Monday, March 22, 2010

U.S. Agenda of Urgency - Healthcare - North Korea




Washington, Capitol Hill, 2:00 GMT
The most important U.S. issue of those days is President Obama's healthcare bill to pass the lower house of Congress. This historic vote is expected to take place within a few minutes. It is still unclear whether the President's bill will receive the necessary support of 216 votes, even though there are rumours that opposing Democrates have agreed to compromise on the abortion issue voted for earlier this evening.
2:50 GMT
Healthcare bill passes the House 219 vs. 212 votes (216 needed).
Pictures: Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi giving final argument. (above/left) - The moment of victory. (above/right and below)




March 26, 2010: Bill Signed into Law

Today, the final version of Obama's healthcare bill was signed into law by the President. It only needed some further days for final changes to pass the Congress for a second time. Even though that healthcare reform is only a reduced version of Obama's original draft, it still remains a historic achievement as the first healthcare reform since President Lyndon B. Johnson. Many presidents have tried that subject but only few succeeded in ameliorating an outdated law that needed to be adapted to the level of national healthcare laws of other Western nations like Britain and France.

The new law extends healthcare coverage to 32 million uninsured Americans. Thus 95% of eligible Americans are now entitled to healthcare insurance comparing to 85% before. Further points of the new law are listed on the following tables, provided by Al-Jazeera:


In the aftermath of the bill passing both Houses on Capitol Hill and the ceremony of its signing into law, manifestation of protest against the new law has reached another peak. At least 10 Democrats have received death threats over the healthcare bill. Two congressional district offices have been vandalised after the vote while critics insist that the "Government has no power to force Americans to purchase insurance".



North Korea's Allegations
On U.S. Biological Warfare


Another long-standing subject that needs to be dealt with is the North Korean issue. As we recently heard, there is now further and even stronger evidence that U.S. military used biological weapons during the Korean war, weapons that had been developed with the aid of Japanese experts who, on their part, had been rewarded for their cooperation by shielding them from treatment as war criminals. Unfortunately, former U.S. presidents of the Cold War period failed to put their house in order such that the Pentagon is still insisting on their traditional position, the whole story might be nothing else than a "disinformation campaign that refuses to die".

President Obama would be well advised to have a closer look at the original documents that are still being withheld by, both, U.S. military and security administration. It shouldn't be so difficult to bring about a formal apology towards North Korea (and China, if the Chinese really want to hear it) for such historic mess that once lay in the hands of some U.S. officials who probably died long ago. At the same time, any demand for recompensation from the Nort Korean side could easily be rejected by referring to the cruelties U.S. soldiers had suffered from during their time as prisoners of war. That, at least, would establish a credible position of the U.S.A. towards North Korea when it comes to the nuclear item being solved or the question of human rights. Everything else would only enforce allegations of U.S. hypocrisy and help North Korea survive as the last remnant of Stalinism.

Wednesday, March 17, 2010

North Korea And U.S. Biological Warfare



Latest update further down !

Today, AL-Jazeera TV launched a special report on U.S. biological warfare in 1952, during the war against North Korea. A special investigation led by Professor Mori Masataka, a leading Japanese biochemist, showed evidence that the U.S. once used infected insects in order to spread contagious diseases like typhoid fever and anthrax among the population of North Korea. As there are still official U.S. documents withheld from the public, it is not possible to deliver the final prove of U.S. war crimes during the Korean War, but evidence has become strong enough to partly understand North Korean resentment against any U.S. interference when it comes to reach an agreement on the nuclear weapons issue. While the Pentagon is still speaking of a long-living propaganda lie "that refuses to die", it is now clear that U.S. military at Fort Detrick (Maryland) employed Japanese specialists of biological warfare who had already become notorious for their atrocities against Chinese citizens during the Japanese occupation of China in World War II. Most interesting:

Kenneth Enoch, a former navigator on board of a B26-bombing machine, recently admitted having dropped "special bombs" on the disputed area, thus adding another version to what he had told to and written down for his Chinese and Korean investigators as a prisoner of war, after his plane had crashed over North Korea. Back in the U.S.A., however, he publicly denied everything confessed before after having been warned by U.S. military that he might otherwise be charged for treason under martial law. Now at the age of retirement, he finally confirmed that there was some "security fuss" about the bombs they dropped and that nobody of the crew should speak about the special character of that mission over North Korea.




Al-Jazeera Special (March 17, 2010)
(download of 22 minutes flv-file)





旧生物战的新闻


有名的生物化学教授Masataka Mori表示:
1952年,美军用了细菌弹在反对朝鲜的战争。
据秘密文件美细菌学家和旧日军细菌战战犯
在美军营Ft.Detrick都同事在生物武器试验。
美空军人K.Enoch说的是他们也用了“秘密
弹头”在轰击朝鲜的敌人地区。





The following text is an excerpt from the autobiography of Pu Yi, the last emperor of China, and is recalling his time as a war criminal which he spent in a so-called reeducation camp near Harbin, Manchuria. It was there that he learned about the Korean War. Not yet fully "reeducated", he hoped for U.S. help like many other prisoners of war, yet fearing communist punishment as well as U.S. bombardment which seemed to have come very close to that region.

This text has been chosen to prove how U.S. bombardment of, both, North Korea and China's border provinces once moved the people who had to live there in the early 1950s. As we all know, the so-called Korean War was nothing but a war by proxy where the newly founded People's Republic of China, "just another evil communist state", opposed the United States of America, "that jewel of democracy and herald of the free market".


… 我总认为自己不死于中国人之手,就得
死在美国飞机的轰炸中。…

...
I had come to believe that I might not die from the hands of Chinese people but rather during bombardment by U.S. planes. ...

…中朝人民军队把美国军队赶到三八线附近,
我们还抱有很大的怀疑。…

...
As the joint armies of China and Korea drove all U.S. troops back towards the 38th degree [demarcation line], all of us [war criminals] still remained full of doubt. ...

一天半夜,… 我认为这必是美国军队逼近了
哈尔滨,共产党终于对我们下手了,…

One day, in the middle of the night,...[as there was much noise and confusion with the camp's iron gate being opened and many people running about]..., I considered this should be related to U.S. army units pressing towards Harbin while the Communist Party would finally put their hands on us. ...

[After that night, where a member of the prison staff had unexpectedly died from an acute disease, a high-ranking official held a speech in front of the prisoners to clarify what the Communist Party of China had planned for them.]

… 他代表政府明确地告诉我们,人民政府并不想
叫我们死,而是要我们经过学习反省,得到改造。

...
On behalf of the government, he made it clear to us that the people's government did not intend to order us being killed. Yet, we should undergo a process of learning how to examine ourselves which would finally reform [our way of thinking]. ...

…“你们对于朝鲜战争有很多奇怪的想法。有人
可能认为,志愿军一定打不过美国军队,美国
军队一定会打进东北,因此担心共产党先下手
杀了你们;…”

...
"As far as it concerns the Korean War, you have many strange ideas on your minds. There are some who might think the [Chinese] volunteers' army could, by no means, beat U.S. troops while U.S. units are able, without any doubt, to make incursions into Dongbei [province]. And therefore you fear, the Communist Party would kill you in advance." ...

“… 我可以明确地告诉你们:中朝人民一定会
打败美帝国主义,中国共产党的改造罪犯的
政策也一定得到胜利。…”

... "I can definitely tell you: Both, the Chinese and Korean people are able, without any doubt, to defeat U.S. imperialism. As well, the policy of reeducating war criminals on behalf of China's Communist Party will be successful without any doubt." ...


All text in brackets is either a shortcut of some less important sentence or a clarifying annotation, while all citations in Chinese have been meticulously translated from the Chinese original into English by Ulysses / W.W.
[溥仪—我的前半生—1996年2月第19次印刷]




Looking for additional material on the web, I found another video on this subject. This should be the first Chinese response to U.S. biological warfare against North Korea and China during the Korean War. It was launched by CCTV in July 2009 when a series of brandnew articles on that item appeared in different Chinese media.
美国在朝鲜战争的细菌战谜团

Saturday, March 13, 2010

U.S.A. - Tea or Coffee ?





We recently heard about the formation of a so-called Tea Party Movement in the U.S., intended to oppose disputed Federal government's politics as well as State government's political trends that are not so popular. Without being directly related to the established and powerful organizations of the Democrates and the Republicans, this movement's name is hinting at the famous Boston Tea Party.
Once incited by some early colonial settlers who then threw a trade ship's tea load into Boston harbour in protest of the British colonial governments's intention to raise a tax on tea imports, this incident has ever since been seen as the first step towards independance of the North-American colonies from Britain and that finally led to the foundation of the United States of America.
Today as an answer, a Coffee Party Movement has been launched which is supposed to work together with the government and its administration in order to help solve national and local problems. Nowadays, however, its not again about throwing tea or coffee loads into the sea but rather about discussing items while consuming large amounts of tea or coffee.
Now, the choice will be yours: Tea or coffee coming together with a "mouthful" of politics difficult to digest. At least, caffeine is included in both beverages, enough to get through eternal debates.