, Covert Action Quarterly, Summer, 2002. http://cosmos.ucc.ie/cs1064/jabowen/IPSC/php/art.php?aid=4573
31. Alexander Cockburn, “How the US State Dept. Recruited Human Rights Groups to Cheer On the Bombing Raids: Those Incubator Babies, Once More?” Counterpunch, April 1-15, 1999. http://cosmos.ucc.ie/cs1064/jabowen/IPSC/articles/article0005098.html
32. Boyle and Bernstein.
Labels: AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL, NORTH KOREA, SANCTIONS, STEPHEN GOWANS
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Vilifying the victim: U.S. journalists Ling and Lee ignore the role of U.S. policy in impoverishing north Korea
Posted in north Korea by gowans on September 3, 2009
By Stephen Gowans
Laura Ling and Euna Lee, the U.S. journalists who snuck into north Korea and were captured, tried and sentenced by north Korean authorities, have recounted their story in the September 1st edition of The Los Angeles Times. Their op-ed piece is more a propaganda offensive aimed at vilifying north Korea (and excusing their crime) than an honest account of their ordeal.
The journalists, freed last month after former U.S. president Bill Clinton flew to Pyongyang to arrange their release, acknowledged that they entered north Korea illegally, a charge U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton originally dismissed as baseless. The U.S. media, acting in its accustomed role as unofficial propaganda apparatus of the U.S. government, accepted Clinton’s claim, never wondering whether the charges were indeed baseless or how Clinton could know one way or the other.
But while admitting their actions were illegal, the two journalists nevertheless sought to extenuate their guilt. “There were no signs marking the international border, no fences, no barbed wire,” they wrote, suggesting they stumbled innocently into north Korea, and that part of the blame lies with north Korea for failing mark its border clearly. They also suggested that their guide had ‘set them up.’
But it’s clear the two journalists (a third, cameraman Mitch Goss, eluded capture) knew they had crossed an international border. They were led by a seasoned Korean Chinese guide who knew the terrain. And they recognized that the frozen Tumen River, which they walked across, marked the frontier. When “our guide beckoned for us to follow him beyond the middle of the river” (i.e., the international border) “we did, eventually arriving at the riverbank on the North Korean side,” the pair wrote.
Ling and Lee had travelled to the area to interview what they called “several North Korean defectors – women who had left poverty and repression in their homeland.” The designation of the women, economic migrants, as ‘defectors’ (are Mexicans who cross the Rio Grande ‘defectors’?) is a standard practice of Western journalists seeking to vilify an ideological enemy. So too is the obligatory reference to ‘repression.’
Yet while the journalists invoked hoary anti-communist shibboleths, they failed to cite even the flimsiest evidence that the women were fleeing repression, noting only that “most of the North Koreans we spoke with said they were fleeing poverty and food shortages.”
Indeed, it is poverty, not political repression, which compels north Koreans to leave their country. They leave in search of a better life elsewhere, just as poverty compels countless Latin Americans to migrate to the United States, many illegally, also in search of a better life.
Ling and Lee failed to ask, or indeed to illuminate, why north Koreans are poor and short of food in the first place, implying, in the standard U.S. media fashion, that north Korea’s command economy has failed north Koreans. The real reason has much to do with U.S. foreign policy.
Korea scholar Bruce Cumings explains that north Korea “has been sanctioned since 1950, when the Korean War began. It’s been isolated by the United States since the regime was formed in 1948.” [1] Why? According to David Straub, director of the U.S. State Department’s Korea desk from 2002 to 2004, “North Korea’s closed economic and social system means the country has virtually nothing of value to offer the United States.” [2] U.S. policy since 1948 has been to pressure north Korea militarily and economically to open its doors to U.S. exports, investments and military bases. Pyongyang has, however, successfully resisted Washington’s pressure, remaining closed to U.S. domination, and therefore remaining of virtually no value to the U.S. corporate class. As a consequence, it is an object of U.S. enmity.
Despite being sanctioned, north Korea managed to rebuild after the Korean War (the U.S. Air Force flattened every structure in the country over one story) and was able to grow economically at a faster pace than south Korea, until the mid 1980s. And this despite the reality that south Korea received huge injections of aid from the United States and Japan, while Pyongyang received far less from the Soviet Union and China.
A major set-back came when the socialist bloc collapsed. North Korea was deprived of its markets, and this eliminated counter-pressure against the West’s sanctions. Now, the sanctions bit more deeply.
On top of economic warfare, north Korea faced unceasing U.S. military hostility. Tens of thousands of U.S. troops were stationed on Korean soil, and continue to be stationed there, while 40,000 more are deployed in nearby Japan. U.S. warships patrol the country’s maritime borders, and U.S. warplanes fly menacingly close to its airspace. Washington introduced battlefield nuclear weapons into the Korean peninsula soon after the war, and while claiming the weapons have since been withdrawn, refuses to renounce the first strike use of strategic nuclear weapons against north Korea – and refused even before Pyongyang acquired its own nuclear weapons capability. The principal reason north Korea embarked on a program of nuclear proliferation is to deter U.S. nuclear aggression. Had the U.S. Strategic Command not announced in the early 1990s that, with the Soviet Union having collapsed, it was re-targeting some of its missiles on north Korea, Pyongyang might never have withdrawn from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
North Korea hasn’t been the only country to face Washington’s hostile treatment. What Felix Greene wrote in 1970 of China and Cuba, remains true of north Korea today.
“The United States imposed a 100 percent embargo on trade with these countries; she employs great pressure to prevent her allies from trading with them; she arms and finances their enemies; she harasses their shipping; she threatens them with atomic missiles which she announces are pre-targeted and pre-programmed to destroy their major cities; her spy ships prowl just beyond these countries’ legal territorial waters; her reconnaissance planes fly constantly over their territory. And having done all in their power to disrupt these countries’ efforts to rebuild their societies by means of blockades to prevent essential goods from reaching them, any temporary difficulties and setbacks these countries may encounter are magnified and exaggerated and presented as proof that a socialist revolutionary government is ‘unworkable’.” [3]
Faced with much larger, hostile adversaries (south Korea’s military budget is many times larger than north Korea’s) Pyongyang has been forced to channel a crushingly large percentage of its meagre budget into defense. With scarce resources going to the military, productive investments can’t be made. That, in combination with sanctions and financial isolation, has meant poverty for millions of north Koreans.
The United States used the same strategy against the Soviet Union. The Reagan administration spent massively on an arms build-up in the 1980s in an effort to spend the Soviet Union into bankruptcy. [4] As the Soviets struggled to keep pace, their more limited resources were diverted increasingly into arms spending. Improvements in living standards were slowed and investment and consumption expenditures were forced to take a back seat to military outlays. U.S. cold warrior Robert McNamara explained the strategy.
“The Soviet Union came out of the Second World War with a brilliant military victory. With heavy casualty and high economic expenditure…this country had three priorities for its plan after the war. 1. Renewing the country’s infrastructure completely so the Soviet people could reach the promise of communism; 2. Rebuilding and renewing the country’s defense in the face of the stalking capitalist world; 3. Gaining new friends in the world, especially in Eastern Europe and the Third World…
“If the United States succeeds in engaging the Soviet Union in an arms race, then all these plans would go out the window…Our goal was very simple: the second priority would, if possible, replace the first priority. In other words, first increasing the military expenditure and last, improving the people’s standard of living…and of course this would affect the third priority as well.
“What is the meaning of this? It means that if the Soviet Union is dragged into an arms race and a massive portion of its budget, 40 percent if possible, is allocated to this purpose, then a lesser amount would be left for improving the people’s lives, and therefore, the dream of communism, which so many people are awaiting around the world, would be postponed and the friends of the Soviet Union and the supporters of the idea of communism would have to wait a long time…On the basis of this calculation, the arms race may even threaten Soviet ideology in Moscow.” [5]
With few socialist countries left, and Cuba and north Korea struggling with poverty, the received doctrine is that socialism is unworkable. But as author William Blum points out,
“…every socialist experiment of any significance in the twentieth century — without exception — was either overthrown, invaded, corrupted, perverted, subverted, destabilized, or otherwise had life made impossible for it, by the United States and its allies.
“Not one socialist government or movement — from the Russian Revolution to the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, from Communist China to the FMLN in El Salvador — not one was permitted to rise or fall solely on its own merits; not one was left secure enough to drop its guard against the all-powerful enemy abroad and freely and fully relax control at home.
“It’s as if the Wright brothers’ first experiments with flying machines all failed because the automobile interests sabotaged each test flight. And then the good and god-fearing folk of the world looked upon these catastrophes, nodded their heads wisely, and intoned solemnly: Humankind shall never fly.” [6]
“North Korea is the most sanctioned nation in the world,” noted then U.S. president George W. Bush in 2008, adding that it would remain the most sanctioned nation on earth for some time. [7] Is it any wonder north Koreans are poor and short of food?
While the causes of north Korea’s difficulties are partly endogenous, they are largely exogenous. In an effort to discredit socialism and create the impression that it is misguided and unworkable, anti-communist ideologues attribute all of north Korea’s difficulties to internal factors, deliberately ignoring the larger external causes. Ling and Lee portray themselves as motivated by humanitarian concern over the plight of impoverished and hungry north Koreans, seeking only to bring their hardships to light. But if they were genuinely galvanized to bring relief to north Koreans, they would have trained their sights on the anti-north Korea policies their own government has implemented, rather than blaming the victim. Poor and hungry north Koreans aren’t sneaking across the border into China because they’re repressed, and they’re not poor and hungry because socialism is incapable of providing for their material needs. Prior to the collapse of the socialist bloc, north Korea was a rapidly industrializing country that left U.S. State Department planners in despair that their south Korean neo-colony would never catch up. [8] North Korea’s problems are not related to socialism. Indeed, it is far more likely the case that north Korea’s socialism has mitigated its externally-imposed difficulties. North Korea’s problems have been largely created by Washington, whose goal since W.W.II has been the domination of the Korean peninsula in its entirety, and the destruction of pro-independence forces within.
1. “North Korea warns of new tests as nuclear standoff intensifies,” Democracy Now!, October 11, 2006.
2. Kim Hyun, “U.S. Has No Intention to Build Close Ties with N Korea: Ex-official,” Yonhap News, September 2, 2009.
3. Felix Greene, The Enemy: What Every American Should Know about Imperialism, Vintage, New York, 1970, p. 292.
4. Sean Gervasi, “A full court press: The destabilization of the Soviet Union,” Covert Action Quarterly, Fall 1990, 21 – 26. 14.
5. Robert McNamara, cited in Bahman Azad, Heroic Struggle, Bitter Defeat: Factors Contributing to the Dismantling of the Socialist State in the USSR, International Publishers, New York, 2000, p. 138
6. William Blum, “The Anti-Empire Report,” September 2, 2009. http://killinghope.org/bblum6/aer73.html
7. The New York Times, July 6, 2008.
8. Bruce Cumings, Korea’s Place in the Sun: A Modern History, W.W. Norton & Company, New York, 2005.
Labels: NORTH KOREA, STEPHEN GOWANS
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DPRK hails Zim’s success
Herald Reporters
ZIMBABWEANS are true masters of their destiny and should work together to defend their sovereignty and independence, visiting President of the Presidium of the Supreme People’s Assembly of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea Mr Kim Vong Nam has said.
Mr Kim, who is leading a high-powered delegation that includes the DPRK Ministers of Foreign Trade and Foreign Affairs, arrived in Harare yesterday afternoon for a two-day visit.
Speaking to journalists after meeting President Mugabe at State House in Harare, Mr Kim expressed admiration for the successes that Zimbabwe had scored under very difficult circumstances.
"The true masters of Zimbabwe are the people of Zimbabwe and they have real talent to build Zimbabwe. We wish that the people of Zimbabwe will continue to defend their sovereignty and independence in close unity in the future.
"My country will always be with Zimbabwe in the struggle for independence," he said.
"I mentioned to His Excellency President Mugabe that I feel for the independence of Zimbabwe. Zimbabwe belongs to the people of Zimbabwe."
The DPRK and Zimbabwe have a long history and good tradition of friendship, he said.
At a banquet he hosted for Mr Kim and his delegation at State House last night, President Mugabe thanked the DPRK for its support in sectors such as construction, defence, security, energy, health, mining and arts and culture.
President Mugabe said the visit was a reaffirmation of the solidarity between the two countries, which dates back to the time the DPRK assisted Zimbabwe in the Second Chimurenga.
"Your visit takes place approximately three months after the formation of the inclusive Government by our country’s major political parties.
"The visit is, therefore, a clear demonstration of the DPRK’s support and solidarity with the people of Zimbabwe in this noble endeavour," President Mugabe said.
He said though the inclusive Government had only been in place for a short time, the commitment of the leadership and the people of Zimbabwe to making it a success had been quite positive.
He, however, noted that efforts to rebuild the economy were being hampered by the continued existence of the West’s illegal sanctions regime.
"To give further impetus to this economic thrust, we are also engaging the international community and trying to normalise relations by resuscitating co-operation at bilateral and multilateral levels.
"Of major importance to us in this engagement is the need for the removal of sanctions. As long as the illegal and insensitive sanctions remain in place, our efforts to resuscitate our economy will continue to be more difficult."
President Mugabe said there was need for more high-level dialogue between Zimbabwe and the DPRK to give further impetus to bilateral co-operation.
He said a foundation for such engagement had already been laid through the Treaty of Friendship of 1980, agreements on trade in 1981 and the Joint Economic Commission of 1986, among others.
"It is very important that our countries actively implement these agreements to energise economic exchanges for the mutual benefit of our countries and peoples.
"In particular, serious consideration should be given, through diplomatic channels, to the convening of the Second Session of the Joint Commission between Zimbabwe and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea."
President Mugabe also paid special tribute to the founder of the DPRK, the Great Leader Kim Il Sung, with whom he worked closely during the liberation struggle and the post-independence era.
"The Great Leader will thus live forever in our memories of the revolutionary struggle we waged to earn our freedom.
"Not only did he provide us with training facilities for our cadres, but he also extended to us substantial material assistance by way of weaponry. We thank him today as we did yesterday."
Last night’s banquet was attended by officials from the country’s main political parties.
Mr Kim was last in Zimbabwe in 1991 when he was Foreign Minister.
Yesterday, Mr Kim was met at Harare International Airport by Vice President Joice Mujuru, Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai, Deputy Prime Minister Thokozani Khupe, Foreign Affairs Minister Simbarashe Mumbengegwi, Harare Resident Minister and Provincial Governor David Karimanzira and several senior Government officials.
In a statement, the DPRK Embassy in Harare said the visit would further develop the good relations between the two countries.
"We are convinced that the current visit will mark a significant occasion in further expanding and developing good relations between our two countries," it said.
Mr Kim is today expected to visit the National Heroes’ Acre before touring meat processing firm Colcom Foods and the Willowvale Mazda Motor Industries vehicle assembly plant.
DPRK engineers and architects built the National Heroes’ Acre in Harare, which President Mugabe last night described as capturing the "enduring essence of freedom, devotion and courage".
Labels: NORTH KOREA, ZIMBABWE
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