Stephen Lendman

America, NATO, Israel, Saudi Arabia and their rogue partners in high crimes are the world’s leading state sponsors of terrorism - not Russia, China, Iran, Syria, Lebanon’s Hezbollah, Hamas, Yemeni Houthis or North Korea.

They support world peace and stability, their agendas polar opposite what America and its rogue allies pursue.

On Monday, Trump said “(w)e will be instituting a very critical step and that will start right now. Today, the United States is designating North Korea as a state sponsor of terrorism. Should have happened a long time ago. Should have happened years ago.”

US sanctions against the DPRK will be elevated to “the highest level.” North Korea was earlier designated a state sponsor of terrorism, rescinded by the State Department in 2008.

Weeks earlier, Trump suggested he’d reinstate the designation - despite no DPRK acts or threats of terrorism against any nations or anyone.

Falsely designating the country is another black mark against America’s appalling record - consistently blaming other nations for its high crimes, targeting sovereign independent states for regime change, naked aggression its main strategy of choice.

Trump: “In addition to threatening the world by nuclear devastation, North Korea repeatedly supported acts of international terrorism including assassinations on foreign soil” - a bald-facd lie on both counts, crimes America is guilty of, not its adversaries.

Trump finds new ways of disgracing himself, adding he intends imposing “maximum pressure” on Pyongyang.

It’s hard imagining how much tougher new US sanctions will be than already - unless Trump intends imposing a land, sea and air blockade on the country, seizing its ships in international waters, heading toward waging unthinkable war, assuring a nuclear one if launched, threatening the peninsula and neighboring countries.

Congressional neocons applauded Trump’s hostile action, blasting the DPRK with deplorable Big Lies, the same tactic bipartisan US officials use against all sovereign independent nations, unjustifiably vilifying them.

Iran, Syria and Sudan were also falsely designated state sponsors of terrorism by the State Department, the designation used for political reasons - high crimes of major US-allied terrorist regimes ignored, notably Israel and Saudi Arabia.

The designation is largely symbolic, applying it to North Korea more evidence of US imperial viciousness, further exposing its abhorrent record.

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Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

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