Why blame religion? It's human nature to follow leaders. Animals also do it.
Well, some of them do. Perhaps not cats. But many other animals.
Religion is just one example of how people fill their needs. But look at the
Quakers, at least the ones in the eastern US. They don't have a leader and the
God to whom they pray is the one that is within each individual.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> On Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
Sent: Tuesday, March 05, 2019 11:22 AM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: PATRICK LAWRENCE: It Was Kim That Walked Away
You know, I get fed up with this sort of crap. Little macho boys, strutting
their stuff on the school yard. The crisis we face is that these are the sort
of people who slime their way to the top of the Pyramid, and even if we kick
them off the top, they are just ahead of a crowd of lookalikes.
Our need to look to strongmen leaders comes from a long history influenced by,
among other things, our many religions. We are conditioned to look outward,
rather than to look within for strength.
This misdirection is everywhere. We worship our strong military leaders, our
strong industrialists, our big mouthed politicians and even our tough guy
criminals.
I tell you, if we don't want to use our brains, then let's give them to some
animal that will.
Carl Jarvis
On 3/4/19, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
PATRICK LAWRENCE: It Was Kim That Walked Away March 4, 2019 There are
two sides to the story about why the second North Korea peace summit
fell apart last week, writes Patrick Lawrence.
By Patrick Lawrence
Special to Consortium News
The abrupt and unexpected failure of the second Trump–Kim summit last
week raises many questions. Let’s get one out of the way before
addressing the
others: No, the collapse of talks between President Donald Trump and
Kim Jong-un, the North Korean leader, does not scuttle the most
promising chance for peace on the Korean Peninsula since the 1953
signing of the armistice ending the Korean War. There is more to come.
This was plain within hours of the summit’s end.
At this point it’s still difficult to discern even what transpired
between the two leaders. The U.S. and North Korean accounts of the
proceedings in Hanoi are widely at variance on key points. With
history in view, it is very likely that the North Korean version comes
closer to the truth than what the Trump administration is putting out
and what the U.S. press is dutifully reporting.
Trump and U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo holds news conference
after summit JW Marriott Hotel, Feb. 28, 2019, in Hanoi. (Official
White House Photo by Joyce N. Boghosian)
Trump and U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo hold news conference
after summit on Feb. 28, 2019, in Hanoi. (White House Photo by Joyce N.
Boghosian)
By Trump’s account, Kim agreed to dismantle his most important nuclear
production facility, at Yongbyon, roughly 60 miles north of Pyongyang.
In exchange, Kim asked for all sanctions now in force against North
Korea—some passed at the UN, others imposed by Washington alone—to be lifted.
Here is Trump talking to correspondents after the bust-up Thursday morning:
“Basically, they wanted the sanctions lifted in their entirety, and
we couldn’t do that. They were willing to de-nuke a large portion of
the areas that we wanted, but we couldn’t give up all the sanctions
for that…. They wanted sanctions lifted but they weren’t willing to do an
area we wanted.”
The “large portion” Trump mentioned is Yongbyon: There is no dispute
about this. Pyongyang has shut down the reactor at Yongbyon twice in
the past, in
1994 and in 2007. In 2008 Kim Jong-il, the reigning Kim’s father,
ordered the cooling tower at Yongbyon demolished—a televised event
many readers will remember. The site was reactivated in succeeding
years following a series of multi-sided talks that went nowhere.
Kangson Facility
The “area we wanted” appears to refer to an alleged nuclear facility
at Kangson, also near the North Korean capital. What the North
actually does at Kangson has never been verified, but it was one of a
number of sites the U.S. side also insisted Pyongyang close.
Translation of the U.S. version of events in Hanoi: Kim offered us
only one item on our list while demanding we give him everything he
wanted. Who could possibly agree to such a deal?
North Korean officials tell a different story. After Trump offered his
post-summit description of events, the North’s foreign minister, Ri
Yong-ho, gave his own press conference; a rarity among North Korean
officials. Kim had agreed to shutter the North’s main nuclear
facility, by Ri’s account, if the U.S. consented to lift only the five
sets of sanctions imposed by the U.N. Security Council in 2016 and
2017.
Unlike restrictions on weapons and nuclear-related equipment, these
covered entire export sectors, including minerals, metals, coal,
agriculture and seafood. These, Ri said, were the measures that
directly hurt the lives and livelihoods of ordinary North Koreans.
Layer upon layer of other sanctions would remain in effect.
What’s Wrong?
Translation of the North Korean position in Hanoi: We will take a
considerable step toward denuclearization providing you take one of
corresponding magnitude. Now the question changes: What exactly is
wrong with such a deal?
You have to go back to Trump’s early months in office to understand
what appears to have transpired in Hanoi. The administration’s initial
position was simple but ridiculous: The North had to completely disarm
before Washington would even begin talks.
Trump leaving second summit with Kim Jong Un, Feb. 28, 2019, at Noi
Bai International Airport in Hanoi. (White House Photo by Shealah
Craighead)
Trump leaving second summit with Kim Jong Un, Feb. 28, 2019, at Noi
Bai International Airport in Hanoi. (White House Photo by Shealah
Craighead)
Only when the absurdity of this maximalist demand became too obvious
to sustain—”give us everything we will negotiate before we
negotiate”—did the Trump administration alter its demands, if reluctantly and
slightly.
Moon Jae-in, South Korea’s president, countered this as soon as Trump
agreed last year to meet Kim, as they did in Singapore last June. The
way ahead was “action for action,” in Moon’s phrase. Pyongyang’s term
for the same thing is “corresponding measures.” Elsewhere the concept
is called “sequencing.”
Whatever one calls it, a gradual, step-by-step process is the only
logical way forward after nearly seven decades of mutual distrust.
Trump’s Refusal
In effect, Kim proposed a sequenced approach when he met Trump last week.
And in effect, Trump refused it. It is no wonder John Bolton, Trump’s
national security adviser and the administration’s hyper-hawk on North
Korea, has been assuring like-minded colleagues not to fret about the
Trump-Kim summits because they are guaranteed to fail.
“This kind of opportunity may never come again,” Ri, the North’s
foreign minister, said at his late-night press conference. This is not
where the odds lie.
First, Moon Jae-in pledged to help mediate between the North and the U.S.
as
soon as the Hanoi summit collapsed. And it has been clear since Moon
was elected South Korea’s president in May 2017 that control of the
agenda on the Korean Peninsula has gradually passed from the U.S. to
Seoul and those working with it, notably China and Russia.
Second, Moon enjoys a trustful rapport with Kim. And the latter is
unquestionably serious about shifting the North’s priorities from
nuclear capability to economic development. Kim wants a deal, in short.
The primary danger to future advances toward a lasting settlement in
Northeast Asia lies in Washington. It has been the spoiler on the
Korean question before, let us not forget. In the early 2000s, the
U.S. never delivered two light-water reactors it had promised the
North in exchange for its cessation of its nuclear program. After
Yongbyon was shuttered in 2007, the U.S. failed to supply promised
shipments of heating fuel, citing “an understanding between the
parties” about which neither China nor Russia, who were also
signatories to the agreement, had ever heard.
This time around, there is little question that Bolton and other hawks
in the Trump administration intend to block progress as long as they
can. They have just succeeded in scuttling Moon’s long-gestating plans
to develop a series of cross-border economic projects. The South
Korean leader had hoped that a planned communiqué to be issued at the
summit’s end in Hanoi would have opened the way for these ventures to
proceed. Trump and Kim never signed it.
“We had to walk away,” Trump said at his press conference in the
Vietnamese capital. It is more likely that Kim is the one who walked
away first.
“It occurs to us that there may not be a need to continue,” Choe
Son-hui, Kim’s vice-foreign minister, said later. “We’re doing a lot of
thinking.”
It
is difficult to blame Pyongyang for this, given the outcome in Hanoi.
Patrick Lawrence, a correspondent abroad for many years, chiefly for
the International Herald Tribune, is a columnist, essayist, author,
and lecturer. His most recent book is “Time No Longer: Americans After
the American Century” (Yale). Follow him @thefloutist. His web site is
www.patricklawrence.us. Support his work via www.patreon.com/thefloutist.
