nuclear disarmament

A propaganda video? Seriously?

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The most bizarre moment of the Singapore Summit was the propaganda video prepared by Team Trump to show North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un, which he also showed to the media. Reporters thought this video was North Korea propaganda. It came from the White House.

Reporters crowded into a Singapore auditorium Tuesday, expecting President Trump to walk out and announce the results of his historic meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

Suddenly, two huge screens on either side of the empty podium came to life. Soaring music boomed over the speakers, and the reporters were bombarded with a montage portraying North Korea as some sort of paradise.

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Golden sunrises, gleaming skylines and high-speed trains. Children skipping through Kim Il Sung square in Pyongyang. North Korean flags fluttering between images of Egyptian pyramids, the Taj Mahal and the Lincoln Memorial.

In a split-screen shot, Kim Jong Un waved to an adoring crowd while President Trump stood beside him with his thumb in the air. The pair appeared over and over again, like running mates in a campaign video.

The film went on like this for more than four minutes, with brief interludes of missiles, soldiers and warships interrupting the pageantry. Some journalists, unable to understand the Korean-language narration, assumed they were watching one of Pyongyang’s infamous propaganda films. “What country are we in?” asked a reporter from the filing center.

But then the video looped, playing this time in English. And then Trump walked onto the stage and confirmed what some had already realized.

The film was not North Korean propaganda. It had been made in America, by or on the orders of his White House, for the benefit of Kim.

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America’s ‘great negotiator’ gets snookered by ‘Little Rocket Man’

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“Little Rocket Man,” Kim Jong-un of North Korea, got the photo-op that he so desperately wanted from President Donald Trump: the U.S. and North Korean flags side-by-side and President Trump smiling and shaking his hand. Trump said it was “an honor” to meet him.

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This will now run on a loop on North Korea’s state-run propaganda media to show that North Korea’s Supreme Leader, by developing nuclear weapons and an ICBM missile that can deliver a nuclear warhead to the continental United States, forced the President of the United States into meeting with him one-on-one as an equal among nuclear states, and obtained assurances from the president of the survival of his despotic murderous criminal regime.

Other despotic regimes around the world will take away the message: get yourself some nukes, and force the United States to deal.

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Michael Green, senior National Security Council official on Asia policy during the George W. Bush administration, writes at Foreign Policy, Trump Pardons Another Celebrity Criminal:

In Singapore on Tuesday, the president of the United States demonstrated that he has the authority to give unconditional pardons not only to felons at home, but also on the international stage. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s regime has violated multiple United Nations Security Council resolutions by continuing to test ever more dangerous ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons and was found guilty of crimes against humanity by a U.N. Commission of Inquiry in 2014. In Singapore, U.S. President Donald Trump announced that he trusted Kim, said it was an honor to meet him, and declared peace on the Korean Peninsula. The situation on the peninsula is so horrible in terms of human suffering and threats to peace that one wants to hope for the best with this diplomatic pageant. Maybe I am just another “hater and loser” — but parsing what we know thus far, it is hard to see what we have achieved for the North Korean people or the safety of the world in exchange for pardoning Kim.

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The ‘Dotard’ to meet ‘Little Rocket Man’ for a photo-op

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Jennifer Rubin of the Washington Post warns, After Trump’s G-7 summit fiasco, be afraid (excerpt):

Trump’s Republican enablers, who ridiculed liberal Democrats for coddling dictators and ignoring allies (ah, the good old days when they groused, inaccurately, about the return of a Churchill bust!), should see what their groveling has wrought. They now back a president who does not put America or the West first. A Manchurian Kremlin candidate could not show greater fealty to Russia nor more diligence in helping Russia pursue its goals. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.), who refuses to consider reclaiming Congress’s role in trade, will see the consequences that flow from his and his fellow Republicans’ neglect of their constitutional obligations. Republicans have rejected their obligation to restrain an unfit executive and lessen the damage by reasserting Congress’s rightful power in areas such as trade. They are now Trump’s facilitators in his apparent desire to blow up the international world order — the world order America helped created and has always led. In that sense, McConnell, too, is helping, wittingly or not, to make Russia great again.

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As Trump is poised to meet with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, he declares he’ll know within a minute whether the meeting will be a success. Here is a man declaring his gullibility and waiting to be snookered with a few smiles, some stomach-turning flattery and many empty promises from a calculating adversary. Trump seems not to know that the first meeting between the U.S. president and the dictator of North Korea is not an amazing achievement for the United States; it’s a huge win for Pyongyang.

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Watch video of “Nuclear Weapons, War & Environment” forum held at UA

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ARIZONA LEADERS WARN OF CLIMATE DESTRUCTION AND GLOBAL DISASTER

IF NUCLEAR WEAPONS ARE NOT ELIMINATED (press release)

 (Tucson, AZ) — “Amidst growing tensions of global nuclear weapons and attack, including North Korea’s recent barrage of missile tests, keynote speaker Dr. Ira Helfand and Congressman Raul Grijalva joined local leaders convened today to raise awareness about the catastrophic impacts of a nuclear weapons exchange, risks of war and potential environmental impacts of a nuclear attack.

 A video of the forum can be found here.

 In a forum hosted by Physicians for Social Responsibility – Arizona Chapter, speakers discussed the important connection between climate change and nuclear war, and the grave threats they pose to human survival. There is evidence that use of even relatively small nuclear arsenals could cause long lasting, global damage to the Earth’s ecosystems.

 They also addressed important approaches to preventing nuclear war, nuclear disarmament and the International Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.

 “The crises in Korea and Iran underline the extraordinary danger of nuclear war that confronts the world today. The U.S. needs to fundamentally change its nuclear policy and accept that nuclear weapons are not agents of national security but rather an existential threat to our survival,” said Dr. Ira Helfand, Co-Director of the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War. “We need to urgently pursue negotiations with the other nuclear armed states for a verifiable, enforceable agreement to eliminate these weapons before they are used.”

 Climate change will place increased stress on human populations and may lead to global crop failure and massive migrations and conflict between states which are armed with nuclear weapons.  Nuclear war would cause massive and abrupt additional climate disruption. Speakers at the forum urged the reduced reliance on nuclear weapons by all nuclear weapons states to create a more peaceful and secure world freed from the threat of nuclear annihilation.

 “I urge ever Arizonan to take immediate action, as we all have a stake in the issue and are directly impacted by the threats of nuclear war,” said Dr. David Spence, Member, Physicians for Social Responsibility – Arizona Chapter. “Contact our Arizona U.S. Congress members and tell them to support the Markey/Lieu (S 200/ HR 669) legislation that would allow only Congress (not the President) to authorize a first-use nuclear strike.”

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