Thursday, March 1, 2018

Treasury Secretary Mnuchin Exposes the Horrific Expansion of Sanctions by the Trump Administration on North Korea



Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin visited the University of California, Los Angeles on Monday to take part in a conversation about the economy at the school’s Burkle Center for International Relations.

He was heckled during his comments and because of that he asked UCLA not to post a recording of his comments, but the recording has leaked.

At one point during the conversation, host Kai Ryssdal asked Mnuchin about sanctions on North Korea. Mnuchin reported that sanctions have doubled under the Trump administration:

Mnuchin: There's 500 sanctions on North Korea since 2005. Basically half have been done in the last year. We have more sanctions authority now than we've ever had before. So for example, we have now powers that we can sanction anybody who's doing trade with North Korea. So I would in all disrespect, I would, I would say, or respect, I would say that  these things take some time, but it is not decades, and we've seen evidence that they are already having an impact. But let me also make a comment. Our issue is not with the people of North Korea. So we want to be careful that we're not doing things — there are things that we could sanction that impact the people. What we're trying to do is cut down his ability to do ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons.
What a clown. A doubling of sanctions is just terrible. The most recent sanctions, as I have reported, are blocking much-needed oil from reaching the Hermit Kingdom. This most certainly hurts the average person in the country who has nothing to do with ballistic missiles or nuclear weapons.

As Jacob Hornberger has put it:
If the Pentagon suddenly bombed North Korea, killing thousands of North Korean citizens, that would clearly be considered an act of war. Yet, when the U.S. government intentionally targets North Korea with economic sanctions that kill thousands of North Koreans through starvation or illness, that’s considered to be simply a peaceful diplomatic measure. That’s odd because from a practical standpoint, people are dead either way — from bombs or sanctions.
Americans have become so accustomed to the concept of sanctions that the policy has become hum-drum and commonplace. Since the violence associated with sanctions is indirect and difficult to see, people don’t put them in the same category as bombs. But the reality is that sanctions, by virtue of their targeting foreign citizens for death, are every bit an act of war as dropping bombs on them.
Yet for Mnuchin, this is just "policy."

 -RW 

1 comment:

  1. Mnuchia (sic) is just the type to pull a Madeleine Albright, “I think this is a very hard choice, but the price–we think the price is worth it.”

    We all know the quote. Twenty-two years later it is clear that most Americans think “the price is worth it.” If they are indifferent to military action, even if they understood that sanctions can be more deadly than bombs they wouldn’t care.

    One of if not the biggest news program on the air in 1996 broadcast that sanctions on Iraq caused half a million deaths of children, this does not even count the adults and the other devastation. You would think that this revelation would have caused such upheaval that the government would have to change its policies on sanctions.

    We know that didn’t happen.

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