Saturday, June 16, 2018

Peace Dividends

Blessed Peacemakers,

Moon of Alabama has the back story about secret negotiations between China, North and South Korea, and the US, for over a year. This casts events in a different light, in my opinion. Trump's dramatic statements, provocative of war, made most of the world cringe and ant peace, which is what was being plotted. It seems that there had to be a lot of drama before the US could accept the freeze-for-freeze proposal that North Korea presented to Obama in 2015. The Spring and fall war games between the US and South Korea were timed to starve North Korea by disrupting rice planting and harvesting. Those 1.2 million North Korean reservists are most of the farmers in the impoverished country. The war games are an act of war. The North Korean TV documentary of Kim's summit trip is very engaging, and I don't understand Korean, but I get the gist, anyway. the last 2 minutes is pretty heart rending. The outpouring of gratitude and relief upon his return appears wholehearted and completely real, person after person after person. This is the view from inside North Korea. It's a thing. They can work on feeding people and improving their economy now. North and South Korean economic levels were very similar until the collapse of the Soviet Union. this country has had it's collapse, and dearly desires a recovery. (The picture of a beaming Kim, triumphantly shaking hands with his nemesis, John Bolton, is quite nice, too.)


By reaffirming the Panmunjom Declaration, the US President has committed to bringing its military back from South Korea and thus a complete denuclearization of the South as well as the North...
The Singapore joint statement is not a deal; it’s a statement. The absolutely key item is number 3: “Reaffirming the April 27, 2018, Panmunjom Declaration, the DPRK commits to work toward the complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.”... This means that the US and North Korea will work towards denuclearization not only in what concerns the DPRK but the whole Korean Peninsula. ... Predictably, both US neocon and humanitarian imperialist factions are unanimous in their fury, blasting the absence of “meat” in the joint statement. In fact there’s plenty of meat. Singapore reaffirms the Panmunjom Declaration, which is a deal between North Korea and South Korea... By signing the Singapore joint statement, Washington has been put on notice of the Panmunjom Declaration. In law, when you take notice of a fact, you can’t ignore it later. The DPRK’s commitment to denuclearize in the Singapore statement is a reaffirmation of its commitment to denuclearize in the Panmunjom Declaration, with all of the conditions attached to it. And Trump acknowledged that by signing the Singapore statement.
http://www.atimes.com/article/the-key-word-in-the-trump-kim-show/

"John F. Kennedy and The Question of World Peace", is another article about his American University Speech, the best argument for peace in our time by any American president that I know of. There is lots of context about how it was taken in the USSR. WE know how it went down in the American halls of power. Kennedy sprung this political ambush on the Pentagon, and the rest of the Military Industrial Complex, took it straight to the people and the world. He got the Nuclear Test  Ban Treaty in the remaining months of his life, the first step into a better world that was prevented in November, when America died.

The Real Economic Numbers: 21.5% Unemployment, 10 Percent Inflation, and "Negative Economic Growth" (aka, "contraction", "depression", etc.)

Well, this is about to change everything... "The grain-growing region in the High Plains of America—known as America’s breadbasket—relies entirely on the Ogallala Aquifer. But long term unsustainable use of the aquifer is forcing states in the region to face the prospect of a regional economic disaster. As the High Plains states reach the verge of a major crisis, the states have taken different approaches to conservation with varying results.
The Ogallala Aquifer supports an astounding one-sixth of the world’s grain produce, and it has long been an essential component of American agriculture. The High Plains region—where the aquifer lies—relies on the aquifer for residential and industrial uses, but the aquifer’s water is used primarily for agricultural irrigation. The agricultural demands for Ogallala water in the region are immense, with the aquifer ultimately being responsible for thirty percent of all irrigation in the United States. The Ogallala Aquifer has long been unable to keep up with these agricultural demands, as the aquifer recharges far slower than water is withdrawn... In northwest Texas, so much water has been pumped and so little recharged that irrigation has largely depleted the aquifer in the area. "

John Barleycorn

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