Tonight, August 30, on NBC Nightly News, Lester Holt made a clarification of some false allegations by Donald Trump. Unfortunately, the clarification was also false. At this moment, I cannot get the link to tonight’s broadcast to give you the exact words. That may have to wait until tomorrow.

At about 13:25 into the video below, Richard Engel explained in the following words:

President Trump is apparently refering to Clinton-era negottiation that failed to curb North Korea’s nuclear ambitions. Talks that often ended in aid payments.

Engel gives you no context on the “failure” to curb the nuclear ambitions. As I remember it what happened back then, the USA did not meet all the commitments of the deal so that North Korea gave up on trusting our promises.

I found a PBS documentary Examining the Lessons of the 1994 U.S.-North Korea Deal. I let you be the judge of whether or not NBC is at least guilty of lying by omission.

Here are some excerpts from the words of the interview with William Perry U.S. Sec’y of Defense (1994-1997); U.S. Special Envoy to North Korea (1999)

The Agreed Framework [provided] that North Korea would continue this suspension of all activities at Yongbyon, that that freeze would be verified by International Atomic Energy Agency [IAEA] inspectors at Yongbyon continuously, as well as remote verification equipment. That the allies, in this case United States, Japan and South Korea, would build them two light-water reactors — with appropriate safeguards to assure that the fuel could not be diverted from those reactors — and that when the reactors reached a certain stage of completion, then North Korea would dismantle all of its facilities at Yongbyon. And that in the meantime, the allies would provide heavy fuel oil to make up for the electricity that was lost by not having the reactors at Yongbyon operating.

In addition to that there were a number of qualitative statements in the agreement, basically which said that the North Korea and the United States, Japan and South Korea would work towards a harmonious relationship and in particular that they would work toward ending the armistice with a peace agreement, and then work head towards normal diplomatic relations. All of those were spelled out as goals in the Agreed Framework.

Here are some excerpts from Robert Gallucci Chief U.S. Negotiator with North Korea during the nuclear crisis of 1993-1994

The criticisms were of the following kinds: first that we had we had submitted to blackmail. The North Koreans were threatening us with a nuclear program, and we gave in and gave them good things. That we were appeasers. That this was a rogue regime. Had we learned nothing about the failures of appeasement to deal with regimes such as this? We also heard that the North Koreans wouldn’t stick with the deal, they’d cheat. And didn’t we know that they were the kind of folks who would cheat?

There are those now who have come forward from the Clinton administration saying that the deal was basically abandoned by the United States. That’s perhaps too strong, but that there was a lack of political will to enforce the Agreed Framework, that in fact, the complaints coming from North Korea that the United States dragged its feet and reneged have some validity.

My own view here is — and there are disagreements about this — that in the Clinton administration there wasn’t the enthusiasm for everything the North Koreans wanted in terms of the political pay-off from the deal. So the North Koreans were somewhat disappointed. But let’s be clear about this. There are hard and soft portions to the deal. A hard portion was they needed to have their [plutonium] program frozen, and under inspection, and they needed to re-can the spent fuel so it wasn’t reprocessed. That was done.

Did they hold to their end of the agreement in that sense?

Absolutely. Absolutely. And on our side, in terms of the hard part, so did we. We were obligated to create an entity called the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization, an international entity — which was really South Korea, Japan and the United States and eventually the European Union — to build these 2,000-megawatt light-water reactors. That was a hard point in terms of the deal and we were doing that.

We also had to deliver a quantity every year of something called heavy fuel oil to provide energy replacement for what they were giving up with not having their own nuclear facilities. And did we meet every delivery schedule on the day? No. Did we generally meet the schedule, and were we generally providing what we said we’d provide? Yes. So in terms of the hard performance under the framework, both sides were doing it.

But there was the political opening and the economic opening. The lifting of sanctions. The establishment of liaison offices.

Sure. Liaison offices were not established, but not because we weren’t willing to. We were quite willing to. In fact, we had foreign service officers pulled out of rotation and prepared for that. It was the North Koreans that figured out: A) We were not going to have a huge operation up there that we would pay them for, instead, we were gonna use part of the old German Embassy, and B) They were gonna have to have a high bill to pay here in Washington. And they had other reasons why they were reluctant. So the liaison offices didn’t happen, but it wasn’t our fault.

Second, with respect to the economic opening, lifting of sanctions, that’s the area in which they didn’t get the pay-off that they thought they’d get. But nothing that you could nail and say, this is what the framework says we didn’t perform. We were not as forthcoming as they might have liked. This is not what I would call, to use the current language, a “material breach.” A phrase which by the way, doesn’t apply to the framework which isn’t even a legal agreement.

I think the important thing to focus on in the Clinton administration is, after they tested a ballistic missile of extended range on August 31, 1998, and in the same summer were discovered to have what we thought might be secret sites, we got the North Koreans to allow us to visit one particular site and determine that they were not cheating at that site. And we also got the North Koreans to unilaterally announce a moratorium on ballistic missile tests.

These admissions are from our side. Who knows what it looked like to North Korea?

Public Radio International (PRI) has the article The Netherlands, always vulnerable to floods, has a new approach to water management.

Ten years ago, the Netherlands developed the concept of “room for the rivers,” which Zevenbergen calls a “paradigm shift.” “The room for the rivers concept is a turning point in our approach,” he explains.

One of the difficulties that many countries face is in financing projects.

As always, funding massive projects presents challenges, even when the stakes are so high. Recently, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) held a conference which directly addressed how to engage the finance sector and the water sector.

The World Bank estimates that investing a dollar in flood protection saves $7 to $10 in flood damage, but, “for some reason,” Zevenbergen says, “there is an investment gap. … The money cannot find the projects, and the projects cannot find the money.”

A country like the USA that is sovereign in its own currency and has little debt that is not denominated in that currency does not face these financing problems. We have much greater leeway to create the money necessary to finance these projects.

Below is Naomi Klein’s video that was an afterthought in the previous post Harvey Didn’t Come Out of the Blue. Now is the Time to Talk About Climate Change.

The Intercept has Naomi Klein’s article Harvey Didn’t Come Out of the Blue. Now is the Time to Talk About Climate Change.

Talking honestly about what is fueling this era of serial disasters — even while they’re playing out in real time — isn’t disrespectful to the people on the front lines. In fact, it is the only way to truly honor their losses, and our last hope for preventing a future littered with countless more victims.

Naomi Klein didn’t even mention that absence of any zoning laws in Houston exacerbated the flooding tremendously. There are no rules preventing developers from paving over wetlands that would have sopped up a lot of this water. I am not saying that zoning laws could have prevented Harvey, but I am saying that it could have lessened the damage. Or do we now think that lessening the damage is not a proper function of government?

To back up my comment about zoning, you have to read the Green News Update article Hell and High Water Predicted Houston Disaster.

First, it’s important to know that Houston – the fourth largest city in the U.S. –has no zoning. Yes, that’s right. Developers have a basically free hand in acquiring sites and installing subdivisions or commercial development in the burgeoning Houston region. There are virtually no development regulations, and developers often sue successfully to get their way!

Houston’s lack of zoning laws has been notorious since I lived in Dallas in 1969. We knew back then that this lack of zoning would come back to bite them someday. We just didn’t know how.

Governing has the article How a Far Left Candidate Won in a Deep Red State.

The new mayor of Jackson, Miss., may offer striking evidence of a nationwide trend.

This is the beginning of my research into Jackson, Mississippi. My interest was keeked by comments of Ajamu Baraka in the previous post On Contact: Agenda of Hate with Ajamu Baraka.

The article on Jackson in Wikipedia has a rather ironic first topic after the introduction.

The region that is now the city of Jackson was historically part of the large territory occupied by the Choctaw Nation, the historic culture of the Muskogean-speaking indigenous peoples who had inhabited the area for thousands of years before European encounter.
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Under pressure from the U.S. government, the Choctaw Native Americans agreed to removal after 1830 from all of their lands east of the Mississippi River under the terms of several treaties.

YouTube has the video On Contact: Agenda of Hate with Ajamu Baraka.

On this week’s episode of On Contact, Chris Hedges examines the rise of white, right-wing hate groups with Ajamu Baraka, Associate Fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies and the Green Party’s nominee for Vice President in the 2016 election. RT Correspondent Anya Parampil looks at the profusion of white supremacist groups in America.

This episode is not only about negative aspects of what is happening. Finding out about Jackson, Mississippi was encouraging. Jackson is something I’ll want to learn more about.

The Guardian has the article Should the rich be taxed more? A new paper shows unequivocally yes.

Measuring tax paid against share of income earned and wealth owned reveals the US tax system has become less progressive – and in Britain it is a similar picture

I have said for a long time that the factoid “The top 1% of earners in the UK accounts for 27% of income tax receipts” is meaningless. Tell me what percentage of the income the 1% earn before we judge the fairness of paying 27% of the tax.

Finally, this article alludes to that number even if it doesn’t present it in a simple fashion.

eoi online has the article ‘X’ Marks the Spot Where Inequality Took Root: Dig Here.

The spot so marked is shown in the following figure from the article.

The analysis is interesting, but I think the author left out a very important factor.

We came out of WWII relatively unscathed compared to Europe and other theaters of the war. Our workers and our corporations enjoyed an advantage over the rest of the world that could not last forever. As the Asian economies growth really started to gather full steam, some adjustment had to happen. We did not see the need to manage that adjustment, so we did not handle it well. All the burden of adjustment was put on the backs of the workers, while the wealthy were able to bend the rules to protect themselves – well at least temporarily.

One of the ways we went wrong was on the insistence of maintaining a strong dollar. This was good for maintaining the value of the wealth of the rich people. It was not good for spreading the pain of the inevitable adjustment over the entire population of the USA as our WWII advantage started to wane. I think this attempt to refuse to face up to the adjustment led to some of the desperate efforts to maintain the wealth of the wealthy in the face of forces we refused to recognize.

The New York Times has the article Chastised by E.U., a Resentful Greece Embraces China’s Cash and Interests.

While Europe was busy squeezing Greece, the Chinese swooped in with bucket-loads of investments that have begun to pay off, not only economically but also by apparently giving China a political foothold in Greece, and by extension, in Europe.

The NYT failed to point out that China understands the economic principles that the west has forgotten. The way to boost a struggling economy is not through austerity, but through government backed investments to stimulate the economy. Are we now going to blame China for our stupidity?

We no longer have to ask whether a Progressive economic policy would get the economy going again. China proves the Progressive economics works all over the world. We can refuse to learn anything from the evidence, or we could just give in and try economic policy that works.

I know people are going to twist my words into an endorsement of Chinese politics, but I said no such thing. We used to understand and apply progressive economics in our Democracy, but since we have switched our government to an oligarchy, we cannot seem to get out of our own way on economics.

Maybe fear of China will put a human face back on our capitalism. The threat of communism from the USSR is what used to prevent our system from diving into its current depths of depravity.

Medium has the article How To Keep Your Head In A Sea Of Propaganda. There are some very good ideas in this article. I found that I have recently developed an appreciation one of these ideas due to a book I have been reading. Here is an excerpt from the article that introduces the idea of “inner work”

Propaganda works by constructing narratives that are favorable to the institution promulgating it, and it does so by appealing to people’s baser impulses like fear and tribalism in order to create sympathy for their stories. Inner work which creates some space from mental narrative and identification is a great way to inoculate oneself against such manipulations. Meditation, self-inquiry, mantra repetition and mindfulness practices can all be useful toward this end, as can right-brained activities like drawing and painting since they involve a movement away from the language center.

I never put much stock in the value of meditation until I read the book “Being Different: An Indian Challenge to Western Universalism” by Rajiv Malhotra. Here is an excerpt from the description of the book that I found on Amazon.

India is more than a nation state. It is also a unique civilization with philosophies and cosmologies that are markedly distinct from the dominant culture of our times – the West. India’s spiritual traditions spring from dharma which has no exact equivalent in Western frameworks. Unfortunately, in the rush to celebrate the growing popularity of India on the world stage, its civilizational matrix is being co-opted into Western universalism, thereby diluting its distinctiveness and potential.

“Being Different” explained the value of “inner work” as a tool that can be used in addition to western style logic to give you insights that you won’t get from western style logic alone. I still have not taken up meditation, but I now see the point of it.