“History In The Making:” UPS Attains FAA’s First Full Approval For Drone Airline
UPS announced Tuesday that it had received the Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) first full Part 135 Standard certification to operate a drone airline across the U.S.
UPS is currently expanding drone networks on academic and hospital campuses across the country, and will shortly expand to other businesses. During the build-out, UPS Flight Forward plans to go beyond the line of sight, which means the drones could one day fly from city to city, or even across the country.
The FAA awarded UPS Flight Forward a Part 135 Standard certification last Friday, and with-in 12 hours, the UPS subsidiary launched deliveries at WakeMed’s hospital campus in Raleigh, N.C.
UPS teamed up with Matternet, to produce the M2 quadcopter, was flown under an FAA exemption allowing for a “beyond visual line of sight.” The drone can fly upwards of 6 miles, weather permitted of course, and carry a payload of about 5 pounds.
UPS’ drone delivery service on the WakeMed campus is the first-ever revenue-generating service for drone delivery of medical products and specimens. The Part 135 certification will allow UPS to build a more extensive network that could extend outside the campus, could eventually connect other universities or businesses.
“This is history in the making, and we aren’t done yet,” said David Abney, UPS chief executive officer. “Our technology is opening doors for UPS and solving problems in unique ways for our customers. We will soon announce other steps to build out our infrastructure, expand services for healthcare customers and put drones to new uses in the future.”
Part 135 also allows UPS drones to carry more than 55 pounds of cargo and fly at night. This will enable UPS drones to fly from city to city, and or even from state to state, and in some cases, across the country. UPS is building small networks at campuses, will eventually connect them as nodes — this will be part of a large logistical drone network that could extend across the country by 2025.
“UPS Flight Forward is benefitting from our knowledge as one of the world’s leading airlines. The Flight Forward organization is building a full-scale drone operation based on the rigorous reliability, safety, and control requirements of the FAA,” Abney said.
“This is a big step forward in safely integrating unmanned aircraft systems into our airspace, expanding access to healthcare in North Carolina and building on the success of the national UAS Integration Pilot Program to maintain American leadership in unmanned aviation,” said U.S. Secretary of Transportation Elaine L. Chao.
UPS is in the beginning innings of building out a nationwide drone network by creating local nodes in academia and hospital campuses first. Then will eventually link the nodes into an interconnected national system, that will have various types of drones making localized deliveries, and or ones that will make long-distance ones. This logistical network in the sky, using drones and artificial intelligence, could displace tens of thousands of UPS workers by 2030.
I confess that I still don’t get what exactly is going to be the particular offense for which President Trump is going to be impeached.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m all in favor of impeaching Trump and removing him from office, but only for grave crimes, such as waging war illegally (i.e., without the constitutionally required congressional declaration of war), wreaking death, suffering, and destruction in those wars, committing countless assassinations, and violating provisions in the Bill of Rights with respect to indefinite detention, torture, denial of speedy trial, and denial of due process of law.
But impeaching Trump for a telephone conversation? To me, that has the feel of desperation attached to it, a desperation born out of an increasing realization that none of the Democratic presidential candidates is capable of defeating Trump in an election. Trump’s impeachment seems like it might be the political equivalent of a Hail Mary pass in football — almost impossible to complete but would at least give the Democrats a long-shot, short-cut way to the presidency.
There are three possible offenses that would form the basis of an impeachment. Let’s examine and analyze each one.
Offense One
Trump’s request of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to initiate a criminal investigation of former Vice-President and current Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden on possible corruption charges in Ukraine.
Is it really a criminal offense for a president to request that a criminal investigation be launched against someone, including a political opponent?
Let’s first consider the case of an American citizen, John Doe, who is not running for office. The president calls the attorney general and says, “Would you initiate a criminal investigation against John Doe?” Would that really be a crime under U.S. law? What if Doe is a suspected terrorist? Or a suspected murderer? Or a suspected robber? Where in the law is the president prohibited from requesting the attorney general from initiating an investigation (and possible criminal prosecution) of Doe?
Now, let’s change the scenario. Let’s say that Trump calls a state attorney general and makes the same request. Is that against the law? I don’t see how it can be. Again, what if the person really does need to be investigated? What if he’s committed fraud, both on the federal and state level? Where in the law does it say that the president is legally prohibited from asking a state attorney general to initiate an investigation?
Let’s change the scenario again. Let’s say that Trump calls the president of a foreign country and makes the same request. Let’s say that the person he’s targeting is running an international child-trafficking operation that is based in that country but also operating within the United States. Would it really be illegal under U.S. law for the president to request that foreign president to initiate an investigation into such person? I don’t see how it would be.
Now, let’s change the scenario to one where Trump makes the same requests with respect to someone who is running against him for president. Would that be illegal? If it’s not illegal to make the request with respect to a non-candidate, then I don’t see how it would be illegal to make the same request with respect to an opposing candidate.
Yes, the request might be a malevolent, vicious, improper, and unethical thing to do, but if we are going to impeach presidents for doing those types of things in political races, no president would last more than a few days in office. Every one of them engages in malevolent, vicious, improper, and unethical conduct in his or her insatiable quest for political power.
What if the opposing candidate really has engaged in criminal wrongdoing, either here in the United States or in a foreign country or both? Does the law really say that when a person announces for public office, he is automatically immune from investigation and prosecution for any crimes he has committed? I am certain the law doesn’t say that. Otherwise, every murderer, robber, and rapist would be running for office perpetually.
Democrats and mainstream newspaper commentators are saying that Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden are innocent of any criminal wrongdoing. Fair enough. But maybe that’s because they haven’t been sufficiently investigated. Many guilty people appear innocent until an aggressive evidence shows otherwise. Why does the fact that they say they are innocent of official corruption in Ukraine convert Trump’s request that they be investigated for official corruption into an impeachable offense?
Offense Two
Holding up a U.S. foreign aid package to Ukraine shortly before Trump requested President Zelensky to initiate the investigation.
The charge here refers to bribery. The argument is that by Trump withholding the foreign aid money to Ukraine until he made his request to investigate the Bidens, he was essentially offering Zelensky a bribe. That is, the argument is that Trump was essentially saying with his actions, “If you will grant my request, I will give you this money.”
If that’s the case, that certainly would constitute a bribe. But there are two big problems with this argument.
First, that’s not what Trump said. It might appear that that is what he was doing by withholding the foreign aid but appearances are not the same as proof. Trump himself has come up with two explanations as to why he was holding up the aid package, neither of which had anything to do with a bribe. He might well be lying, but the burden of proof is on the accuser, not Trump. Moreover, the fact that the aid was later released to Ukraine, without Trump having had his request for an investigation into the Bidens granted, does not bode well for the accusers.
Second, U.S. foreign aid has long been used as bribery. That’s the very purpose of foreign aid — to induce foreign regimes to do the bidding of U.S. officials. See my articles “Foreign Aid for Dictators” and “From the Anti-Russia Brouhaha to the Ukraine Brouhaha.” Is Trump going to be impeached and removed from office for doing what the the U.S. foreign-aid system is intended to do?
I’m reminded of what happened to Yemen after it voted against President George H.W. Bush’s request for a UN resolution authorizing war against Iraq. U.S. Secretary of State James Baker reportedly stated that that was the most expensive vote Yemen would ever take. U.S. foreign aid to Yemen was terminated. Neither Bush nor Baker was impeached.
Moreover, it turns out that Biden himself did the same thing when he was vice-president. He told Ukrainian officials that if they didn’t remove a particular prosecutor in the regime, he would make sure that U.S. foreign aid to Ukraine would cease. The official was quickly removed, and the aid was continued. Now, it’s true that just because Bush and Biden did it doesn’t justify Trump doing it. But it seems to me that it’s going to look a bit hypocritical, petty, and Third-Worldish to impeach Trump and remove him from office for using foreign aid in the same way that other U.S. officials do.
By the way, if we are going to start impeaching presidents for bribery through U.S. foreign aid, can we also start prosecuting candidates for bribery who offer voters political freebies — such as free education, free healthcare, and free income — in return for their votes?
Offense Three
Soliciting an illegal campaign contribution from Zelensky by supposedly requesting him to get political dirt on Biden and his son.
The idea here is that by requesting a criminal investigation into Biden by Ukrainian officials, Trump was essentially seeking political dirt on Biden. The political dirt, the argument goes, would be a campaign contribution from a foreign regime. It is unlawful under U.S. campaign-finance laws for Trump to solicit or accept a campaign contribution from a foreign regime.
There are three big problems with this supposed offense.
First, a criminal investigation is not the same thing as an investigation to find political dirt on someone. A criminal investigation is a criminal investigation. It ordinarily leads a criminal prosecution. That’s not to say that a criminal investigation cannot also be a search for political dirt, but there is no evidence that Trump specifically requested political dirt when he requested that Zelensky initiate a criminal investigation of the Bidens. Based on the notes of the telephone conversation, it is clear that Trump requested an investigation, not political dirt.
Second, for political dirt to constitute a campaign contribution, it has to have some value. If Trump’s request for an investigation is construed as a request for political dirt, how much would that dirt be worth? How can such a determination be made without knowing what the dirt is? And what if it turned out that there was no dirt? Is it unlawful under U.S. campaign finance laws to seek a contribution worth zero dollars from a foreign regime?
Third, if U.S. campaign-finance laws make Trump’s request for an investigation into the Bidens a criminal offense, the laws are clearly unconstitutional. That’s because they obviously run afoul of the First Amendment, which states as follows: Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech.” It would be difficult to find a better example of speech than a telephone conversation. Under our constitutional form of government, when a congressional enactment collides with the Constitution, the enactment must give way.
* * *
After embroiling the nation for three years in what has to be considered the most ludicrous conspiracy theory in U.S. history – that Trump colluded with the Russians to elect him to the presidency – it seems to me that the Democrats, the mainstream press, and possibly even the deep state have now moved on to Part 2 of their effort to remove Trump from office without having to defeat him in an election.
Dead Deutsche Banker’s Son Peddled Trump Financial “Dirt” To The Highest Bidder – Which Adam Schiff Promptly Subpoenaed
A trove of insider Deutsche Bank documents was subpoenaed by House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-CA) after a bizarre series of events involving Moby.
Val Broeksmit, stepson of top Deutche Bank executive Bill Broeksmit – who committed suicide in January 2014 in the wake of several banking scandals he had overseen, had been trying to sell or distribute information from the German bank which he obtained after his father’s death, which may have contained information on Donald Trump, according to the New York Times.
Val and Bill Broeksmit at Wimbledon in 2013 Via the NYT
Mr. Broeksmit’s late father, Bill, had been a senior executive there, and his son possessed a cache of confidential bank documents that provided a tantalizing glimpse of its internal workings.Some of the documents were password-protected, and there was no telling what secrets they held or how explosive they could be.
Federal and state authorities were swarming around Deutsche Bank. Some of the scrutiny centered on the lender’s two-decade relationship with President Trump and his family. Other areas of focus grew out of Deutsche Bank’s long history of criminal misconduct: manipulating markets, evading taxes, bribing foreign officials, violating international sanctions, defrauding customers, laundering money for Russian billionaires. –NYT
Broeksmit was eventually introduced to Schiff through the musician Moby (Schiff’s “friend and neighbor.” When Schiff refused to pay for the materials, the lawmaker instead issued a subpoena for them.
Mr. Schiff’s investigators badly wanted the secret Deutsche files. Mr. Broeksmit tried to extract money from them — he pushed to be hired as a consultant to the committee — but that was a nonstarter. An investigator, Daniel Goldman, appealed to his sense of patriotism and pride. “Imagine a scenario where some of the material that you have can actually provide the seed that we can then use to blow open everything that [Trump] has been hiding,” Mr. Goldman told Mr. Broeksmit in a recorded phone call. “In some respects, you — and your father vicariously through you — will go down in American history as a hero and as the person who really broke open an incredibly corrupt president and administration.” (Mr. Broeksmit wouldn’t budge; eventually, Mr. Schiff subpoenaed him.) –NYT
All of that said, it’s clear that the information is of low value as it relates to Trump for two reasons. First, Schiff has them – yet is pushing for impeachment based on a phone call between President Trump and Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelensky in regards to investigating former VP Joe Biden.
Second, Fusion GPS paid Broeksmit $1,000 to give the documents to a reporter for the Financial Times on New Year’s Eve, 2016 – so they’ve been in the Trump resistance’s arsenal for more than three years without seeing the light of day.
In Rome on New Year’s Eve of 2016, Mr. Broeksmit shared the files with a reporter for the Financial Times, periodically excusing himself to snort 80-milligram hits of OxyContin, and the journalist later connected him with someone willing to pay for the documents. On the third anniversary of his father’s death — Jan. 26, 2017 — $1,000 arrived in his PayPal account.
The money was from Glenn R. Simpson, a former journalist who ran a research company called Fusion GPS. Weeks earlier, it had rocketed to notoriety as the source of the so-called Steele Dossier — a report by a former intelligence agent containing salacious allegations against Mr. Trump. Mr. Simpson was searching for more dirt and, Mr. Broeksmit told me, he agreed to pay $10,000 for the Deutsche materials. –NYT
Simpson then convinced Broeksmit to work with him – instructing him via encrypted messaging to start searching for “Any Russia stuff at all,” adding “Let’s get you here ASAP.”
Two days later, Simpson and Broeksmit met in the US Virgin Islands to look for dirt on Trump, Russia and Trump donor Robert Mercer – a financial backer of Breitbart and then Steve Bannon. As the Times reports however, “They didn’t discover bombshells — more like nuggets. One spreadsheet, for example, contained a list of all of the banks that owed money to one of Deutsche Bank’s American subsidiaries on a certain date — a list that included multiple Russian banks that would soon be under United States sanctions.”
Mr. Simpson asked Mr. Broeksmit to travel with him to Washington and meet some of his contacts. Mr. Broeksmit shared some of his files with a Senate investigator and — after snorting some heroin — a former prosecutor in the Manhattan district attorney’s office. The documents found their way to a team of anti-money-laundering agents at the New York Fed. Coincidence or not, a few months later, the Fed fined Deutsche Bank $41 million for violations inside the American unit that Bill Broeksmit had overseen. (A Fed spokesman declined to comment.)
Mr. Broeksmit moved to Los Angeles to drum up Hollywood interest in his life story. Early this year, a producer invited him to a dinner party. Among the guests was Moby, the electronic music legend, who told me he was impressed by Mr. Broeksmit’s exploits and existential sadness. Moby arranged an introduction to his friend Adam Schiff, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, which had recently opened an investigation into Deutsche Bank’s relationship with Mr. Trump. –NYT
After Broeksmit was subpoenaed by Schiff, The Los Angeles FBI field office contacted him, as someone coincidentally noticed his whistleblower submission to the Justice Department’s website (presumably satisfying the requirement for ‘first-hand’ information).
They wanted to talk about Deutsche Bank — one of the world’s largest and most troubled financial institutions, and the bank of choice to the president of the United States. Mr. Broeksmit’s late father, Bill, had been a senior executive there, and his son possessed a cache of confidential bank documents that provided a tantalizing glimpse of its internal workings. Some of the documents were password-protected, and there was no telling what secrets they held or how explosive they could be. –NYT
According to the report, “After the three-hour session, Mr. Broeksmit still needed some stroking, and the F.B.I. agents obliged. They told Mr. Broeksmit he could have a special advisory title. They promised to keep him in the loop as their investigation proceeded. They let him tell the world — via this article — that he was a cooperating witness in a federal criminal investigation. They even helped procure a visa for his French girlfriend.”
At the end of the day it appears that Brieksmit attempted to help take Trump down with information he didn’t himself understand, and he’s now being punished for delivering a nothing burger by The Times‘ David Enrich, who details it all in his new book – “Dark Towers.”
The ills that have haunted our species since time immemorial — starvation, illness, protection from the elements — are less prevalent than ever before. At the same time we’ve probably never been as disillusioned about the fruits of progress.
Panicking about an imminent apocalyptic disaster, people march on the streets of the most prosperous cities in all of human civilization. They chant about impending extinction of humankind or the planet itself, about an unsustainable way of life, about an invisible gas produced as a by-product of our increasingly affluent lifestyles.
More than one commentator has pointed to a crisis of spirituality and how radical environmentalism has filled the void left behind by religion. Moral outrages over plastic and the Amazon are blown entirely out of proportion. Virtue signaling and “taking a stance” are more important than effecting change.
In that light, looking at actual societal collapses is relevant. When podcasts like Paul Cooper’s Fall of Civilization are trending on most platforms and the popular historian Dan Carlin’s forthcoming book The End Is Always Near is making huge waves, it is clearly time to dust off the work of esteemed geographer Jared Diamond — particularly his book Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Survive, the follow-up to his Pulitzer Prize–winning Guns, Germs, and Steel (which just came out in a 20th-anniversary edition). This year he released Upheaval: Turning Points for Nations in Crisis, which is a natural continuation of the broad-brushed portrait of the fundamental challenges for human societies that he has been painting for 20 years.
Diamond’s personal, insightful, and accessible writing often consists of deep dives into various case studies. He might be cherry-picking his examples, but he usually does so in well-balanced and convincing ways to illustrate his major points. In Collapse he identifies five different factors whose presence or absence explains the dozen collapsing societies that he considers:
Climate change (through little fault of societies themselves)
Eco-cide (“unintended ecological suicide”)
Hostile neighbors
Collapse of trading partners essential to upholding lifestyle
Societies’ own response to these four factors
As Diamond is a geographer, ecological disasters always loom large in his account of civilizations — which is supremely relevant considering today’s quasi-religious emphasis on how humans destroy their surroundings. Diamond has seemingly long been ahead of his time.
His introductory chapter in Collapse deals with Montana’s deforestation and soil-erosion problems — two topics that repeatedly appear in Diamond’s writing. The Greenland Norse overgrazed their fragile environment, which caused their nutrient-poor soils to erode. They refused to change their ways: they kept with a costly Northern European ideal of Christianity and stubbornly preferred cows to sheep even though the former were much less suited to Greenland than to the Norse’s ancestral Scandinavia. They did not learn from or establish friendly relations with their neighboring Inuits, who had successfully adopted hunting practices that allowed them to overcome the harsh Arctic climate.
The Easter Island society on Rapa Nui, one of the most isolated places on earth, is to Diamond “the closest approximation that we have to an ecological disaster unfolding in complete isolation.” When the Polynesians arrived, sometime between 800 and 1200 AD, they were met with a lush forest consisting partly of what was probably the tallest species of palm trees in existence — which is surprising to a modern visitor to the now almost treeless island. For those worrying over the Amazon forest, Easter Island is the worst possible outcome: complete deforestation. Even Diamond admits that it is a crucial warning: “The collapse of Easter Island society [is] a metaphor, a worst-case scenario, for what may lie ahead of us.”
The dispute in the scientific community that Diamond engaged in (Paul Cooper discusses research that disputes many of Diamond’s conclusions) is between an intentional human-made ecocide — an extreme obsession with Moai, those iconic rock figures — and an accidental explosion of the rat population that ate all the seeds, preventing the trees’ regeneration. Cooper also mentions that rounds of diseases by initial European visits and subsequent kidnappings by whalers in the 19th century decimated the Easter Island population. In this account, the Easter Island trees were still there, until overstocking of sheep finally tilted the ecosystem into a tailspin. One way or another, it was a human-made ecological disaster.
The collapses of lesser-known Polynesian islands (Mangareva, Henderson, and Pitcairn) are particularly interesting, as Diamond places the blame for their collapse on the ceasing of the crucial intra-island trade, vital for their inhabitants’ meager subsistence: oyster shells and critical crops from Mangareva, the “motherland island,” to Pitcairn and Henderson; volcanic glass and basalt from Pitcairn to Henderson and to Mangareva; and from Henderson to other islands, probably sea turtles and other perishables highly prized in Polynesian society. Thus, Diamond argues, “each island’s deficiencies were filled by the other islands’ surpluses.”
Drawing examples from the modern world, Diamond’s account of the Tutsi genocide in Rwanda in 1994 is both revealing and disturbing. Rather than the normal explanation given for the Rwandan genocide — colonially induced ethnic conflicts — Diamond explores an ecological interpretation. Setting the stage for the slaughter were immense overpopulation and increasingly poor farm yields, followed by tensions created through extreme demographic and societal inequality. As the cows and the farms of the victims must be redistributed to somebody else, Diamond suggests that the ultimate cause of the Rwandan genocide was overshooting that society’s ecological limits.
If there’s anything to criticize Diamond for, it is his poor grasp of economics. He seems to view world trade as zero-sum and presumes that countries need to — or ought to — be self-sufficient in resources. When Japan in the 20th century all but banned domestic logging and China more recently shifted to relying on imported timber, Diamond explicitly says that other countries “must suffer the harmful consequences of [their] deforestation.” Surely, Diamond is not suggesting that cutting down any trees, anywhere in the world, amounts to “harmful deforestation”?
In his writing, Diamond often refers to a country’s per-capita grasslands or forest coverage, as if that’s a relevant constraint in a globalized world. He talks about a country earning “foreign exchange” as if we were still in the Bretton Woods system or as if all countries have internationally worthless currencies. In a modern, globalized world with developed financial markets, freely floating exchange rates, and lots of cross-border payments, there is no need for a country to earn foreign exchange or even to run balance-of-trade surpluses — which is ironically illustrated by the modern Australia that so vexes Diamond.
In Collapse, Diamond frequently returns to the “horse race” between accelerating “development of environmental problems” and our capabilities of solving them. Economists have long been intelligently writing on this and have provided us with two fundamental — and much overlooked — insights. First, through the price mechanism, free markets with property rightsrationnatural resources such that they never run out. This is fundamental to all worries that forests, iron, or oil is running out — Diamond’s chapter on Australia again being a case in point.
Second, to answer Diamond’s question (“Which horse will win the race?”) it seems the economists and “Kuznets’ Curvers” — those of us who believe that emissions increase with income up to a point, after which prosperous societies clean up their environment, decreasing emissions — are on to something. As we’re getting richer, we’re also getting more able to protect ourselves from the elements — whether naturally occurring or man-made. The richer we are, the smaller the effective problem of climate change becomes, which was illustrated in the Economist’s recent issue on climate change.
If the consequences of emissions are bad and harmful to human flourishing, we must pay for mitigation, damage reduction, and/or adjustments. Those payments come either out of current income or endowed wealth — and the growth of our incomes has outpaced the growth of emissions for the last 25 years. We seem to be getting better at squeezing out economic growth from every unit of carbon emission. While it’s theoretically possible that every unit of emissions causes more harm than its associated income allows us to offset, that’s a still-debated empirical question.
In Upheaval, Diamond’s most political book thus far, he considers questions of the present and the future. He is quite clear about his negative outlook: “The issues that I discuss are the things that are still getting worse.” Despite the many discouraging examples of collapsing and struggling societies mentioned, shining through all his work is a mildly hopeful tone that societies’ fates are in their own hands.
That’s how I think we should view Diamond’s work: insightful, provocative, unconventional stories of our species that may carry some dire warnings. His flawed economic analyses do undermine some of his conclusions, but they do not detract from his storytelling. It is clear that worries about civilizational collapses by the Thunbergs and Extinction Rebellions of the world are exaggerated, as we are nowhere near the brink of disasters faced by the societies Diamond considers.
The basic question becomes one of which comparison to make: are we modern-day Australia, continuing to flourish despite its so-called ecological limits — or are we Easter Islanders or Norse Greenlanders, positioned for inevitable civilizational collapse?
North Korea fired an unidentified projectile this morning toward East Sea from Wonsan, Kangwon province, South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff says in text message.
JCS didn’t give further details such as type of projectile, flight range or altitude
For the last several months, North Korea conducted a series of short-range ballistic missile tests, while furiously commenting about U.S. and South Korean war drills, and today’s launch appears to have been longer-range with Japan’s chief cabinet secretary Yoshihide Suga confirming the missile fell in Japan’s EEZ offthe Shimane Prefecture.
Another missile landed outside the EEZ, Suga says.
As AP reports, after supervising a testing firing of what the North described as a “newly developed super-large multiple rocket launcher” last month, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un was quoted by state media as saying that the system would require a “running fire test” to complete its development.
It would appear this latest launch is some kind of show of strength ahead of the planned negotiations this weekend.
Perhaps it is worth talking to 38North’s Joseph Detrani who shares his vastly more experienced views on how to negotiate with North Korea…
The thirteen years (2003-2016) I invested in negotiations with North Korea in different capacities—Special Envoy, Associate Director of National Intelligence and as a private citizen—have made me guardedly optimistic that a peaceful resolution of issues with North Korea is possible. The US has successfully concluded agreements during the past twenty-five years of on-and-off negotiations with North Korea, notably the Agreed Framework of 1994, the Six Party Talks Joint Statement of September 19, 2005 and the “Leap Day Agreement” of February 29, 2012. From these experiences, we learned a lot about North Korea’s determination to have a normal relationship with the US and to be accepted as a nuclear weapons state; we also got to know the North Korean negotiators, many of whom we have been negotiating with since 1994. Conversely, over this period, North Korea acquired a better understanding of US intentions, while also getting to know our negotiators, who routinely rotated every few years. Although past achievements, after extensive negotiations and partial implementation, eventually collapsed, they offer important lessons that can help guide US negotiators through the thicket of obstacles they will confront in achieving US goals with North Korea.
Survival of the Leadership Is Paramount
Over the past 2,000 years, Korea has been invaded often by China, Russia, Japan and Mongolia. To survive against these powerful and aggressive neighbors, Korea had to be militarily strong and self-reliant. It is no surprise, therefore, that over the past 65 years North Korea has pursued a “military first” policy, highlighted by Kim Il Sung’s pursuit of nuclear weapons in the 1950s. Kim Jong Un has continued this tradition. He views a strong military, especially one with nuclear weapons and missile delivery systems, as the ultimate deterrent to the US or any country that may want to attack or remove the regime in North Korea, and thus essential to his survival and the preservation of the Kim dynasty. Simply put, getting Kim to agree to complete and verifiable denuclearization will continue to be a challenge.
Distrust of the US Persists
Since the end of the Korean War in 1953, North Korea has been convinced that the US was seeking regime change in the North. Even in negotiations, and regardless of the agreements reached, North Korea has seen US policy as hostile and harbored distrust of US security assurances. US statements that North Korea should follow the Libyan denuclearization model have reinforced the views of hardliners in Pyongyang that regime change is Washington’s ultimate objective, regardless of any agreement with the US. I lost count of the number of times I was told that North Korea will never follow the Libyan model, which they viewed as a US effort to topple the Gaddafi regime.
Tearing down this wall of North Korean distrust remains a considerable challenge, but progress can be made. For example, during the plenary sessions of the Six Party Talks in August 2003 and February 2004, our delegation was instructed to avoid one-on-one meetings with the North Korean delegation and to refrain from any private discussions with DPRK officials. The efforts US Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly and I made during these talks to engage our North Korean interlocutors in private discussions, notwithstanding our official instructions, engendered a more open and professional relationship and helped to build some trust. During the February 2004 meeting, at China’s Diaoyutai State Guesthouse, with Vice Foreign Minister Wang Yi as the host, Jim Kelly and I decided that we needed private talks with the North Korean delegation, similar to the private meetings we had with the other delegations, to discuss some of the issues that were on the table. At our request, Wang Yi provided a room for these private discussions with North Korea’s Vice Foreign Minister Kim Kye Gwan. I’m confident North Korea appreciated this outreach on the part of the US delegation. Although these talks didn’t produce any appreciable progress on the substantive issues, I believe they contributed to Pyongyang signing the September 19, 2005 Joint Statement, which committed North Korea “to abandoning all nuclear weapons and existing nuclear programs and returning, at an early date, to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons and to IAEA safeguards.”
North Korea Wants Nuclear Weapons And Normal Relations with the US
A constant refrain I heard from my North Korean interlocutors through the years is that a normal relationship with the US would give the North greater access to the international community and facilitate foreign direct investment and trade, as well as permit North Korea to be less dependent on China. Indeed, North Korea’s mistrust of the US notwithstanding, Pyongyang’s ultimate objective is to have normal relations with Washington, and it has urged the US to accept it as a nuclear weapons state. Over the past two decades, senior North Korean officials have repeatedly stated that the North will never use nuclear weapons against the US or any other country, that nuclear weapons are a necessary deterrent for a vulnerable North Korea, that the US should treat North Korea as it treats Pakistan and that North Korea can become a good friend of the US. Washington’s response has been consistent: The US will never accept North Korea as a nuclear weapons state because of WMD proliferation concerns—specifically, a nuclear North Korea could spur other countries in the region to pursue nuclear weapons programs, increasing the risk that a weapon or fissile material would find its way to a rogue state or terrorist organization, with catastrophic consequences. I believe this consistent US response resonated with our North Korean interlocutors.
Personal Relationships Are Important
North Korean negotiators who meet with the US have spent their professional careers working on these issues. By contrast, US officials who interact and negotiate with North Korea routinely change. Given the years of hostilities between our countries, this rapid personnel turnover makes it more difficult to establish personal relationships that are conducive to building trust and confidence between our negotiators, which requires considerable time, continuity and patience. Having negotiated with North Korea during the Six Party Talks, I spent hundreds of hours in task force and plenary session meetings in Beijing and frequently used the “New York channel,” and was able in 2009, at the request of the US State Department, to use these interactions to engage in countless hours of negotiations with senior officials in Pyongyang to secure the release of journalists Euna Lee and Laura Ling and arrange for US President Bill Clinton to visit Pyongyang to finalize their release and return to the US. In 2011 and 2012, when I was Director of the National Counter Proliferation Center, the White House asked me to visit Pyongyang to meet with senior officials to discuss US concerns with North Korea’s highly enriched uranium program and to warn Pyongyang not to sell missiles and other weaponry. This engagement was possible because of my years negotiating with North Korea and establishing relations with senior officials in their Ministry of Foreign Affairs and other agencies. I can’t emphasize enough the importance of a good working relationship with counterparts in North Korea. This creates the trust necessary to have a dialogue and hopefully move forward on issues affecting relations with North Korea.
Confronting North Korea with Ultimatums Doesn’t Work
Being candid with North Korea is necessary, but any language that threatens North Korea with punitive consequences if it does not accept a US proposal will engender a defiant response or a cessation of negotiations. I’ve been in meetings when such rhetoric was used and the North Korean response was consistent and predictable. In fact, during the first round of Six Party Talks with North Korea, they were told that, in addition to nuclear weapons and facilities disablement, they would not be permitted to have a nuclear program for civil energy. North Korea balked, which explains why the 2005 Joint Statement declared that: “The DPRK stated that it has the right to peaceful uses of nuclear energy. The other parties expressed their respect and agreed to discuss, at an appropriate time, the subject of the provision of light water reactor [for civil energy] to the DPRK.” Not surprisingly, North Korea is very sensitive to threats from powerful countries or attempts to infringe on its sovereign rights.
Be Resolute on the Need for Complete and Verifiable Denuclearization
Any wavering on the part of the US on the need for North Korea’s complete and verifiable denuclearization will encourage some in the DPRK to believe that eventually the US will relent and permit the North to retain at least some of its nuclear weapons and/or nuclear weapons facilities. North Korea has spent billions of dollars and decades establishing a robust nuclear weapons program. To expect Kim to walk away from this program, without providing North Korea with the security assurances it seeks, a path to normal relations with the US and the lifting of sanctions, is unrealistic. Moreover, if the US makes clear that these deliverables would be available to North Korea with complete and verifiable denuclearization, it would be fair to assume that Kim might be willing to move forward with the US, pursuant to the June 12, 2018 Singapore Joint Statement that commits North Korea to complete denuclearization. Ultimate success will be the actual implementation of a negotiated agreement, ensuring North Korea receives the promised deliverables in return for progress with denuclearization and agreement on a detailed action-for-action road map with timelines.
Implementation of Any Agreement Will Take Years and Verification Is Key
Given the complexity of North Korea’s plutonium and uranium enrichment programs, and the verification challenges to ensure compliance with its denuclearization commitments, implementation of any agreement will take considerable time. Washington will need to work with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), probably China and Russia and other nuclear weapons states who can assist with the dismantlement of nuclear weapons and the disablement of nuclear weapons facilities. Verification will be a major challenge with any agreement. In 2009, implementation of the September 19, 2005 Joint Statement that committed North Korea to complete denuclearization came to an abrupt halt when North Korea refused to sign a verification protocol permitting nuclear monitors to visit non-declared suspect nuclear sites. At North Korea’s insistence, that was the end of the Six Party process that started in 2003.
Conclusion
These are just some of the lessons learned from years of negotiations and talks with North Korean officials. Hopefully, as we enter into working-level negotiations, we will benefit from all we have learned from these experiences.
By now the phrase is a cliché – “Never apologize to the left” – but the truth behind the words couldn’t be any more compelling.
Last week at the University of Michigan for example, the Institute for the Humanities hosted the event “The Power of Pronouns,” part of its High Stakes Culture lecture series.
As reported by The Michigan Daily,those on the panel “spoke about the linguistics behind gendered pronouns and what language may be used in the future.”
The panelists included a transgender person and a lesbian, but this didn’t thwart some students from taking “issue with the framing of the discussion.”
Junior Jordan Furr, who identifies as transgender, chided the panel for getting “into so much stress about grammatical issues” because, he said, the “power of the pronoun” is really about “how powerful it is.”
Whoa — deep.
Like a good contemporary academic, linguistics professor Robin Queen (the lesbian panelist) apologized to Furr, saying it was perhaps “misguided on [her] part not to be more specific” about the political nature of pronouns for different people.
Furr didn’t appear to be placated, however.
He said trans issues, such as pronoun use, “should be represented by trans-identifying individuals who are personally affected.”
It didn’t matter to him that Scott Larson, an American culture professor, represented the trans community on the panel … because Larson doesn’t use the “they/them” pronouns. Furr said the professor was “tokenized” by the other panelists in order to gain “credibility.”
And then the ante was upped:
“At the end of the day, only trans people should be talking about this,” Furr said (emphasis added).
You might think such a statement couldn’t be topped — that is, if you’re unfamiliar with the identity political left. Furr, now joined by another student, returned to Queen:
She is “symptomatic of a system that privileges cis identity and perspective.”
“It’s not about just one individual person doing something transphobic, it’s about cis people getting away with doing that,” senior Katrina Stalcup said.
“Everything she did isn’t uniquely something that only she does. That’s quantified by all the questions that came afterwards where a cis man reiterated what Jordan said, and just completely invalidated the thing that he had said.”
Looks like another intersectional conundrum in all its glory. And don’t think for a second that if Professors Queen, Larson, and others on the panel did/said precisely what Furr, et. al. were bellyaching about … that the latter wouldn’t find something else about which to whine.
It’s all about maintaining a state of perpetual grievance.
Meet The Treasure Hunter That Has Spent Two Decades Looking For 800 Barrels Of Gold
Dutch businessman and treasure hunter Bernard Keiser has spent much of his life – two decades – on the hunt for 800 barrels crammed with gold and jewels that is rumored to be hidden on Chile’s Juan Fernandez island, according to Bloomberg.
Juan Fernandez island is 400 miles off the Chilean coast and is where “Scottish privateer Alexander Selkirk was marooned for four years in the early 18th century”. The event is said to have inspired the story of Robinson Crusoe.
The treasure supposedly arrived on the island years after Selkirk left. The story involves hurricanes, shipwrecks, looting, murder and mutiny. There are accounts that value the treasure at $10 billion and claim that it includes a “giant rose made of gold”.
Despite the fact that the story of how the 18th century gold got on the island continues to change, it hasn’t stopped Keiser from pushing forward with his search.
And this week, Chile has officially thrown their hat in the ring for the hunt, adding a new chapter to Keiser’s story.
Chile has announced that it gave Keiser permission to dig up part of a national park using heavy machinery. Environmentalists oppose the idea, saying that the intervention of a 8.7 ton excavator will be “irreversible”.
Diego Ibanez, a congressman with left-wing coalition of parties Frente Amplio said:
“It is a clear twisting of the law that’s being used to favor a Dutch multimillionaire who hasn’t found any evidence after years of searching. It’s important to preserve the land, and not to give it away to investigations that seem to be based more on religion than science.”
The treasure was rumored to have been amassed by the Spanish Crown in Latin America and then buried by admiral Juan Esteban Ubilla around 1714, during a civil war in Spain, on Juan Fernandez island.
One of the most common stories about the treasure says that Ubilla, before dying in a hurricane, told his ally and Captain George Anson where the treasure had been hidden. Anson then sent another Captain to dig the treasure up years later, but his ship was hit by a storm on his way back, forcing him to return and bury the treasure again.
Then, after hearing plans for a mutiny, the story says, the captain burned his ship, killed the crew and fled in a rowboat to the mainland, before dying.
The story garnered attention in 1950 when a letter was discovered that reportedly gave a description of the treasure’s location.
Keiser has now been conducting “yearly searches” in a rocky northwest area of the island called Puerto Ingles. Teams of about ten people using portable equipment have drilled up to 23 feet below the surface in the search for an underground cave where the treasure is supposed to be buried.
Keiser is now stepping up his excavating muscle, filing with Chile’s government that he now intends on using a backhoe that has a lifting capacity of 4.4 tons.
His plans continue to create controversy. The regional director of the forestry agency, Conaf, resigned this month in opposition to Keiser’s plans. National Heritage Minister Felipe Ward was also criticized for meeting with Keiser before Conaf approved the excavator.
But the ends could justify the means for Chile if Keiser has success: he must give 75% of any treasure he finds to the Chilean state. With the treasure valued at $10 billion, we’re sure that’s a toll Keiser would be more than willing to pay.
In any country, during prosperous times, the great majority of people go to work each day with the understanding that productivity results in an improved life. Even for those of humble means, the existence of prosperity around them is a daily assurance that, if you work hard and/or work smart, your life will steadily improve.
This is the normal state of affairs and has existed since time immemorial. Whether progress is quick or slow in a given location, the principle remains the same. A general condition of prosperity is a continual reminder of the value of a strong work ethic.
In a collectivist country, however, this is missing. The leaders live quite well, but they’re small in number and, for the most part, are outside of the view of the proletariat. What the common man sees around him is uniform poverty. No one in his midst is visibly progressing, so there’s no one to be jealous of.
This breeds complacency and so it’s not surprising that collectivism may be tolerated by the populace for many decades, even generations. People are invariably worse off under collectivism, but collectivism rarely ends due to rebellion. It ends because it’s a dysfunctional non-productive system that eventually collapses under its own weight.
But, if that’s so – if people living in a free-market system will instinctively reject collectivism and those living under a collectivist system also rarely rebel – how is it possible that, periodically, revolutions occur?
Why might the people of, say, the US, have been staunch supporters of a free-market system half a century ago and now be demonstrating a dramatically increased belief in collectivism? How is it even possible that political candidates with no experience in either politics or leadership positions be elected to Congress by promising collectivism?
Well that’s occurring for the same reason that it has occurred throughout history. The US no longer lives under a free-market system. Roughly one hundred years ago, the free market began to be replaced with corporatism. As corporatism increasingly bled the populace, the opportunity for personal prosperity declined. Over time, the average person was seeing less and less evidence of prosperity around him. At this point, he’s viewing corporate leaders enjoying unimaginable wealth, whilst those around him are experiencing stagnation. Real wages have not increased in decades.
Historically, it’s at this point that a people are ripe for the empty promises of collectivism.
And collectivists happily provide it. Although they occasionally promise to raise the proletariat up to the level of their economic betters, for the most part, they focus on the promise that they’ll bring the aristocracy down.
The selling of the idea of collectivism is based upon envy and resentment toward those who are better off than we may be. Collectivist leaders invariably accuse anyone who has prospered as being “greedy” and having “starved the poor” in order to achieve their relative wealth.
Although this is rarely accurate, it’s a great sales pitch, as those who have learned that their lives are not progressing are actively seeking an explanation and are ripe for one that blames those who have progressed.
The key here is that collectivism almost never sells well in a country where prosperity exists. In a free-market country, a strong work ethic is regularly rewarded. However, once the free market has deteriorated enough that the proletariat have come to understand that they’re not genuinely moving forward, they’re ready to jump on board with those leaders who appeal to their frustration and anger.
At this point, logic and reason cease to be important. What matters is rhetoric.
Once a people have concluded that prosperity is not truly in their future, they must choose between hopelessness and empty promises.
This is an important point, because human nature will always dictate that they choose empty promises. Left with no real hope, false hope is infinitely preferable to no hope.
Collectivism in the US began in the 1930s and was expanding nicely, when it was interrupted by World War II. The productivity of creating the goods of war for the European Allies sent the US into a period of dramatic productivity. This continued after the war, but in the 1960s, the effort to increase government’s control of production was renewed until, today, the wet blanket of government has become so heavy that prosperity has been minimized and the US is in a condition of stagnation.
And so, Americans are ripe for empty promises, and the younger the American (i.e., the less memory he has of the former prosperity), the more believable the empty promises seem to be.
Young Americans today are disinclined to daydream about a home with a white picket fence, a single wage earner, and a wife at home with three well-adjusted children. That dream sold well to their grandparents, but their grandparents witnessed people all around them achieving that dream, so it was clearly attainable if they were prepared to work for it.
Today’s young American sees this as hopeless. He’d like to be a billionaire like Jeff Bezos, but that clearly isn’t going to happen. So, he might as well not try.
His country has entered into eternal warfare, the government is broke, and he can’t even open a lemonade stand without applying for government permits and inspections.
At this point, it’s very unlikely that 1950s-style rhetoric of “Make America Great Again” will have any appeal to him whatever.
What is appealing is the promise that even if he makes no effort whatever, even if he remains in his parents’ basement for the rest of his life, unemployed, there’s a new political movement out there that understands him.
And it’s a breath of fresh air. It promises a life free from worry and effort. A free healthcare system, free college for as long as he wishes to be enrolled, and most importantly, a guaranteed living wage without the need to earn it.
In addition, instead of feeling worthless, his belief in the new collectivism gives him the ability to “stand for something.” He may now see himself as “making a difference.”
Only five years ago, Americans would have said that this would not have been possible. Leftist crackpots have always existed, but no one took them seriously. Surely, this would never come to pass in the US.
But recently, that’s been changing. Some candidates who have received the greatest support have been those who offer absurdly empty collectivist promises, and the media (whether they endorse them or not) are shining a spotlight on them every day.
The rhetoric has been classical collectivist propaganda. As impossible as it might be to actually work, it does absolutely appeal. It’s therefore spreading rapidly. I term this rhetoric, “infectious insanity” – a harsh term but, I think, an apt one.
In my belief, this will spread much as Bolshevism did after 1917, like a particularly virulent skin rash.
Historically, it’s always been true that, when prosperity has ceased to be readily visible in a nation, the false hope of collectivism becomes the drug of choice.
* * *
Unfortunately, there’s little any individual can practically do to change the trajectory of these trends in motion. The best you can and should do is to stay informed so that you can protect yourself in the best way possible, and even profit from the situation. That’s why Doug Casey and his team just released an urgent new video with all the details. Click here to watch it now.
DOJ To Declassify ‘The Backbone’ Of Mueller Investigation With Monthly Document Dumps
The Department of Justice will release to the public approximately 500 pages of FBI ‘302’ witness interview forms per month, according to CNN – which sued the DOJ along with co-plaintiff BuzzFeed News under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).
The documents, known as 302s, memorialize interviews conducted by the office and form the backbone of much of the Mueller report. –CNN
The government has until November 1 to product the first tranche of documents, according to a fuling by federal Judge Reggie B. Walton in Washington DC.
The Mueller investigation initially sought to determine whether the Trump campaign ‘colluded’ with the Russian government during the 2016 US election, along with whether President Trump attempted to obstruct the FBI’s efforts. In his report, released April 18, Mueller’s team was unable to establish any conspiracy, while declining to render an opinion on ten instances of potential obstruction. Ultimately, Attorney General William Barr and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein determined that obstruction had not occurred.
According to DOJ attorney Courtney Enlow at a Tuesday morning hearing, a total of 800 302 forms were generated during the Mueller probe, potentially numbering around 44,000 pages – which are now subject to a release rate of 500 per week.
Enlow said the FBI had already begun to process the records but said a host of potential exemptions that had to be considered before their release, including national security implications, certain privileges, and exposure to ongoing prosecutions and investigations.
“We have been going through 302s line by line,” Enlow said. “It’s a very intensive process.“
The future production schedule for the remaining interview forms, as well as other records requested by the news outlets, is a matter of contention. –CNN
Judge Walton criticized the incredibly slow declassification, only for the Enlow to respond that the pace was ‘routine’ for the FBI.
Walton will also rule on a request by next month for the release of an unredacted version of the Mueller report, when another status hearing has been scheduled in the cases.
The releases of genetically-modified organisms (GMOs) into the natural environment is having a catastrophic and irreversible impact on our planet. A company known as Oxitec, based out of the United Kingdom, which had announced plans to release genetically-engineered, or transgenic, mosquitoes into the wild.
Oxitec’s stated goal was to eradicate native mosquito populations carrying potentially deadly diseases like Zika by infiltrating their ranks with transgenic impostors. These impostor mosquitoes, we were told, do not have the ability to reproduce, and thus pose no risk of causing long-term changes to the natural ecosystem, according to a report by Natural News.
What could possibly go wrong?
However, it appears that Oxitec was wrong about their GMO mosquitoes. As revealed in a new study, which was published in the esteemed journal Nature,Oxitec’s transgenic mosquitoes are not only able to reproduce, but their presence within native mosquito populations is actually causing super-mosquitoes to spawn. The world will have to face an onslaught of super-mosquitoes that are more resilient than the ones that previously existed in nature.
“To summarize the findings of the study, this mad science GMO experiment managed to create a super mutant population of mosquitoes that now carry genes that are potentially tied to enhanced insecticide resistance, making them harder to kill than ever before,” MikeAdams wrote for Natural News.
“The experiment utterly failed to achieve its promised outcome of wiping out mosquitoes, too.”
Failure is an understatement. Since the goal was a decrease in the mosquito populations that carry infectious diseases, this quote from the conclusion of the study bears mentioning:
The results of our tests of the infectivity of one strain each of the dengue and Zika viruses in females of the OX513A strain and the Jacobina natural population (before releases) indicate no significant differences (Fig. 3). –Nature
The mosquitoes are still carrying infectious diseases at the same rate as before the GMO mosquitoes were released. The study states that this whole plan broke down because the natural female mosquitoes prefer to mate with male mosquitoes that were known to be fertile, and not the infertile GMO mosquitoes released by Oxitec.
