Exactly Spell-out What the Agreement Says and Means

 

The first thing we need establish is the exact wording of the signed agreement. In that effort, below is what the two leaders signed.

Convinced that the establishment of new U.S.-DPRK relations will contribute to the peace and prosperity of the Korean Peninsula and of the world, and recognizing that mutual confidence building can promote the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, President Trump and Chairman Kim Jong Un state the following:
1. The United States and the DPRK commit to establish new U.S.-DPRK relations in accordance with the desire of the peoples of the two countries for peace and prosperity.
2. The United States and the DPRK will join their efforts to build a lasting and stable peace regime on the Korean Peninsula.
3. Reaffirming the April 27, 2018 Panmunjom Declaration, the DPRK commits to work toward complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.
4. The United States and the DPRK commit to recovering POW/MIA remains, including the immediate repatriation of those already identified.

In many ways, one could look at this short and concise statement the two leaders signed, but that would be missing the main accomplishment, the two leaders met face-to-face, spoke with one another, nobody got hurt, and they singed a mutual declaration. This, in and of itself, was a great accomplishment as by meeting they were able to dispel many of the many misgivings, biases, superstitions, and other concepts which forced the two nations apart and prevented any real establishment of a new relationship. This was a first step to go beyond the old paradigm of demanding bribes for false promises. This meeting allowed for each leader to gauge the other and get a feel for whether they should be trusted or spurned. The big question going forward will be whether the two leaders make any further headway or decide to just allow everything to settle until all hope of a breakthrough dies. Then, should they decide to trust and move forward, then comes the question of in what way will anything produced in another round be different than previous agreements reached with the North Koreans.

 

President Trump Denotes Where King Jong-un Should Seat Himself

 

To understand that, it helps to understand what the previous negotiations produced. That is not exactly a pretty story. In every former negotiation with North Korea, the United States came out holding the short end of the stick. Each one followed the same exact routine, a routine that only a politician could call successful. The leader of North Korea threatened some form of mayhem and turmoil and the United States President begged to know what would prevent their actually carrying out their threatened move. The North Koreans named their price, there was a brief period of hemming and hawing, and then the United States paid the named bribe and even a little more just to make sure. The bribe demanded was usually in some form of food relief, guaranteed energy provisions plus a boatload of cash. As we stated, it was a sorry affair. Usually within a year of paying the protection price, the North Koreans would proceed to resume their nuclear and missile tests breaking their side of the agreement. Breaking the agreement was a necessity otherwise; they would not have had the ability to start their next round of threats.

 

So, already the United States is an improved position as this time the threats got the cold shoulder and until Kim Jong-un had approached more apologetically. The initial temper tantrum received only the slightest attention approaching to seek what would be the price for resumed quiet. Instead, President Trump one-upped Kim Jong-un by threatening him right back. This was seen as foolish and tempting fate by most observers from all the usual places. They chimed in with the uncalled for advice, that swatting a beehive with a bat was not only dangerous but foolhardy. President Trump responded that the beehive was actually a pouty child and should be brought to civil behavior by punishing such behavior, not rewarding it. The champions of the status-quo cautioned that playing this game of tit-for-tat would only lead to a ruinous war and that the United States and the world would only be sorry and suffer great losses. President Trump simply ignored their advice and that this time things were going to be different when after Kim Jong-un threatened to use a nuclear device on Guam or maybe Hawaii and President Trump Tweeted, “North Korean Leader Kim Jong Un just stated that the ‘Nuclear Button is on his desk at all times.’ Will someone from his depleted and food starved regime please inform him that I too have a Nuclear Button, but it is a much bigger & more powerful one than his, and my Button works!” This sent the normal into such a tizzy with some of the snowflakes melting and the wilting flowers running for cover all making Chicken Little seem absolutely brave and highly intelligent. The talking heads were claiming there would be glowing melting remains in cities everywhere. The reality was Kim Jong-un realized he had his bluff called and called in spades. Kim Jong-un broke first and came to President Trump pleading for a way out of the predicament into which he had gotten himself. President Trump was kind and did not make any huge deal of Kim Jong-un flinching and simply set up a meeting which Kim Jong-un could have had by the asking before all the inanities of who could threaten the most between Kim and Trump. That letting him off without rubbing his face in his loss, by not disgracing him, President Trump may have set himself up for Kim Jong-un returning to threats by breaking his word to President Trump and threatening one last time. Trump responded with the least amount of effort by simply cancelling their meeting. That was President Trump reminding Kim that it was Kim who needed to meet, not Trump and Trump still had a larger button on his desk that worked, all without having to repeat it.

 

President Trump’s Nuclear Threat Tweet

 

Well, Kim backed down again and they have now had their meeting. There will be those who claim that the agreement does not say anything which might be considered thunderously calling in a new age. Well, they met, they signed before the cameras, and they left promising to meet again and President Trump was obviously the one controlling the situation while Kim was playing a quiet supporting role. That is far more thunderous than the begging to be allowed to feed the beast which had been the former response to North Korea and to such a point that Kim Jong-un was led to believe that all he need do was make threats and the Americans would shower him with aid meeting anything he demanded. Well, he found out that there is a new sheriff in Washington D.C. who doesn’t flinch as easily as Kim had been advised. The first sign that Kim Jong-un and the North Korean military advisors, who initially misled him, have been tamed will come should issue four be satisfied in a full and timely manner. That specified its requirements stating, “The United States and the DPRK commit to recovering POW/MIA remains, including the immediate repatriation of those already identified.” This would result in the immediate repatriation of those POW/MIA soldiers from the Korean War being returned by North Korea and doing so with a fair amount of alacrity. Should North Korea start making excuses and dragging their feet, then President Trump will know that they are back up to their old tricks and trying to play him for the fool. That will prove to not having been wise and they should have figured that out already, but some people learn really slowly.

 

The big test will be for North Korea denuclearizing immediately by disassembling their nuclear weapons laboratories and taking their Nyongbyon reactor off-line and shutting it down permanently. North Korea’s Nyongbyon reactor was taken off-line at its main nuclear complex in 2007 as part a disarmament-for-aid deal, but, surprise-surprise, that accord simply fell apart which was validated by satellite imagery indicating the North Koreans had resumed extracting plutonium. This will also be something which can be verified by satellite imagery and will be a definitive sign of compliance or of total disregard of the consequences of breaking their word with a President from the business world where your word is your bond. President Trump would not react kindly to such an affront. What should get President Trump put up for a Nobel Peace Prize would be an actual signing of a peace agreement between North Korea and the allied United Nations powers from that conflict. Of course, even considering President Trump for the award would be enough to raise the average blood pressure of all too many other national leaders and anti-Trump masses the world over that it would result in the total collapse of many a European health system and test those in the United States. Still, should he bring North Korea to comply and also end the conflict allowing the United States to cut their military presence, cut, not eliminate, in South Korea leaving a presence to man some of the positions along the DMZ so as to assure that North Korea keeps that peace. One can only pray that President Trump has successfully tamed the North Korean dragon and put a decent scare into the Chinese dragon making the world that much safer. Now we simply have to ponder, what next.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

Latest Libel Against Israel Refuted

There have been a number of articles, especially by liberal bloggers, which have accused Israel of racism due to their repatriation of illegal immigrants with their home country. Since the majority of these illegal immigrants are of African origin, the claim is Israel is a Caucasian dominated country degrading the Africans within their border, inviting the inference that Israel is striving for racial purity. But let’s look a little closer at the historical records and find the reality that exists there. The initial item is that these are people who entered the country illegally who have no official standing. Many of these people willingly admit that they are financial refugees who came to Israel in order to live in a place with more jobs and other opportunities. Where such is a laudable reason for immigrating into a country and makes it worth the effort to pursue the legalities required to relocate to such a destination, it does not excuse anyone doing so illegally by not following the legal means for immigrating. It also must be taken into consideration that Israel allowed tens, possibly hundreds, of thousands of refugees from the Sudan to remain in Israel with some having been there for over a decade. These people were treated legally under international law and provided sanctuary as they faced torture, discrimination or even death had they been returned to the Sudan which was a virtual war zone with certain groups being victims of horrific violence. Since then the southern areas of the Sudan has gained their independence as a new country, South Sudan, and it is now reasonable and safe to return these refugees to their homelands. The same is true for those who came from Eritrea and the Ivory Coast. All of those refugees from these countries have been declared safe for repatriation through legal means in the courts. Israel has even offered to give the returning refugees who willingly volunteer by a certain date some financial assistance to facilitate and ease their return to their homes.

 

There are others who have simply decided they prefer to take their chances ignoring the law and remaining in Israel. Almost all, if not every one, of these refugees passed through Egypt among other nations such as Sudan, Algeria, Libya, Somalia, Eritrea, Kenya, Nigeria, and likely others, on their way to reaching Israel. This begs a question, Why did these people refuse to choose any of these other places to flee as they were obviously closer to their start point and took less effort than crossing their entirety in order to reach Israel? I can answer why they refused to stop or even loiter in Egypt, they would have been shot on sight. Despite this truth, nobody is condemning these countries for their inhospitable treatment of these refugees, only Israel is the mean, evil country. You don’t believe me about the shooting them on sight? Well, search news stories for “shoot refugees Israel” and one of the first page articles you will find is titled >a href=http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1946861,00.html target=blank>Dangers Await Africans Seeking Asylum in Israel.</a> Reading the article will exemplify the difference between the two countries, Egypt and Israel. One cares for the refugees and the other eliminates the refugees. Yet, Israel is condemned for repatriation of refugees once the situation in their homelands have changed and become safe for their return while Egyptian border military shoot the refugees dead on sight. Which, if you were a refugee, would you prefer, death at the hands of an Egyptian Guard or being returned home when the international community and the courts deem the situation is safe? I know my preference is life.

 

While we are speaking on refugees being returned to their place of origin, are these illegal African refugees the sole immigrants Israel has ever sent back? Oddly enough, the answer is no. When Israel was accepting hundreds of thousands of Jewish refugees from the former Soviet Union it was necessary to send some of the refugees back to the Soviet Union. Despite the liberal terms and definition of who was legitimately a Jew, there were a fair number of refugees sent by the Soviets who were not Jewish by any calculations. Many of these refugees even admitted that the Soviets had sent them to Israel simply to be rid of them. This resulted in the eventual return of some of the Soviet refugees and nobody in the world made a peep about those repatriations. Why the big outpouring and crying now and the silence back then? And what about the other side of the coin? Israel has accepted African Jews from South Africa and has and currently is engaged in a large operation bringing thousands of Ethiopian Jews home to Israel as well as hundreds of near destitute Jews from southern India home to Israel. I guess bringing people of color to Israel is not mentioned as it does not fit the story line of mean white European Israel. This poses the question of whether these people condemning Israel on this narrowly defined story while ignoring tons of other real stories also ignore that nearly half of the Jewish population in Israel are not Ashkenazi Jews but are Sephardic Jews with Spanish, North African, and Middle East heritage. But I guess that has to be discounted as it does not fit the story of Israel the mean European Jewish State. Perhaps the reasoning is that those who are being brought into Israel at great government expense from Ethiopia and India and anywhere Jews are found do not count as they are Jews.

 

It does get ever so tiring hearing all these half truths and outright lies all made in order to claim one thing, Israel bad, Jews bad. Somebody will say that defaming Israel is completely different from hating Jews and that they know many good Jews. The problem with this denial is simply this; have you taken any other country to task similarly or is it only Israel (or the United States) with which you find fault. Is it only the Jewish State which transgresses the norms you hold dear and the rest of the world live exemplary lives.  When your sole target is Israel you do not have a political or social problem with Israel or Israeli actions, you have a problem with the Jewish State and only because Israel is the international representative of the Jews which raises your ire. Ignoring the fact that most of the countries bordering Israel and who reside in the neighborhood have radically more oppressive policies and treat foreigners with violence and contempt while Israel is the modern nation which operates under the rule of law and makes honest efforts to do that which is honorable and correct makes no difference, it is still Israel that cannot meet your standards. It boggles the mind to think about what would happen if for one week Israel actually acted in a manner as that which she has constantly been accused of acting and more like her neighboring countries would act against any Israeli in their midst. Exactly what would the world say then? Well, what would they say once they picked their jaws off the floor where they dropped in total surprise and amazement? Don’t worry yourself, Israel and her people after five thousand years of being the civilized people on the block and are not about to go carnal on their enemies now, though sometimes one wonders.

 

Beyond the Cusp