Once again, the United States, through its endless military provocations against the embattled workers state of North Korea, has raised the threat of war in the Pacific – and has been called out on it by North Korea.
And once again, the bourgeois press of the USA dutifully snaps to attention and spreads pro-US propaganda in the service of its owners, the numerically tiny US capitalist class, distorting the protests of the North Koreans into irrational-sounding declamations coming out of left field somewhere.
Completely lost in the propaganda of the US-capitalist-class-owned news media is the obvious racist message being sent to the Korean, Japanese and Chinese people: the Ticonderoga-class guided-missile cruiser being sent there is named… the U.S.S. Chancellorsville!
Does that name ring a bell? It should; the name of the vessel is a”tribute” to the US Civil War battle fought in 1863 – and WON by the slavery-defending Confederate military forces! It is, in fact, quite appropriate that the US Navy would send a death-dealing warship so named to Asia – a continent where the US military has long played out its racist strategy to reconquer the workers states of China, North Korea and Vietnam, in an attempt to return these heroic workers states to the status of brutally exploited colonial possessions they were – before the workers successfully overthrew capitalism in their respective countries, after decades of bloody struggle.
Originally ordered in 1984 under the administration of racist, anticommunist pig Ronald Reagan, the naming of the “Chancellorsville” was no accident – and neither is the fact that it retains this repulsive name in the face of widespread opposition being organized by decent human beings of all races, creeds and colors to monuments “in honor of” the Confederacy that exist all over the United States (principally in the states that made up the Confederate States of America). It is long past the time that the workers of the United States rose up against the racist US capitalist class and their KKK friends and removed every last monument to the Confederate slaveocracy that stands in this country! But that glorious day will not come until the workers overthrow the US capitalist class in a workers socialist revolution – only then can we finally FINISH THE CIVIL WAR!
So, why would those wacky North Koreans get all upset about one little ship being sent out to patrol in their home waters? Take a peek at the armament the “Chancellorsville” carries and try to imagine how the US Government would react if the Chinese or North Koreans sent ships like this to patrol inside the US’ self-declared 200-mile limit of its territorial waters:
| Armament: | 2 × 61 cell Mk 41 vertical launch systems containing
8 × RGM-84 Harpoon missiles 2 × Mk 32 12.75-in (324 mm) triple torpedo tubes for lightweight torpedoes |
| Aircraft carried: | 2 × Sikorsky SH-60B or MH-60R Seahawk LAMPS III helicopters. |
[Source: Wikipedia, “USS Chancellorsville (CG-62)”]
Moreove, as the North Korean Central News Agency points out in their article: “Military experts are unanimous in commenting that it is the first time for the U.S. to deploy overseas the warship with such striking-capability… If the [total currently-anticipated number] of US warships are deployed [to Japan], the number of the warships in the U.S. Navy base in Yokosuka will reach 14 including
the [nuclear-powered supercarrier U.S.S.] Ronald Reagan to be deployed at the end of this year, the appearance of the largest-ever warship fleet in Japan since World War II, foreign press reports said.” [phrases in brackets added by IWPCHI]
The North Koreans go on to state that their concerns about the growth of the US Naval flotilla are not the product of their own imaginations but that in fact “the U.S. Navy base command in Yokosuka claimed it is part of the U.S. ‘strategy for making a switchover to Asia-Pacific’ in a bid to ‘contain’ the DPRK and China”.
The insatiable greed of the US capitalist class leads it – like the capitalist classes of all major industrialized states – to seek endlessly to expand its access to raw materials and markets of every foreign nation-state on Earth. They seek to drive hard bargains with “Third World” countries like North Korea, ruthlessly exploiting their national resources and squeezing profits from their workers. The reason the US is so maniacally intent on attacking North Korea is that N. Korea is the ONLY country left in the world that absolutely refuses to allow the capitalists to operate inside their borders! The world’s capitalist classes are not allowed to extract ANY profits from North Korea – which is intolerable to the greed-addled imperialists! And so the US capitalist class spends billions of US dollars annually to isolate, threaten and – they hope – ultimately to conquer North Korea and crush its heroic working class! The workers of the United States must defend North Korea’s right to exist and demand that the United States military be withdrawn from Asia immediately. These US capitalist greedheads will launch WWIII out of sheer lust for profits if they can ever delude themselves into believing that it can be done “profitably” – i.e. with “acceptable” numbers of US citizens annihilated in a Chinese/N. Korean counterattack. We must not let this happen!
The North Korean workers state is NOT our idea of an “ideal” workers state – far from it. There is much to admire about the heroic internationalist history of the Korean working class. It could well be argued that there would never have been a Chinese Revolution if not for the major contributions of exiled Korean communist workers – who provided vitally important revolutionary communist leadership in China while Korea and China were under brutal Japanese occupation. Having helped lead the Chinese working class to power in 1949, the Koreans launched their own revolution, this time against the savage military assaults of the US imperialist war machine. In spite of the butchery of 3 million Koreans and the near-complete destruction of North Korea (it is said that no building above two stories was left standing between Seoul and the Chinese border after the US bombing campaigns) the North Koreans, with the assistance of the USSR and China emerged victorious. The victory won at such a tremendous cost by our North Korean working class sisters and brothers and their heroic leaders (there is nothing phony about the achievements of the great revolutionary leader Kim Il Sung) stands to this day as a victory for every worker on Earth! We must defend North Korea against any attempt by the capitalists to overthrow socialism in North Korea and to return it to the status of a vassal state of US or EU imperialism!
The North Korean workers state, is, like the USSR (formerly) and China, led by a bureaucratic caste that has usurped political power from the N. Korean workers and rules over the nation with an iron fist. The North Korean government is fundamentally nationalist – which in itself is a complete abandonment of the principles of revolutionary Marxism, which is thoroughly internationalist. In pursuit of something called “the Juche Idea” – a quasi-religious and mystical philosophy that claims, among other things, that mountains possess magical powers and that genuine revolutionary hero Kim Il Sung was some kind of god – the North Koreans seek to achieve the impossible: complete economic self-sufficiency in a nation-state the size of West Virginia! Thanks to their planned socialist economy (and the massive assistance from China and, previously, the USSR) until recently the North Koreans have been able to do quite well. A series of severe droughts that hit that tiny country hard caused the collapse of North Korean food production and reportedly caused famine in the country – not at all surprisingly – which was undoubtedly exacerbated by the mismanagement of available resources by North Korea’s autocratic Kim Il Sung-ist bureaucracy. Back in the ’70s compared to capitalist South Korea (which has of course been massively subsidized by the West), the standard of living in North Korea was actually HIGHER than in the South. Even today, the planned economy of North Korea holds up well against that of South Korea:
GDPs of North Korea and South Korea, 1960-2015. Source: Trading Economics
But with the collapse of the USSR and the continuing degeneration of the Chinese Communist Party into an emerging capitalist class sucking up to US imperialism – both of which threaten the subsidies necessary to keep this tiny nation-state afloat – the North Korean workers state is doomed economically. If China was to cut off all subsidies to North Korea (a situation which the United States is trying desperately to bring about, and which the continued degeneration of the Chinese Communist Party into a gang of capitalist swindlers threatens with every passing day), then the economic pressure on North Korea could become so great that they would have to make major concessions to the imperialists just in order to survive as an independent state. The situation can ONLY be resolved in North Korea’s favor if capitalism is overthrown throughout Asia and eventually around the world. This alone will provide North Korea with the socialist trading partners it needs to prosper. Unless the North Korean working class can organize itself to depose the ruling Kim Il Sung hereditary “communist monarchy” in a pro-socialist political revolution and return to the road of revolutionary Marxist internationalism, the days of North Korea will be numbered. This, if it were to occur – just as with the collapse of the USSR – would represent a major defeat for the working class of the world. This is why we say: DEFEND NORTH KOREA! US IMPERIALISM: KEEP YOUR BLOOD-STAINED HANDS OFF THE WORLD! US workers must fight to force the US Government to withdraw its military forces from Japan and from all territories outside the US mainland. The US capitalist class does not have the right to intervene in the affairs of other countries. The workers of the US must overthrow the US capitalist class before these greed-infected capitalists launch World War Three, killing perhaps hundreds of millions of workers all over the globe and maybe even wiping out the human race – to say nothing of what such a war would do to the ecosystem of this planet which any “lucky” survivors would be left with!
We republish below the complete text of the North Korean statement on the deployment of the “Chancellorsville” and the larger, ominous threat of a regional war posed by the US’ war moves in their racist “pivot to Asia”.
The statement is in the inimitable butchered English translation sadly common in all official Korean-English translations produced by the North Korean government. The bourgeois press can snicker all they want at the bad translations; the message is very serious, and the threat so keenly felt by the North Koreans is not a joke at all. After all, in the US thoroughly racist Korean War, launched just after the equally racist nuclear war crimes at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, 3 million Korean workers were butchered by the US military. The North Koreans have every right to protest vigorously every time the US imperialist war machine appears on the horizon.
– IWPCHI
http://www.kcna.kp/kcna.user.article.retrieveNewsViewInfoList.kcmsf
KCNA Commentary Accuses U.S. of Its Moves to Launch Nuclear War
Korean / English / Chinese / Spanish / Japanese
Pyongyang, June 29 (KCNA) — The U.S. military moves to launch a nuclear war on the Korean peninsula at any cost have reached an ever more undisguised and full-fledged phase.
Recently, latest missile cruiser Chancellorsville of the U.S. Navy equipped with Aegis system anchored at the U.S. military base in Yokosuka, Japan.
Belonging to carrier flotilla, it has the mission to strike naval and underwater targets while performing missile defense and anti-air defense duties. Military experts are unanimous in commenting that it is the first time for the U.S. to deploy overseas the warship with such striking-capability.
Two cruisers equipped with similar missile defense system will be deployed in Yokosuka late in 2017.
If the above-said warships are deployed, the number of the warships in the U.S. Navy base in Yokosuka will reach 14 including the U.S. nuclear carrier Ronald Reagan to be deployed at the end of this year, the appearance of the largest-ever warship fleet in Japan since World War II, foreign press reports said.
As regards the deployment of three warships equipped with Aegis system, the U.S. Navy base command in Yokosuka claimed it is part of the U.S. “strategy for making a switchover to Asia-Pacific” in a bid to “contain” the DPRK and China.
It was also reported that the U.S. is mulling temporarily deploying four Global Hawks at the Misawa airfield of Japan from July.
All these military moves under the pretext of “containing the DPRK and China” are aimed to kick up an overall nuclear war racket against the DPRK in the ground, air and seas.
This fully revealed once again the aggressive nature of the U.S. imperialists who are making no scruple of periodically disturbing peace and stability in the region to attain their strategic and avaricious purposes.
Through a statement of the National Defence Commission the DPRK declared before the whole world that its army and people would launch a nationwide action of a new high level against the robber-like U.S. imperialists.
As clarified in the statement, the frantic moves the U.S. has stepped up for a nuclear war by introducing Chancellorsville, Global Hawk and the like would face stronger counter-actions of the DPRK.
The U.S. would be well advised to bear in mind that the DPRK has already put in place powerful strike group equipped with strategic and tactical rockets to cope with its missile threat.
The U.S. is required to pay heed to the DPRK’s warning that it is ready for conventional or nuclear or cyber wars.
The world people still remember and will never forget such crime committed by the U.S. against humanity 70 years ago as dropping atomic bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki to achieve its strategic aim.
It is a serious miscalculation and daydream for the U.S. to think it can employ the same method on the Korean peninsula as what it did to attain its purpose.
It is as clear as a pikestaff that if the U.S. nuclear maniacs ignite a nuclear war on the peninsula at any cost, they will perish in the flames kindled by themselves.
After all, the U.S. styling itself “the world’s only superpower” will precipitate its final ruin. -0-
Independent Workers Party of Los Angeles 