Revisiting History of Korea--Part 3

In his 2004 book, Target Korea: Pushing North Korea To The Brink of Nuclear Catastrophe, Australian National University Professor Gavan McCormack provided some historical background to the current crisis in Korea, when he wrote the following about the situation in Korea after World War II in the late 1940s:

"In the Soviet zone...broadly popular social and economic reforms were implemented, including the purge of Japanese collaborators, land reform, the emancipation of women, and the transfer to public ownership of all Japanese assets...

"Widespread discontent...exploded on the island of Cheju, off [South] Korea's southern coast [in 1948-49]. As a result, between 10 and 25 percent of its 300,000 inhabitants were massacred, more than half of their villages burned, and the panoply of anti-guerrilla measures later developed to the full in Vietnam--herding of the population into strategic hamlets or fortified villages, destruction of crops, scorched earth, slaughter of villagers--put into operation...

"...Syngman Rhee...launched cross-border raids in 1949 to test Northern defenses...Stalin gave his consent to the invasion plans [of North Korean government leader Kim] only reluctantly, after forty-eight telegraphic pleas from Kim...

"...Through early 1950...Rhee grew even more strident in his calls for a `march' north to unify the country and his forces stepped up raids..."

Revisiting History of Korea--Part 2

In his 2004 book, Target Korea: Pushing North Korea To The Brink of Nuclear Catastrophe, Australian National University Professor Gavan McCormack provided some historical background to the current crisis in Korea, when he wrote the following about the situation in Korea after World War II in the late 1940s:

"With the announcement of the Japanese surrender, the capital, Seoul, was swept by joyful anticipation and a spontaneous network of popular local organizations, the `People's Committees,' emerged...The People's Committees were quickly banned...and the rich conservative and staunch anticommunist, Syngman Rhee, an emigre' Korean who had lived for decades in Washington, developing strong ties to conservative Americans, was imposed at the head of a new regime...

"[General] Hodge [the U.S. military commander]'s intelligence told him in February 1946 that leftist elements in the South would be bound to win any fair election, and in that same month a survey found that 49 percent of South Koreans felt that conditions were worse under the Americans than they had been under the Japanese.

"Those associated with the People's Committees...were...arrested or driven underground...The most prominent figure...seeking accommodation with the north, Yo Unhyong, was assassinated in July 1947...

"On November 11, 1947, Patrick Shaw, then head of the Australian diplomatic mission in Tokyo, described the situation in South Korea:

"`Real power is apparently in the hands of the ruthless police force which works at the direction of the G2 Section of the American G.H.Q....Korean prisons are now fuller of political prisoners than under Japanese rule. The torture and murder of the political enemies of the Extreme Right is apparently an accepted and commonplace thing.'..."

Revisiting History of Korea--Part 1

In his 2004 book, Target Korea: Pushing North Korea To The Brink of Nuclear Catastrophe, Australian National University Professor Gavan McCormack provided some historical background to the current crisis in Korea, when he wrote the following:

"Nearly 37,000 Americans, and an estimated three million Koreans, died in the Korean War of 1950-1953...

"...We now know that many of the greatest atrocities in that awful [Korean] war were committed by the South Koreans and the United States--at Nogunri, Taejon, and elsewhere--and then by the United States alone, when in its air campaign against the North it devastated dams, power stations, and the infrastructure of social life in breach of international law. In other words,...much of the terror was inflicted by the forces acting in the name of the United Nations...

"...The United States, to suit its global needs, divided a country that had been united for over a thousand years and whose culture and tradition were extraordinarily coherent...In the State Department an arbitrary line was drawn across the map at the 38th parallel, a geographical marker of no previous political or cultural significance, which had the effect of placing Korea's capital, Seoul, and most of its population under American influence...

"Koreans below the 38th parallel who welcomed liberation from Japanese imperialism...were forced instead to accept a subordinate state...The objectives of American policy-makers were...to establish a cooperative regime that would reflect U.S. strategic interests...Nationalist aspiration was anathema to the Americans and had to be crushed..."

47th Anniversary of JFK Assassination: Who Eliminated JFK?

(November 22, 2010 marks the 47th anniversary of the assassination of U.S. President Kennedy in Dallas Texas. The following item first appeared in the July 22, 1992 issue of the now-defunct Lower East Side alternative weekly newspaper, Downtown).

On October 13, 1964 the ex-wife of former CIA Covert Action Head Cord Meyer--Mary Pinchot-Meyer--"was shot twice, once in the head and once in the chest, with no apparent motive" and she and President Kennedy had been "involved at the time of the president's assassination," according to The Encyclopedia of American Scandal by George Kohn.

Coincidentally, in his book The Senator Must Die, former CIA contract agent Robert Morrow stated that shortly before Mary Pinchot-Meyer was eliminated, he met with a former Deputy Comptroller of the U.S. Treasury, Marshall Diggs, at Paul Young's Restaurant in Washington, D.C. According to Morrow, Diggs told him that Mary Pinchot-Meyer "claimed to my friend that she positively knew that company-affiliated Cuban exiles and the Mafia were responsible for killing John Kennedy." After speakingg with Diggs, Morrow "drove to New York and met with [then-Cuban Exile Leader] Kohly" and "after I told him the story of Mary Meyer, he looked very concerned."

According to Morrow, Kohly then said "just tell Diggs I'll take care of the matter" and "Then he told me to stay away from him and not tell anyone I had seen him or where he could be found." Coincidentally, a week after Morrow's meeting with Kohly in New York, Mary Pinchot-Meyer was eliminated.

Also, coincidentally, in his 1980 book, Conspiracy, Anthony Summers wrote:

"In 1978 I interviewed the son of the late Mario Kohly...The younger Kohly recalled opening a bottle of champagne at the news of President Kennedy's death and then calling his father. According to Kohly, `My father seemed elated and quite relievedl; he seemed more pleased, I would say, than surprised. I am sure he had knowledge of what really happened in Dealey Plaza. But, if you recall, everyone that has had knowledge ended up dead."

The same book also observed that Kohly's son quoted the deceased Cuban Exile Leader as saying "John Kennedy was a traitor...He was a Communist."

Former CIA contract agent Robert Morrow's book about RFK's elimination, The Senator Must Die, also stated the following:

"Bobby Kennedy suspected that a conspiracy involving CIA/Mafia-related people killed his brother.

"...On Aug. 19, 1977, I would seemingly have some confirmation of the Company's involvement in the President's assassination. I received a mysterious phone call to meet with the son of a former high-ranking member of the intelligence community.

"We met the following day for lunch. In our initial conversation, the young man claimed his father, an ex-Air Force colonel and others working for the Central Intelligence Agency had prior knowledge that President Kennedy was going to be assassinated in Dallas on November 22, 1963.

"He also claimed that through his father, he learned that the CIA hierarchy had done everything in their power to thwart the Warren Commission investigation, including the suppression and destruction of evidence--evidence that could prove that a conspiracy existed.

"The intelligence officer's son...asserted that his father had been tied into organized crime and had been a bagman for at least one of the payoffs relating to the presidential assassination, transporting a large sum of money to Haiti for payoff purposes during the Summer of 1963...

Former CIA contract agent Morrow also included in his book an affidavit signed by former Reagan White House staff member Diane (Didi) Hess in Sept. 1977 in which Hess stated that she submitted to a taped interview with Morrow on Sept. 27, 1977 in order "to describe the circumstances surrounding the admissions" of a former Air Force Colonel to her "of his personal participation in the assassination conspiracy of President John F. Kennedy on Nov. 22, 1963" and "to state the desire" of this Air Force intelligence officer "to convey this information directly to the prooper authorities upon being granted immunity from prosecution."

According to Morrow, Hess "had lived with the intelligence officer's son over an extended period of time" and "she also told her story to the House Select Committee On Assassinations (HSCA)" during the late 1970s.

(Downtown 7/22/92)

George Bernard Shaw: On Using Writing & Poetry To Change Society

In 1895, the socialist writer and dramatist George Bernard Shaw indicated why great writers and great poets often attempt to use their writing as a tool for creating a new society:

"...If people are rotting and starving in all directions, and nobody else has the heart or brains to make a disturbance about it, the great writers must. In short, what is forcing our poets to follow Shelley in becoming political and social agitators, and to turn the theatre into a platform for propaganda and arena for discussion, is that whilst social questions are being thrown up for solution almost daily by the fierce rapidity with which industrial processes change and supersede one another through the rivalry of the competitors who take no account of ulterior social consequences, and by the change in public feeling produced by popular `education' cheap literature, facilitated travelling, and so forth, the political machinery by which alone our institutions can be kept abreast of these changes is so old-fashioned, and so hindered in its action by the ignorance, the apathy, the stupidity, and the class feuds of the electorate, that social questions never get solved until the pressure becomes so desperate that even governments recognize the necessity for moving. And to bring the pressure to this point, the poets must lend a hand to the few who are willing to do public work in the stages at which nothing but abuse is to be gained by it..."

NYU Law School Prof Who Sentenced Lynne Stewart: His U.S. Attorney's Office/Columbia/Debevoise & Plimpton Connection

In July 2010, an NYU Law School adjunct professor named John Koeltl unconstitutionally sentenced U.S. civil rights attorney Lynne Stewart to 10 years in prison in the Southern District federal courtroom where Koeltl also is employed as a federal judge. Coincidentally, an Assistant U.S. Attorney since June 2000 in the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District that prosecuted Lynne Stewart--a Columbia University Law School lecturer-in-law named Jonathan Kolodner--apparently worked for Judge Koeltl as his law clerk between August 1997 and August 1998.

Prior to being appointed to the federal judicial bench by U.S. Secretary of State Clinton's husband in 1994 (on the recommendation of a now-deceased former AIPAC-backed U.S. Senator named Daniel "Pat" Moynihan), NYU Law School Professor Koeltl worked for years as a corporate lawyer at the Debevoise & Plimpton corporate law firm in Manhattan. While working at Debevoise & Plimpton, Judge Koeltl apparently wrote, for example, legal briefs for Mobil Oil in the Raymond vs. Mobil Oil case, after Mobil Oil was sued for its alleged age discrimination policies. In addition, while working at Debevoise & Plimpton, Judge Koeltl also apparently attended a June 18, 1987 board of directors meeting of The Council for Tobacco Research--along with the top executives of tobacco companies like American Tobacco and Phillip Morris who sat on this apparently then-tobacco industry-dominated board.

Coincidentally, a member of Debovise & Plimpton's Litigation Department (whose aviation industry practice apparently handles litigation arising out of the September 11, 2001 collapse of the World Trade Center buildings)--a Debevoise & Plimpton Counsel named Suzanne Grosso--also used to work as a law clerk in the late 1990s for the judge who sentenced Lynne stewart to 10 years in prison.

Black Female Worker Jobless Rate: 12.7 Percent Under Obama

Between September and October 2010, the official “seasonally adjusted” jobless rate for Black female workers over 20 years-of-age in the United States increased from 12.6 to 12.7 percent under the Democratic Obama Administration; while the unemployment rate for Black male workers over 20-years-of-age was still 16.3 percent, according to the latest Bureau of Labor Statistics data. The official unemployment rate for all Black workers over 16 years-of-age was still 15.7 percent in October 2010; while the jobless rate for Black youths between 16 and 19-years-of-age was still 48 percent in October 2010. Between September and October 2010, the number of officially unemployed Black female workers over 20-years-of-age increased from 1,143,000 to 1,168,000; while the number of jobless Black youths between 16 and 19-years-of-age increased from 298,000 to 334,000.

Between September and October 2010, the official “seasonally adjusted” jobless rate for Latino or Hispanic workers in the United States also increased from 12.4 to 12.6 percent; while the official “not seasonally adjusted” rate for Latina or Hispanic female workers over 20-years-of-age increased from 11.1 to 11.7 percent between September and October 2010. The “not seasonally adjusted” unemployment rate for Latino or Hispanic youths between 16 and 19-years-of-age also increased from 31 to 31.6 percent between September and October 2010; while the “seasonally adjusted” jobless rate for white youths increased from 23.4 to 23.6 percent during this same period. Between September and October 2010, the number of Latino or Hispanic workers with jobs in the United States decreased from 20,070,000 to 19,939,000, according to the “seasonally adjusted” data; while the number of officially unemployed Latino or Hispanic workers increased from 2,840,000 to 2,865,000.

The total number of officially unemployed workers in the United States increased from 14,767,000 to 14,843,000 between September and October 2010; while the “seasonally adjusted” jobless rate for all U.S. male workers over 16-years-of- age was still 10.4 percent in October 2010. The official jobless rate for white male workers over 20-years-of-age in the United States was still 8.9 percent in October 2010, while the unemployment rate for white female workers over 20-years-of-age increased from 7.2 to 7.3 percent between September and October 2010. The official “seasonally adjusted” number of unemployed white female workers in the United States increased from 3,949,000 to 4,010,000 between September and October 2010; while the number of white male workers over-20-years-of-age with jobs dropped from 59,755,000 to 59,431,000 during this same period.

Between September and October 2010, the official jobless rate for all white workers over 16-years-of-age increased from 8.7 to 8.8 percent; while the unemployment rate for all U.S. workers remained at 9.6 percent. The total number of white workers with jobs decreased from 114,500,000 to 113,974,000 between September and October 2010; while the total number of unemployed white workers in the United States increased from 10,904,000 to 10,933,000 during this same period.

The official jobless rate for all Asian-American workers also increased from 6.4 to 7.1 percent between September and October 2010, according to the "not seasonally adjustated" data; while the total number of unemployed Asian-American workers increased from 463,000 to 519,000 under the Democratic Obama Administration during this same period.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ November 5, 2010 press release:

“…The number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks and over) was about unchanged over the month at 6.2 million. In October, 41.8 percent of unemployed persons had been jobless for 27 weeks or more…

“Both the civilian labor force participation rate, at 64.5 percent, and the employment-population ratio, at 58.3 percent, edged down over the month…

“About 2.6 million persons were marginally attached to the labor force in October, up from 2.4 million a year earlier…These individuals were not in the labor force, wanted and were available for work, and had looked for a job sometime in the prior 12 months. They were not counted as unemployed because they had not searched for work in the 4 weeks preceding the survey…

“Among the marginally attached, there were 1.2 million discouraged workers in October, an increase of 411,000 from a year earlier…Discouraged workers are persons not currently looking for work because they believe no jobs are available for them….

“Employment in manufacturing changed little in October (-7,000)…

“…Employment in construction, wholesale trade, transportation, information, and financial activities showed little change in October…

“…Employment in local government, excluding education, decreased by 14,000 over the month…The number of temporary decennial census workers fell by 5,000 in October…”