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Stop The Bluster – North Korea Is A Nuclear Weapon State
The Washington Post headlined today: Trump threatens ‘fire and fury’ in response to North Korean threats
Just another Trump bluster, I thought. Such are mo longer a reason to read a story. But what are those "North Korean threats" he "responded" to? I had not seen any of those. Diving into the story I found :
President Trump used his harshest language yet to warn North Korea on Tuesday that it will be “met with fire and fury and frankly power, the likes of which this world has never seen before,” if it does not stop threatening the United States.
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It was not immediately clear what Trump was responding to.
The Washington Post needs to fire its headline writer. Why assert that Trump responded to "threats" when there were none? Why assert a reason when you have no fucking clue why he did what he did?
A different shabby site claims that the base for Trump's played-up nonsense was a WaPo piece published the day before:
The president was responding to a report in the Washington Post that, according to a confidential U.S. intelligence assessment presented late last month, the North Korean regime has “successfully produced a miniaturized nuclear warhead that can fit inside its missiles.”
That report was again just bluster. The DPRK (North Korea) had announced a miniaturized nuclear device in March 2016. It even published pictures of it.
On July 4th the DPRK launched its first Intercontinental Ballistic Missile. A second test was successfully launched on July 29 under realistic operational conditions. The DPRK successfully tested nuclear devices at least five times – including a hydrogen device with potentially megatons of explosive power. It has enough nuclear material for some 40-60 weapons. All DPRK claims about progress in its missile and nuke programs have, sooner or later, been proven as truthful. There was and is no reason to doubt its March 2016 assertion.
North Korea is for all practical purposes a nuclear weapon state with the ability to deliver nukes onto the continental United States.
This is not news. Talk about "fire and fury" or an ultimatum to North Korea or of preemptive strikes is all nonsense. Nothing the U.S. can do to North Korea can prevent a response that would nuke and destroy Washington DC or some other U.S. city.
North Korea has good reasons to want nukes and the U.S. missed all chances to remove those reasons. It is way too late to lament about that.
What most American miss while thinking about what going on in Korea is that 1945 did not signify for Koreans an end of short four year long WWII but the end of forty years [40] of horrible Japanese occupation theft of national treasure, slavery, institutional apartheid, discrimination causing pain, suffering and murder of millions and that included institutional rape and kidnapping of Korean women to Japan and elsewhere as a breeding machines for imperial Japan, a subject that even today stirs high emotions within Japanese-Korean relations leading many times even to short shooting wars between them under pretext of territories disputes.
The so called Korean war stems form the fact that, the only political force actively opposed the fascism and militarism in Korea before and during WWII was communist movement. And Korea was not exception where all other political parties cooperated with Japanese occupants and hence lost any credibility after war.
While Korean communist backed by Stalin and Mao [who took over China in 1949] chose democratic path of taking power, they abandoned this path after being outraged seeing US 180 degree turn away from a punisher of a criminal nation into ardent supporter of Japan [hence Japanese miracle].
The US rehabilitation of war criminals bringing them even into Japanese government after Soviets detonated first nuke in 1949, and blocking signing peace treaty with Japan (that included demand for massive reparations] crossed all the Koreans’ political red lines across political spectrum. Even now NK and SK are united in demanding massive reparations from Japan.
The year 1950 marked attempt for final liberation of Korean south from remnants of Japanese collaborators while Kim Il-sung was enjoying huge popularity among all Koreans north and south.
US geopolitics and Deep state obsession with domino fall, did not allow for peaceful Korea, they wanted confrontation with Soviets and Mao [Hot or cold war] and for that end US invaded (under guise of UN) Korea and installed brutal dictators to rule south for decades since population wanted communists in charge as sole protectors from future Japanese militarism epitomized by retaining Japanese Emperor in power. And hence another miracle of an Asian tiger, SK, happened.
One thing that is really outrageous and missing from b analysis here is that Russia and China publicly acquiesced to a psychotic rant of Hal..ey full of lies and hallucinations on which the UNSC resolution is based.
Chinese and Russian as well US military analysts and scholars know NK is not destabilizing the region but stabilizes it removing rather than adding risk of war in the area by balancing force equation. These are illegal sanctions against NK what destabilize NK economy and could lead to sever humanitarian crisis for neighbors.
Of course Russia and China do not intend to follow any ridiculous sanctions aimed solely for starving population, in fact trade between Russia, China and NK is increasing steadily for years , the remittances of money from NK (estimated one million+) working in Russia and China and all over the world increased multiple fold over last decade.
The smuggling operations to and from NK riches epic proportions as well as a lucrative money laundering and parallel transactions involving gold or other collateral is run by anybody who can, including Chinese, Russians and US, UK and EU banks as well as Bitcoin and Ethereum sites.
Dirty cheap NK high tech missile technology is a hit among world’s weapons dealers.
NK economy grows faster than China’s, about 7.5% (like in the US which grows 2.5% at best, it is about 1% GDP growth coming from military weaponry orders), hence mainstream NK economy grows tremendously, as Boy Un wants to make his people happy under the existential threat to his rule, as US elite did in 1950- under existential threat from Soviet Union.
But there is a real and present danger to Russia and China acquiescing to psychotic delusions of US Deep State namely emboldening the neocon psychotic bullies who will continue to succumb deeper into their brain liquefying cancer and associated mental disease.
Ignoring/acquiescing to their rants like this at UNSC is dangerous for the world peace and will not bring sobriety to rotting neocon brains under clear blackmail from the US. Succumbing to a blackmail only encourages more bullying.
But Russia and China seems to play brutal geopolitics as a country club cricket game, not a game leading to annihilation of human race from face of the earth.
Why is that, is a good subject for yet to be written book having to do with rule of united global oligarchic elite.
Whatever your geopolitical persuasion if you think that number one problem with Boy Un in NK is that he is a madman soon (supposedly now after NK firing two missiles recently, missiles tracked closely by Russian military that stated in was intermediate range not long range ICBM able to fly for 3000-5000 km at best reaching Hawaii and parts of Alaska) to be with nukes capable of reaching US West coast think again.
First if he really was a madman he already have proven weapons (possible also chemical WMD) capable of reaching 200 miles into US shores from his fleet of submarines periodically visiting US west coast
Second, if you think that raised and educated in Switzerland Boy Un is a madman I would point you to another madman in WH to nuke.
In fact what is dangerous about Boy Un is his infatuation with the western commercial culture and consumerism that exceeds his farther’s, making him prone to addiction to greed rather than power alone, the very weapon of mass economic destruction that devastated America already so in fact there is nothing to conquer in the US except for Grizzly bears an Grand canyon while they last.
Well still, if you think the Boy Un and his (and NK people) worshiping of his ancestors (dad and granddad) is weird ask any Japanese who is current emperor of Japan. He will tell you Emperor is a direct descendants of the Sun, yes, the Sun (god) had sex with another god and made first Japaneses emperor.
Too much cult worshiping for you.
The cult worshiping in embedded in Asian culture much more than in western culture and serves a way of command and control of the people under made up phony religious-like (in NK ideological) claims of divinity of the ancestors that cannot be questioned or denied.
Talking to ghosts of ancestors was as popular a millennium ago as it is today in Japan, just examine NHK broadcast from this year alone documenting otherwise relational Japanese talking with ghosts of the dead.
What you see in NK is what you saw in Japan between 1845 and 1945 under ideology of Shinto cult and after 1945 is the same cult covered with western commercial culture while the “soul of Japanese people” remains the same as in NK or even SK, former under political Soviet/Chinese grip while latter under US grip.
Actually with Trump it is hard to say who is crazy or unstable politically castrated Trump or Boy Un.
It was Un father who begin to work on nuclear weapons and ICBMs after he saw what happened with Saddam Hussein, wrongly accused of WMD and removed with no shred of evidence. Un who grew up in Switzerland continued his father plans but more for economic reasons than geopolitical reasons.
Believe or not Un supported massive reduction of military in NK that constitutes a huge burden obstacle for faster development of consumer market, he wants to see in NK (he remakes Pyongyang into a western style city, rather the soviet style city of his grandfather) and most of all he wanted to develop the efficient agriculture since in NK they have only 4 months of agricultural season.
But there was another solution to the problem of invigorating NK economy via reduction in military spending that was on the table for twenty years already, namely mutual reduction of military in NK and SK and withdrawal of US troops following signing finally a peace treaty and developing method and schedule for reunification
US flatly rejected it every-time it was proposed even by SK government, because as Trump loving Chinese tell us even today, US is not there in SK to fight/protect against NK but to protect their own self-imposed hegemonic interests in Asia (and perhaps keep peace between both Koreas and Japan since old wounds did not heal yet) and hence deployed THAAD that radar covers over 1000 miles into highly militarized Manchuria, China.
In fact the refusal of post WWII peace treaty by US was to protect Japan from massive reparations for FORTY years long Japanese occupation and enslavement of Koreans.
It is laughable reading US MSM aimed for American sheeple, brainwashing about NK as it is run by a unstable psychotic (which he may as well be) while these are US policies that are surely psychotic and put the world on the verge of nuclear war for nothing at all.
In fact Kim dynasty is a direct product of American belligerence after WWII and continuing preventing any equitable peace arrangements in the region.
The question for all of us remain why?
Why NK is not allowed her own “Nixon trip to China”, normalization of relations like with Nixon did with communist China, opening up relations and by that weaken the autocratic rule in NK they fraudulently clam they seek?
The answer is that US imperial military would have been obsolete there, would have no excuse to be there and by that US grip in the region would diminish and that D.C. neocons would never accept.
PS. those who understood NK statement about Guam as a threat to attack must have their heads examined. NK spoke about military exercises with conventional warheads in waters off Guam (50 miles) outside US jurisdiction. Shocking! NATO had many times their live fire navy exercises 3 miles off Russian territorial waters in Baltic sea as well as in Black sea. Too close to comfort, hm?
Posted by: Kalen | Aug 10 2017 8:14 utc | 51
Not exactly on topic, but the Guardian publishes these two letters today:
“Reading Suzy Hansen’s account of how the all-pervasive belief in the notion of American exceptionalism has stopped her and her countryfolk from seeing how their view of the world is misconceived (Unlearning the myth of American innocence, 8 August) makes me want to draw attention to our own myopia. Majority thinking in the west has been similarly warped. How else were we persuaded to sign up to the cold war, to go to war with Iraq more than once, to see North Korea only through the eyes of the US generals, to sanction Iran despite its moves to stop nuclear weapons development, to fail to recognise the degree to which US political and economic dominance in South America has twisted and undermined democratic development there, and to support the extension of Nato provocatively to the very doorstep of our “enemy” Russia? Pundits call the last century “the American century”. It’s time to give up on that deal, and ensure we all have an equal share in the current 100-year stretch.
Gillian Dalley
London
•”Suzy Hansen’s article is excellent. I was born in 1942 in Newark, New Jersey; I grew up in and near Newark until I went to college at 18. I’m a nuclear physicist, retired after 38 years in Los Alamos National Laboratory, Euratom, the Department of Energy, and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). My field is nuclear safeguards and nonproliferation.
In 1975, my wife, son, and I moved to Italy, where I worked and lived for the next three years. Before I left, a friend and colleague, who’d lived abroad, told me “when you return, you’ll think the country, lab, and colleagues have changed. No, Doug, it will be you who’ve changed.” This was very true. I learned fluent Italian, pretty good German, and enough French to enjoy France. We travelled all over Europe, and even visited Egypt. Later, 1998-2003, I lived and worked for six years in Vienna, Austria. The IAEA is a United Nations affiliate often called the UN’s nuclear watchdog. At Los Alamos most of my work was with and for the IAEA; this enabled me to live and work in over 50 countries, with people from over 120 countries. I think of myself as much as a citizen of the world as a citizen of the USA.
An article in Foreign Policy lists the 10 most dangerous countries. It will surprise most US citizens that the US is at No 1. We have a larger defence budget than the sum of the next nine countries. In our so-called defence of democracy, we’ve killed millions of people, mostly civilians, in our various wars since the second world war. Our CIA has carried out or engineered the assassination of world leaders who weren’t of the capitalist persuasion we prefer. During recent wars, the CIA established black sites outside the US where they could torture captured people that should have been treated as prisoners of war.
Ms Hansen’s article is spot-on! I realise that what I’ve written is anathema to the majority of our citizenry.
Dr T Douglas Reilly
Los Alamos, New Mexico, USA
Posted by: Shakesvshav | Aug 10 2017 15:50 utc | 63
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