Update 4: The UN Security Council is set to met at 4am Saturday Seoul time (3pm ET on Friday)
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Update 3: US Pacific Command has confirmed that its commitment to the defense of Japan and South Korea (via NBC News)
Update 4: The UN Security Council is set to met at 4am Saturday Seoul time (3pm ET on Friday)
* * *
Update 3: US Pacific Command has confirmed that its commitment to the defense of Japan and South Korea (via NBC News)
Former US President Jimmy Carter said the US works more like an “oligarchy than a democracy,” while also lambasting Trump’s “hopeless” approach to solving the Israel-Palestine issue, and the increasing tension with North Korea.
The former president was speaking at a ‘Conversation with the Carters’ event at his Carter Center in Atlanta on Tuesday. He said money in politics is what makes the US more like an oligarchy – run by a small group of rich people – rather than a democracy, AP reports.
Continue reading “Remember when the US had a real President?”
All day Saturday, South Korea braced for a possible new missile test by North Korea as the provocative northern neighbor marked its founding anniversary, just days after its sixth and largest nuclear test rattled global financial markets and further escalated tensions in the region. Throughout the week, South Korean officials warned the North could launch another intercontinental ballistic missile, in defiance of U.N. sanctions and to further provoke the US. As Reuters reports, Pyongyang marks its founding anniversary each year with a big display of pageantry and military hardware. Last year, North Korea conducted its fifth nuclear test on the Sept. 9 anniversary.
Continue reading “China Warns Trump: “We Will Back North Korea If The US Strikes First””
Guest Post by Scott Adams
You might have heard that North Korea and the United States are not getting along. We mock their lack of electricity, they threaten to annihilate us with thermonuclear weapons, that sort of thing.
But why are we enemies?
I’ll sort it all out for you here.
Obviously the largest source of friction is that the United States and North Korea want very different things. And those different things are mutually exclusive. For example, we want to avoid nuclear war and they… okay, they also want to avoid nuclear war. But on most other issues, we want different things.
For example, North Korea doesn’t want the U.S. to invade their country. The United States, on the other hand, wants to invade North Korea about as much as we want rabid porcupines shoved up our asses. I guess you could say we’re on the same page on that too. But that’s only two points of agreement in this whole mess. You have to look at the big picture.
Continue reading “Why North Korea and the United States are Near War”
Guest Post by Martin Armstrong
The South China Post reported that Chinese scientists fear that a mountain in North Korea under which the last five bombs detonated as tests, may collapse crumbling into a crater. They fear that the radiation underground would then leak across region.
Continue reading “The Insanity in Korea – But Is it Logical?”
The most alarming aspect of North Korea’s latest nuclear test, and the larger standoff with the U.S., is how little is known about how North Korea truly functions. For 65 years it’s been sealed off from the rest of the world to a degree hard to comprehend, especially at a time when people in Buenos Aires need just one click to share cat videos shot in Kuala Lumpur. Few outsiders have had intimate contact with North Korean society, and even fewer are in a position to talk about it.
One of the extremely rare exceptions is the novelist and journalist Suki Kim. Kim, who was born in South Korea and moved to the U.S. at age thirteen, spent much of 2011 teaching English to children of North Korea’s elite at the Pyongyang University of Science and Technology.
Continue reading “Undercover in North Korea: “All Paths Lead to Catastrophe””
Guest Post by Patrick J. Buchanan
By setting off a 100-kiloton bomb, after firing a missile over Japan, Kim Jong Un has gotten the world’s attention.
What else does he want?
Almost surely not war with America. For no matter what damage Kim could visit on U.S. troops and bases in South Korea, Okinawa and Guam, his country would be destroyed and the regime his grandfather built annihilated.
“The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting,” wrote Sun Tzu. Kim likely has something like this in mind.
On Sunday, North Korea tested its most powerful nuclear bomb yet, detonating a device that caused a 6.3 magnitude tremor.
The weapon’s sheer power has caused alarm but the fact that Pyongyang is claiming it can be fitted inside an intercontinental ballistic missile is sending shockwaves through Asia and beyond.
Using data from the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Statista’s Niall McCarthy presents the following infographic provides an overview of the strength of all North Korean nuclear tests since 2006.
You will find more statistics at Statista
Continue reading “Putting North Korea’s “Bomb Test” In Context”
Authored by James George Jatras via The Strategic Culture Foundation,
They say that most of the world’s real dangers arise not because of what people don’t know but because of what they do ‘know’ that just ain’t so.
As a case in point, consider three things about Korea that the bipartisan Washington establishment seems quite sure of but are far removed from reality:
Shortly after the news that North Korea announced it was in possession of an “advanced Hydrogen bomb”, to which we said that if “the bomb appears to be authentic, it would confirm that the North is preparing for its most provocative action yet: its sixth nuclear test, which would force Trump to respond, having vowed never to allow North Korea to become a nuclear power with offensive capabilities”, this is precisely what happened, when on Sunday morning, North Korea conducted what appears its sixth nuclear test, triggering a tremor 10 times as powerful as that from its test a year ago and just hours after it showed off what it called a hydrogen bomb capable of being mounted on a long-range missile.
Continue reading “North Korea Conducts Nuclear Test, Riling International Community”
North Korea fired a missile that flew over Japan and landed in waters off the northern region of Hokkaido early on Tuesday, marking a sharp escalation of tensions on the Korean peninsula according to Reuters. The missile test, which experts said was an intermediate-range Hwasong 12 missile, came as U.S. and South Korean forces conduct an annual military drill, against which North Korea strenuously objects.
South Korea’s military said the missile was launched from the Sunan region near Pyongyang at 5:57 a.m. local time and flew 2,700 km (1,680 miles), reaching an altitude of about 550 km (340 miles). Japanese’s NHK broadcaster reported the missile broke into three pieces and fell into waters off Hokkaido.
Continue reading “North Korea Fires Ballistic Missile Over Japan; S.Korea Military Raising Alert”
“The main thing that I learned about conspiracy theory is that conspiracy theorists believe in a conspiracy because that is more comforting. The truth of the world is that it is actually chaotic. The truth is that it is not The Iluminati, or The Jewish Banking Conspiracy, or the Gray Alien Theory. The truth is far more frightening – Nobody is in control. The world is rudderless.” – Alan Moore
Alan Moore, the renowned graphic novel writer, and author of the dystopian classic V for Vendetta, politically identifies as an anarchist. His view that all political states are an outgrowth of anarchy, with the biggest gang taking control and dictating how things will be run, is manifested in V for Vendetta. As an anarchist, you can understand why he is doubtful of conspiracy theories and an all-powerful entity controlling the world. He believes in a chaotic world competing gangs position themselves to gain power and control.
“We live in a badly developed anarchist situation in which the biggest gang has taken over and have declared that it is not an anarchist situation – that it is a capitalist or a communist situation. But I tend to think that anarchy is the most natural form of politics for a human being to actually practice.”- Alan Moore
The Guy Fawkes mask from V for Vendetta has been adopted by anarchist groups around the world, including: Anonymous, WikiLeaks, and the Occupy protestors. Moore’s positive view of the Occupy movement was based on his belief ordinary people had the right to reclaim what had been taken from them by criminal bankers. The initial impetus for the Occupy protests was the destruction of Main Street USA by Wall Street sociopaths, who not only escaped prosecution for their crimes, but were bailed out by the taxpayers they had pillaged and further enriched as captured politicians enabled them to get even bigger.
You will find more statistics at Statista
Continue reading “Just How Scared Are Americans Of North Korea?”
Guest Post by George Friedman
The narrative about North Korea, a narrative I believe to be true and have since early March, is simple: The North Koreans have reached a point in their nuclear and missile programs where they could soon have the capability to strike the United States.
The U.S. isn’t prepared to let itself be vulnerable to the whims of what is seen as a dangerously unpredictable regime in Pyongyang. Therefore, the U.S. is prepared to strike at North Korea’s nuclear and missile facilities.
At the same time, the U.S. is extremely reluctant to attack. The nuclear program sites are dispersed and hardened, making airstrikes difficult, and North Korean artillery concentrated near the demilitarized zone could devastate Seoul.
Continue reading “Time is running out to avoid war with North Korea”
In a troubling repudiation of President Donald Trump’s demands that Beijing do more to rein in its bellicose neighbor, Beijing, through the state-owned media, cautioned the US president on Friday that it would intervene (militarily) on North Korea’s behalf if the US and South Korea launch a preemptive strike to “overthrow the North Korean regime,” according to a statement in the influential state-run newspaper Global Times.
“If the U.S. and South Korea carry out strikes and try to overthrow the North Korean regime and change the political pattern of the Korean Peninsula, China will prevent them from doing so,” it said.
Continue reading “China Warns Trump: “We Will Prevent A North Korea Regime Change””