Monday, February 19, 2018

The Roots Is The Toots: The Music That Got The Generation Of ’68 Through The 1950s Red Scare Cold War Night- A Pauper Comes Of Age- For the Adamsville South Elementary School Class Of 1958-Chuck Berry’s Sweet Little Sixteen


The Roots Is The Toots: The Music That Got The Generation Of ’68 Through The 1950s Red Scare Cold War Night- A Pauper Comes Of Age- For the Adamsville South Elementary School Class Of 1958-Chuck Berry’s Sweet Little Sixteen



From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

This is the way my old corner boy, Fritz Taylor, from down in “the projects” told me the story one night years later when we were sitting on the grey granite steps of our high school, Miller High, in Seaside Heights, that’s in New Hampshire. Those projects by the way, all white projects  unlike the ones you hear about lately which are mostly populated by minorities, had originally been build right after World War II to help stem the heavy demand for housing from returning servicemen with young families and not enough dough to finance a house. The original idea as well was that the housing was temporary and had been built with a certain careless abandon by some low-bidder contractors. Fritz’s and my family had been among those families in the 1950s who did not get to participate in the “golden age” and so we were long time tenants all through our school years until we graduated from Miller High. Between the isolated location of the projects and the high number of kids the place had it had its own elementary school, Snug Harbor (sounds nice right, however, that school was also expected to be temporary and built as such by those same low-bidder contractors), where we both had gone through all six grades together (we started in the time before kindergarten became a step in one’s education). I am telling you about this because the story happened down there long before we got to high school.

So there we were sitting there on the steps, no dough in our pockets, our main guy for a ride out of town, Benny, also a corner boy, on a family vacation up in Maine, no girls in hand, or prospects either since any girls we were interested in had no interest us either because we had not car or because we were from the projects, come to think of it forget that last part it was because we were car-less and that world was filled with guys with cars, “boss cars,” swooping down on the interesting girls, talking slowly. Talking kind of softly for us although loudly or softly no one would have been around to heard us that warm summer night with about six weeks to go before school started again and we could go back and start our junior year, kind of dreamy too really about the first times we had been smitten by a girl, not necessarily a forever smitten thing (forever then being maybe a month or six weeks, no more except for some oddball couples who found love and stayed together for the next fifty years if you can believe that in this day in age) but with a bug that disturbed our sleep.

Yeah, that is exactly the way to put it, when some frail disturbed our sleep, the first of many sleepless nights on that subject.  (That “frail” a localism for girl, heavily influenced by our corner boy with the car Benny watching too many 1930s and 1940s George Raft or James Cagney gangster and Humphrey Bogart hard-boiled private detective movies.) So we were sitting there thinking about how we were now chasing other dreams, well, maybe not other dreams but older versions, sweet sixteen versions of that same dream.  Of course at sixteen it was all about girls but as it turned out that subject had its own pre-history way back when. Just ask Fritz Taylor if you see him.

Fritz Taylor, if he thought about it at all and at times like that dream vision night at sixteen on the steps in front of the high school he might have, probably would have said that he had his history hat on again like when he was a kid, loving history or even the thought of history since Miss Winot blew him away with talk of ancient Greeks and Romans. Blew him away so that when he got in trouble with that teacher for saying something fresh, and it really was, a swear word expression, “what the fuck,” that he heard all the time around his house which he thought everybody said when they were angry, assigned him a paper to write of five hundred words and he wrote an essay about Greek democracy which she actually read to the class she was so impressed. Miss Winot, blew him away more when she freaked him out with talk of Egypt and Pharaoh times with the Pyramids and the slaves and all time and he begged his older brother to drive him all the way down to the art museum in Boston to look at old Pharaoh stuff some guys from Harvard had unearthed. But all that is just stuff to let you know what kind of guy Fritz was in elementary school before he wised up, or kind of wised up, in high school. Funny one time when I wanted to take the bus down to Boston when I got the Pharaoh bug in high school he dismissed me out of hand. Done that, he said. So that night he had his history hat on so I knew I was in for a story, a bloody silly story if I knew Fritz but we had nothing better to do so I let him go on. Let him go on that sixteen years old summer night when out of the blue, the memory time blue, he thought about more modern history, thought about her, thought about fair Rosimund.

No, before you get all set to turn to some other thing, some desperate alternate other thing, to do rather than read Fritz’s poignant little story, this is not some American Revolution founding fathers (or mothers, because old-time Abigail Adams may have been hovering in some background granite-chiseled slab grave in a very old-time Quincy cemetery while the events to be related occurred since Fritz was crazy about her too once he figured out she was the real power behind John and John Quincy) or some bold Massachusetts abolitionist regiment, the fighting 54th, out of the American Civil War 150th anniversary memory history like Fritz used to like to twist the tail around when you knew him, or his like. This is about “first love” so rest easy.

Fritz, that early summer’s night, was simply trying to put his thoughts together and figured that he would write something, write something for those who could stand it, those fellow members of our class who could stand to know that story. Although, at many levels that was a very different experience from that of the average, average Miller High class member the story had a universal quality that he thought might amuse them, amuse them that is until the name, the thought of the name, the mist coming from out of his mouth at the forming of the name, holy of holies, Rosimund, stopped him dead in his tracks and forced him to tell me that story and to write that different story later.

Still, once the initial trauma wore off, Fritz thought what better way to celebrate that milestone on the rocky road to surviving childhood than to take a trip down memory lane, that Rosimund-strewn memory lane. Those days although they were filled with memorable incidents, good and bad, paled beside this Rosimund-related story that cut deep, deep into his brown-haired mind, and as it turned out one that he have not forgotten after all. So rather than produce some hokey last dance, last elementary school sweaty-palmed dance failure tale, some Billie Bradley-led corner boy down in the back of Snug Harbor doo wop be-bop into the night luring stick and shape girls like lemmings from the sea on hearing those doo wop harmonies, those harmonies meant for them, the sticks and shapes that is, or some wannabe gangster retread tale, or even some Captain Midnight how he saved the world from the Cold War Russkies with his last minute-saving invention Fritz preferred to relate a home truth, a hard home truth to be sure, but the truth Here is his say:

At some point in elementary school a boy is inevitably supposed to learn, maybe required to, depending on the whims of your school district’s supervisory staff and maybe also what your parents expected of such schools, to do two intertwined socially-oriented tasks - the basics of some kind of dancing and to be paired off with, dare I say it, a girl in that activity. After all that is what it is there for isn’t it. At least it was that way a few years back, and if things have changed, changed dramatically in that regard, you can fill in your own blanks experience. But here that is where fair sweet Rosimund comes in, the paired-off part.

I can already hear your gasps, dear reader, as I present this scenario. You are ready to flee, boy or girl flee, to some safe attic hideaway, to reach for some dusty ancient comfort teddy bear, or for the venturesome, some old sepia brownie camera picture album safely hidden in those environs, but flee, no question, at the suggestion of those painful first times when sweaty-handed, profusely sweaty-handed, boy met too-tall girl on the dance floor (age too-tall girls hormone shooting up first, later things settled down, a little). Now for those who are hopped up, or even mildly interested, in such ancient rituals you may be thinking, oh well, this won’t be so bad after all since I am talking about the mid-1950s and they had Dick Clark’s American Bandstand on the television to protect us from having to dance close, what with those funny self-expression dance moves like the Stroll and the Hully-Gully that you see on re-runs. And then go on except, maybe, the last dance, the last close dance that spelled success or failure in the special he or she night so let me tell you how really bad we had it in the plaid 1960s. Wrong.

Oh, of course, we were all after school black and white television-addled and addicted making sure that we got home by three in the afternoon to catch the latest episode of the American Bandstand saga about who would, or wouldn’t, dance with that cute girl in the corner (or that leering Amazon in the front). That part was true, true enough. But here we are not talking fun dancing, close or far away, but learning dancing, school-time dancing, come on get with it. What we are talking about in my case is that the dancing part turned out to be the basics of country bumpkin square-dancing (go figure, for a city boy, right?). Not only did this clumsy, yes, sweaty-palmed, star-crossed ten-year-old boy have to do the basic “swing your partner” and some off-hand “doze-zee dozes(sic)” but I also had to do it while I was paired, for this occasion, with the girl that I had a “crush” on, a serious crush on, and that is where Rosimund really enters the story.

Rosimund see, moreover, was not from “the projects” but from one of the new single-family homes, ranch-style homes that the up and coming middle-class were moving into up the road. In case you didn’t know, or have forgotten, I grew up on the “wrong side of the tracks” down at the Seaside Heights Housing Authority apartments. The rough side of town, okay. You knew that the minute I mentioned the name, that SHHA name, and rough is what you thought, and that is okay. Now. But although I had started getting a handle on the stick "projects" girls I was totally unsure how to deal with girls from the “world.” And Rosimund very definitely was from the world. I will not describe her here; although I could do so even today, but let us leave it at her name. Rosimund. Enchanting name, right? Thoughts of white-plumed knighted medieval jousts against some black-hooded, armored thug knight for the fair maiden’s hand, or for her favors (whatever they were then, mainly left unexplained, although we all know what they are now, and are glad of it)

Nothing special about the story so far, though. Even I am getting a little sleepy over it. Just your average one-of-the-stages-of-the-eternal-coming-of-age-story. I wish. Well, the long and short of it was that the reason we were practicing this square-dancing was to demonstrate our prowess before our parents in the school gym. Nothing unusual there either. After all there is no sense in doing this type of school-time activity unless one can impress one's parents. I forget all the details of the setup of the space for demonstration day and things like that but it was a big deal. Parents, refreshments, various local dignitaries, half the school administrators from downtown whom I will go to my grave believing could have cared less if it was square-dancing or basket-weaving because they would have ooh-ed and ah-ed us whatever it was. But that is so much background filler. Here is the real deal. To honor the occasion, as this was my big moment to impress Rosimund, I had, earlier in the day, cut up my dungarees to give myself an authentic square-dancer look, some now farmer brown look but back then maybe not so bad.

I thought I looked pretty good. And Rosimund, looking nice in some blue taffeta dress with a dark red shawl thing draped and pinned across her shoulders (although don’t quote me on that dress thing, what did a ten-year old boy, sister-less, know of such girlish fashion things. I was just trying to keep my hands in my pockets to wipe my sweaty hands for twirling time, for Rosimund twirling time) actually beamed at me, and said I looked like a gentleman farmer. Be still my heart. Like I said I though I looked pretty good, and if Rosimund thought so well then, well indeed. And things were going nicely. That is until my mother, sitting in a front row audience seat as was her wont, saw what I had done to the pants. In a second she got up from her seat, marched over to me, and started yelling about my disrespect for my father's and her efforts to clothe me and about the fact that since I only had a couple of pairs of pants how could I do such a thing. In short, airing the family troubles in public for all to hear. That went on for what seemed like an eternity.

Thereafter I was unceremoniously taken home by said irate mother and placed on restriction for a week. Needless to say my father also heard about it when he got home from that hard day’s work that he was too infrequently able to get to keep the wolves from the door, and I heard about it for weeks afterward. Needless to say I also blew my 'chances' with dear, sweet Rosimund.

Now is this a tale of the hard lessons of the nature of class society that I am always more than willing to put in a word about? Just like you might have remembered about me back in the day. Surely not. Is this a sad tale of young love thwarted by the vagaries of fate? A little. Is this a tale about respect for the little we had in my family? Perhaps. Was my mother, despite her rage, right? Well, yes. Did I learn something about being poor in the world? Damn right. That is the point. …But, oh, Rosimund.

Multiple reports confirm US killed Russians in Syrian oilfield airstrikes

To  GN List Serve  

Multiple reports confirm US killed Russians in Syrian oilfield airstrikes

 
http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2018/02/14/syri-f14.html
The deaths of Russian military contractors under the rain of bombs and missiles unleashed by the Pentagon has sharply escalated war tensions.

 
By Bill Van Auken 
14 February 2018
Reports emerging from Russia indicate that anywhere from dozens to hundreds of Russian military contractors may have been killed in the US air and artillery assault against a column of fighters loyal to the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in eastern Deir Ezzor province on February 7.
As yet, a handful of names of Russians killed in the one-sided battle have emerged. The right-wing nationalist “Other Russia” group reported that one of its members, Kirill Ananiev, who had gone to Syria a year ago, was among the dead. A spokesman for the group said there had been “substantial losses” inflicted upon “paramilitary structures with ties to Russia.”
A paramilitary organization calling itself the Baltic Cossak Union posted a statement online reporting that one of its members, Vladimir Loginov, had died in the US bombardment in Deir Ezzor.
The Conflict Intelligence Team, a Russian opposition group that has monitored developments in Syria, provided three other names: Alexi Ladigin of Ryazan and Stanislav Matviev and Igor Kostorov of Kaliningrad.
The Pentagon initially said it had killed 100 fighters in its February 7 attack, which took place on the western bank of the Euphrates River. It claimed it had responded to an advance by as many as 500 fighters, backed by tanks and artillery, on a headquarters of the so-called Syrian Democratic Forces, the US proxy ground force that consists overwhelmingly of the Syrian Kurdish YPG militia. US special forces troops directing the YPG’s operations in the area were reportedly at the site.
The US troops called in a withering assault by Apache attack helicopters, an AC-130 Specter gunship and F-15 fighter jets, as well artillery batteries.
The Syrian government denounced the US firestorm as a “massacre” and a “war crime,” insisting that its fighters had been targeting remnants of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).
Meanwhile, the Pentagon has reported that it mounted another attack in the same area on Saturday, calling in a strike against a Russian-made T-72 tank, which it claimed had been “maneuvering” into firing range of an SDF “defensive position.”
In both cases, US military spokesmen asserted that American forces used “deconfliction lines” to inform the Russian military about the strikes before and during their execution.
The location of the two attacks reveals the real motives underlying the military confrontations. Both took place near the Omar oil field, the Hashim gas field and the former Conoco gas refinery.
Deir Ezzor is the center of Syria’s gas and oil industry, which ISIS captured and exploited to finance its operations. The US military was so determined to lay claim to these strategic resources that it negotiated a surrender of the Syrian city of Raqqa last October in exchange for the evacuation of some 4,000 ISIS fighters to Deir Ezzor, where they were redeployed to impede the advance of Syrian government forces. Washington’s ground proxies in the YPG-dominated SDF were then rushed to the area to seize control of the oil and gas fields.
Washington’s aim is to deny these resources to the Assad government in order to impede its consolidation of control and the beginning of the shattered country’s reconstruction.
Russian military expert Viktor Murakhovsky told the daily Kommersant: “For the Arab Republic, these are serious resources… Actually, control over such resources in many ways was the source of the civil war in Syria.”
The Russian government of President Vladimir Putin, while denouncing US machinations in Syria, has remained tight-lipped about the reported Russian casualties in Deir-Ezzor.
Reuters cited sources in Russia who said that “dozens” of Russians were killed on February 7. Bloomberg wrote Tuesday that two Russian sources had reported more than 200 soldiers, “mostly Russians,” had died in the US attack.
Grigory Yavlinsky, the leader of the pro-Western, free-market Yabloko party and one of the original architects of capitalist restoration, issued a statement demanding that the Putin government make public what happened in Deir Ezzor.
“If there have been mass deaths of Russian citizens in Syria, then the relevant authorities, including the general staff of the Russian armed forces, have a duty to inform the country about this and decide who bears responsibility,” Yavlinsky said on Twitter. He is running against Putin in next month’s presidential election.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters Tuesday that the account of Russian dead in Deir Ezzor was only “information published in the media,” adding that he did not believe Yavlinsky had “more reliable sources of information.”
Russia’s Defense Ministry, meanwhile, has stated only that no members of the Russian military were in the area at the time of the attack. Other sources close to the Russian government have described reports of mass casualties as Western-driven “information warfare.”
Vitaly Naumkin, a leading expert on the Middle East who has collaborated closely with Russia’s Foreign Ministry on Syria, was somewhat more frank. He told Bloomberg: “No one wants to start a world war over a volunteer or mercenary who wasn’t sent by the state and was hit by the Americans.”
The Russians killed in the US attack, whatever their actual number, are believed to have been military contractors employed by the Wagner Group, an outfit that has been described as Russia’s equivalent to America’s Blackwater. Contractors from the group have been used to guard key facilities in Syria, including the Russian naval base at Tartus and the airbase at Hmeimim, as well as oil and gas installations. They have also been imbedded with Syrian troops, participating in heavy combat.
It strains credulity to accept that these contractors are operating in Syria with tanks and artillery without the approval and close collaboration of the Russian government. While Putin announced during a visit to Syria last December that Russian armed forces had achieved victory over ISIS and were being withdrawn from the country, the fighting continues, and Russian military contractors are apparently heavily involved.
The use of such forces, which allows the Kremlin to deny responsibility for military clashes and conceal from public scrutiny the casualties in Syria, has obvious attractions for the Putin government.
It has also been reported that Wagner is involved in deals with the Syrian government that guarantee Russian capitalist interests up to 25 percent of revenues from oil and gas fields that its fighters retake.
On Tuesday, Russian Minister of Energy Alexander Novak announced that Moscow had signed a “roadmap” agreement with the Syrian government for the recovery and development of oil and gas fields. It is highly probable that whoever died in the US bombardment in Deir Ezzor on February 7 was acting in furtherance of this agreement.
Russia’s military intervention in Syria, launched in 2015, has been directed at propping up Moscow’s principal ally in the Middle East and impeding the US-backed attempt to carry out regime-change through the arming and support of Al Qaeda-linked militias.
In part, Russian motives were bound up with the interests of Russia’s ruling oligarchs and Gazprom, the country’s largest corporation, which faced the prospect of Qatar gaining access to Syrian territory for a gas pipeline directed toward Western Europe, undermining Russian profit interests. Moscow also justifiably feared Syria becoming a base for Al Qaeda-linked Islamist fighters drawn from Russia’s Caucasus region to launch a campaign, backed by the CIA, to destabilize and ultimately dismember the Russian Federation.
Despite this defensive element in Moscow’s intervention in Syria, there is nothing progressive about the motives of the Russian government, which represents the interests of a thoroughly reactionary and criminal capitalist oligarchy. It has, in recent weeks, provided tacit approval for the Turkish assault on the Kurdish enclave of Afrin, as well as for the Israeli bombing of Syrian and Iranian forces.
Whatever the attempts of the Putin government to smooth over the latest military confrontation in Deir Ezzor, the objective geo-strategic conflicts underlying the fighting in Syria are pushing the world to the brink of a war between the world’s two major nuclear powers.
Reflecting the increasingly belligerent posture adopted by the US military and intelligence apparatus, along with decisive layers of the American ruling establishment, the Washington Post on Tuesday published an editorial calling for a further escalation in Syria.
“Far from winding down, Syria's civil war is threatening to trigger direct conflicts between the United States and Turkey, Israel and Iran, and even the United States and Russia. These threats can be defused only by high-level diplomacy backed by the credible threat of force. So far, the Trump administration’s response looks underpowered,” the Post warned.
The editorial insisted that Washington can block Russia from becoming “the dominant power in Syria and, by extension, a major player in the Middle East” only by means of a major military escalation.

Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives honors CIW with its 2018 Human Rights Award!

Veterans Call for De-escalation, Negotiations, and Peace on the Korean Peninsula Veterans For Peace, a U.S. based organization with international chapters in Japan and Okinawa, calls on the governmental leaders of the U.S., the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK, aka North Korea), the Republic of Korea (ROK, aka South Korea) and Japan to stop their escalation of threatening words and actions, and begin negotiations toward the signing of the long-awaited Peace Treaty putting a final end to the Korean War. Any attempt to solve the issues dividing the Korean Peninsula by warfare would bring disaster not only to the people living there, but also to all the people living in Northeast Asia. Retired General Gary Luck, Former Commander of U.S. Forces in Korea, has estimated that such a war would leave one million dead. And what would be the aim of this war? Each side is threatening to make war on the other to punish it for threatening to make war. This is the behavior of schoolyard bullies, armed not with knives and clubs but nuclear weapons. This catastrophic war is avoidable, and must be avoided. In understanding the background to this situation, it should be remembered that the DPRK has been under nuclear threat from the U.S. ever since the Korean War in the 1950s. That their government has in recent years taken to threatening nuclear retaliation to any attacker is a wildly dangerous and morally condemnable policy, but it is not unique to the DPRK. It is a policy, invented by the U.S. and adopted by every country that possesses nuclear weapons, called “nuclear deterrence”. Every criticism heaped upon the DPRK for following this policy applies equally to every country possessing nuclear weapons. Each year the U.S. and the ROK carry out joint military exercises right up against the DPRK border, and based on the scenario of an invasion of that country. Every year the DPRK, which unsurprisingly considers this a threat, protests with verbal counter-threats and, recently, missile launchings. This year, the U.S. and Japan carried out joint military exercises at the same time as the U.S.-ROK exercises. Rhetoric has escalated. U.S. President Donald Trump threatened “fire and fury like the world has never seen”, and stated that “all options are on the table”, which means a pre-emptive strike is being considered. DPRK leader Kim Jong Un threatened to launch missiles aimed at the vicinity of Guam. Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe threatened to send Japan’s Self Defense Forces along with any U.S. invasion of the North, which would spell the final end of Japan’s Peace Constitution. Kim Jong Un responded by sending a missile over northern Japan – though not, as was claimed, violating Japan’s airspace, as when it passed over Japan it was in outer space, at an elevation even higher than that of the many satellites that legally pass over Japan every day. Prime Minister Abe, however, took advantage of the situation by calling a state of emergency in northern Japan, commandeering the national broadcasting system NHK, and also the cell-phone system, to urge people take shelter from the alleged impending attack by moving to the basements of concrete buildings (few buildings have these). Presumably Abe is hoping that the resulting panic will help him to promote his militarization plans, and in particular to gain support for his purchases of expensive counter-missile commodities. (It is noteworthy that during this “state of emergency” the trains, including the bullet trains, were kept running.) This gambling with the lives of millions has got to stop. And there is a way to stop it. DPRK, while carrying out its threatening nuclear tests and missile launchings, has repeatedly said it wants to negotiate a peace treaty ending the Korean War, which the U.S. has been refusing. But a peace treaty is a very good idea, the signing of which would allow the many hundreds of millions of people living in Northeast Asia to breathe a sigh of relief. Veterans For Peace calls on the U.S. Government to accept this offer, and to begin negotiations with the DPRK aiming at signing such a treaty and normalizing relations between the DPRK and the ROK. And as the governments of the relevant countries seem locked into their present self-destructive policies, we call upon the citizens of those countries, who surely do not want a meaningless nuclear war where they live, to demand that their governments back off and begin negotiations, which are the only way to bring peace to the region. Written by Veterans For Peace, VFP Japan and Okinawa VFP Quick Links Join/Renew Donate Vehicle Donations VFP Bylaws VFP Passed Resolutions Request Your Military Service Records Store Find A Chapter Start A Chapter Chapter Contacts Powell's Books Recent Newsletter Application for Travel Outreach Fund Contact Us Veterans For Peace 1404 North Broadway St. Louis MO 63102 vfp@veteransforpeace.org (314) 725-6005 (office) (314) 227-1981 (fax) Affiliates & Projects Arlington Memorials Chelsea Manning Support Network Courage to Resist GI Rights Hotline Golden Rule Boat Project Iraq Veterans Against the War Iraq Water Project Iraqi Student Project King Condemned US Wars International Awareness Campaign Korea Peace Campaign Military Families Speak Out The National Network Opposing the Militarization of Youth (NNOMY) National Priorites Project Peace In Our Times School of the Americas Watch Service Women's Action Network (SWAN) Stop These Wars United National Antiwar Coalition Vietnam Agent Orange Relief & Responsibility Campaign Vietnam Veterans Against the War

Veterans Call for De-escalation, Negotiations, and Peace on the Korean Peninsula

Veterans For Peace, a U.S. based organization with international chapters in Japan and Okinawa, calls on the governmental leaders of the U.S., the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK, aka North Korea), the Republic of Korea (ROK, aka South Korea) and Japan to stop their escalation of threatening words and actions, and begin negotiations toward the signing of the long-awaited Peace Treaty putting a final end to the Korean War.
Any attempt to solve the issues dividing the Korean Peninsula by warfare would bring disaster not only to the people living there, but also to all the people living in Northeast Asia. 
Retired General Gary Luck, Former Commander of U.S. Forces in Korea, has estimated that such a war would leave one million dead.  And what would be the aim of this war?  Each side is threatening to make war on the other to punish it for threatening to make war.  This is the behavior of schoolyard bullies, armed not with knives and clubs but nuclear weapons.  This catastrophic war is avoidable, and must be avoided.
In understanding the background to this situation, it should be remembered that the DPRK has been under nuclear threat from the U.S. ever since the Korean War in the 1950s. That their government has in recent years taken to threatening nuclear retaliation to any attacker is a wildly dangerous and morally condemnable policy, but it is not unique to the DPRK.  It is a policy, invented by the U.S. and adopted by every country that possesses nuclear weapons, called “nuclear deterrence”.  Every criticism heaped upon the DPRK for following this policy applies equally to every country possessing nuclear weapons.
Each year the U.S. and the ROK carry out joint military exercises right up against the DPRK border, and based on the scenario of an invasion of that country. 
Every year the DPRK, which unsurprisingly considers this a threat, protests with verbal counter-threats and, recently, missile launchings. 
This year, the U.S. and Japan carried out joint military exercises at the same time as the U.S.-ROK exercises. Rhetoric has escalated. U.S. President Donald Trump threatened “fire and fury like the world has never seen”, and stated that “all options are on the table”, which means a pre-emptive strike is being considered.  DPRK leader Kim Jong Un threatened to launch missiles aimed at the vicinity of Guam.  Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe threatened to send Japan’s Self Defense Forces along with any U.S.  invasion of the North, which would spell the final end of Japan’s Peace Constitution.  Kim Jong Un responded by sending a missile over northern Japan – though not, as was claimed, violating Japan’s airspace, as when it passed over Japan it was in outer space, at an elevation even higher than that of the many satellites that legally pass over Japan every day.
Prime Minister Abe, however, took advantage of the situation by calling a state of emergency in northern Japan, commandeering the national broadcasting system NHK, and also the cell-phone system, to urge people take shelter from the alleged impending attack by moving to the basements of concrete buildings (few buildings have these). Presumably Abe is hoping that the resulting panic will help him to promote his militarization plans, and in particular to gain support for his purchases of expensive counter-missile commodities. (It is noteworthy that during this “state of emergency” the trains, including the bullet trains, were kept running.)
This gambling with the lives of millions has got to stop.  And there is a way to stop it.  DPRK, while carrying out its threatening nuclear tests and missile launchings, has repeatedly said it wants to negotiate a peace treaty ending the Korean War, which the U.S. has been refusing.  But a peace treaty is a very good idea, the signing of which would allow the many hundreds of millions of people living in Northeast Asia to breathe a sigh of relief.  Veterans For Peace calls on the U.S. Government to accept this offer, and to begin negotiations with the DPRK aiming at signing such a treaty and normalizing relations between the DPRK and the ROK.
And as the governments of the relevant countries seem locked into their present self-destructive policies, we call upon the citizens of those countries, who surely do not want a meaningless nuclear war where they live, to demand that their governments back off and begin negotiations, which are the only way to bring peace to the region.
Written by Veterans For Peace, VFP Japan and Okinawa VFP