Most of the discussion in corporate media about North Korea has been about the untrustworthiness of North Korea. They broke the rules...not the U.S.
Oct. 16, 2006 issue - On Sept. 19, 2005, North Korea signed a widely heralded denuclearization agreement with the United States, China, Russia, Japan and South Korea. Pyongyang pledged to "abandon all nuclear weapons and existing nuclear programs." In return, Washington agreed that the United States and North Korea would "respect each other's sovereignty, exist peacefully together and take steps to normalize their relations."
Four days later, the U.S. Treasury Department imposed sweeping financial sanctions against North Korea designed to cut off the country's access to the international banking system, branding it a "criminal state" guilty of counterfeiting, money laundering and trafficking in weapons of mass destruction.
The Bush administration says that this sequence of events was a coincidence. Whatever the truth, I found on a recent trip to Pyongyang that North Korean leaders view the financial sanctions as the cutting edge of a calculated effort by dominant elements in the administration to undercut the Sept. 19 accord, squeeze the Kim Jong Il regime and eventually force its collapse.
If this is true, then the denials of the bush administration wanting regime change in North Korea is a lie and corporate media is again failing in their responsibility to report the truth no matter where it takes them.
During six hours of intensive give-and-take with Kim Gye Gwan, both in his office and in two one-on-one dinners with only an interpreter present, he said over and over to me, "How can you expect us to return to negotiations when it's clear your administration is paralyzed by divisions between those who hate us and those who want to negotiate seriously? At the very time when we were engaged in such a long dialogue last year, your side was planning for sanctions. Cheney did this to prevent further dialogue that would lead to peaceful coexistence. So many of your leaders, even the president, have talked about regime change. We have concluded that your administration is dysfunctional."
They're not as dumb as I thought they were. :smoke:
The financial sanctions are very severe. The United States has in effect asked all banks in the world not to deal with North Korea or to handle any transactions involving the country. The Bush administration says that it is enforcing laws against money laundering and counterfeiting, and seeking to stop transactions relating to weapons of mass destruction. But statements by Treasury Department officials have made clear that the goal is to cut off all North Korean financial intercourse with the rest of the world.
Obviously the Treasury Department has no qualms in telling the truth.
North Korea is stable and there is more economic activity in Pyongyang than I have ever seen—more cars and bicycles, better-dressed people, more restaurants, more small mom and pop stores, and above all more interest in making money. That's the result of reform policies that give more autonomy and profit incentives to economic enterprises. Everything is still formally owned by the state, but enterprises are leased to managers who pay less to the state than they used to and can keep much more if they make a profit.
Yes, those sanctions are working. :sarcasm:
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/15175633/site/newsweek/I'm not trying to defend Kim Jong Il. He's a smart dictator who practices torture and other horrific acts. Bush's axis of evil was his way of letting the world know those countries will have a regime change and if this article is true, he's doing whatever he can to make it happen in North Korea. This article shows that bush negotiated with his hand behind his back and fingers crossed.
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