KOREA/NORTH KOREA

More than a third of Americans would support a preemptive nuclear strike on North Korea if that country tested a long-range missile capable of reaching the United States, new research has found, even if that preemptive strike killed a million civilians.  The survey of 3,000 Americans was conducted by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists and British research firm YouGov, and asked people to consider a scenario in which North Korea had tested a long-range missile and the U.S. government was considering how to respond.

TIM SHORROCK—My award was doubly significant because my stories had grown directly out of events that took place on the very square where I stood. There, in the shadow of Gwangju’s old Provincial Capital, the last voices of the city’s rebels had been stilled on May 27, 1980, by a Korean Army division dispatched from the DMZ marking the border with North Korea. They were sent with the approval of the US commander of the US-Korea Joint Command, Gen. John Wickham. That decision, made at the highest levels of the US government, forever stained the relationship between the United States and the South. For the people of Gwangju, many of whom believed that the US military would side with the forces of democracy, it was a deep betrayal that they’ve never forgotten.

CALEB MAUPIN—Their argument is this: capitalism is better because the refrigerator possessed by the average American family is better than the refrigerator possessed by the average Cuban family.However, anyone who has ever been to Latin America knows this argument is completely bunk. All throughout the region in places where free market capitalism reigns, there are millions and millions of people who do not have running water or electricity. Millions of Haitians, who live under US free market capitalism and in some cases eat dirt mixed with oil, have no refrigerator at all. In the jungles and mountains of Peru, Guatemala, and Honduras, there are millions of people who have never seen a flushing toilet in their lives, let alone a fully functioning refrigerator.

MIKE WHITNEY—Now if nuclear weapons were Washington’s main concern, then they had plenty of opportunities to deal with them. But the nukes were not the top priority, were they? The top priority was crushing the regime by any means possible and replacing it with a compliant stooge who would do Washington’s bidding. That’s the real objective.

PETER KOENIG—Is Pompeo the answer? Did he boycott the Hanoi meeting? He is indeed the murderer-in-chief, as former CIA director, who doesn’t shy away from suggesting that if Mr. Kim Jong-un shows up dead one day – well don’t ask me or the CIA. Pompeo has watched over a long list of political assassinations – he insinuated a similar fate for Mr. Maduro. He is dishing out death threats left and right. And the world is not even stunned anymore, its common practice of the US of A – murdering ’inconvenient’ people. The CIA is the chief instrument for these killing; they have hundred years of practice – with an insane intensification after WWII.