N. Korea nears annihilation

[LDB]

It's time to either fish or cut bait.

N.K.: Searching ships would be 'act of war' - Washington Times

 

[layoutshooter]

Leo, it was time to fish or cut bait back in 1953. This is what happens when you just ignore problems. Evil does NOT go away on it's own. The people of North Korea are browbeaten to a pulp. They have NO economy, not just a bit tough like we have it right now, NONE!!. The government of North Korea is a threat to the stability of that entire region and the world in general.

The world waited way to long to deal with this mess. North Korea now has the ability to do significant damage both by itself and by providing terrorists with weapons.

We are in real trouble as we continue to gut our military as threats continue to grow world wide. It is NOT by accident. Weakness breads comtempt. The weaker we allow our country to become the bigger the threats from countries like North Korea, Iran, Russia and China will grow.

 

[Poorboy]

It's time to either fish or cut bait.

N.K.: Searching ships would be 'act of war' - Washington Times

I'm surprised that No One has Taken Pyong Kong or however he says his name Out a While Ago

 

[mrgoodtude]

For once Leo we are on the same page...
Doubt Kimmy would pull this crap during the Bush era but hey they only have the 5th largest military in the world and should only need 100 very angry Expediters armed with Barrett 50 cals to snipe the little guy..
I am volunteering after I go to Pearl vision and grab me some new specs
But wait..
Maybe I should just send a apology letter....

 

[chefdennis]

Kim is getting ready to test another missle, this one an ICBM. The last ICBM he tested was i believe in 1993 and it was underpowered on purpose but fell in the waters of hawaii. Our military to this day sayes they had no idea of what wasinbound and they were scared crapless.....This next test, and it will happen, Kim does not care what the hell happens to the people, he is simply making statements to show he can do as he wants and the USA and the UN ain't goin to tell him what he can and can't do.....

So one more test, then as soon as anyone forces their way onto any nk ships, then will be mid rane missles with nuke warheads on them flying into SK and or Japan, with a longer range 1 sitting at the ready to fire on a major west coast US city.

There is some very good reading out right now on just what Nuke weapondary NK has....don't think for a minute they are just a "fly" needing swatted, they can do some serious damage, NK,s nuclear sciencist and engineers know what they are doing and have been doing it very well in not so secret, secret facilities.

Barry better get his apology speeches goin on how bad we the U.S. as a nation has been to NK and how smart they are and all that they have given the world, well at least iran with nuke tech and helping to built the plants.....he just might need them

 

[greg334]

Hey you know what, the UN and the west will not be able to do a thing. The UN has been uneffective so far and the Chinese have pulled on NK chain a few times to get him to stop.

The entire matter may be handled by the Chinese and the Japanese, if not by a number of other Asian countries.

The Japanese have asked for a change in the treaty to become an offensive military force again, which I think we have been allowing them to build up forces without complaining. The Chinese sees that this is both an opportunity for them if we get involved and a problem at the same time.

But again I don't think anyone would complain if China walked over the border with a 2.25 million man army against the NK 1.25 million man army (which most may not fight the Chinese but surrender). The Chinese can call some of the 313 million men from the population who are fit to fight, if there is a need.

 

[layoutshooter]

IF China would do that it would help. They are SLIGHTY less hard on people than North Korea is. I don't think that China wants to mix it up with us, YET. It is not in their best interest at this time. If we continue to weaken, who knows?

 

[greg334]

Well don't forget Layout, Putin is sitting there with Vladivostok and Nakhodka near the border and that is his gateway to the Pacific Asian markets. He may also be a player in shutting NK up. I would not write them off with some of the build up of their military in the last 4 years.

However, the Chinese can do a great thing to get the world on their side, they can invade NK, clean up the mess and then demand a unification of North and South. With the cleanup of the mess, it paves the way for a Chinese sympathtic government for the unified country at the same time allowing the chinese to practice military operations without worry of a world backlash.

 

[layoutshooter]

Well don't forget Layout, Putin is sitting there with Vladivostok and Nakhodka near the border and that is his gateway to the Pacific Asian markets. He may also be a player in shutting NK up. I would not write them off with some of the build up of their military in the last 4 years.

However, the Chinese can do a great thing to get the world on their side, they can invade NK, clean up the mess and then demand a unification of North and South. With the cleanup of the mess, it paves the way for a Chinese sympathtic government for the unified country at the same time allowing the chinese to practice military operations without worry of a world backlash.

All of your observations are correct, Greg. I have NEVER written off Russia. I never did believe the "we want to join the world" garbage that they spewed. It still all hinges on us. If we continue to weaken all of the senarios that are detrimental to the U.S. can and will occur. We need a build up of our military, NOT a draw down.

We are doing sooo much wrong now it is almost as if it is intentional.

 

[chefdennis]

I personally believe Kim is looking for a confrontation..he will do this weapons test and he will have a nuke on the pad ready as soon as their is any type of effort to enforce the borading of NK ships...he simply does not care..he wants this and has planned for it for along time and he sees barry as weak and now his efforts will come off, no matter if his country is destroyed, he is seen by some as the "little kids on the block that took on the bully" and that is all he wants. He wants a Nuclear War, and is working to bring it off....

Korea
Jun 12, 2009
Asia Times Online :: Korea News and Korean Business and Economy, Pyongyang News


Nuclear war is Kim Jong-il's game plan
By Kim Myong Chol

]"Our military first policy calls for an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, retaliation for retaliation, ultra-hardline for hardline, war for war, total war for total war, nuclear war for nuclear war." - Kim Jong-il

TOKYO - A little-noted fact about the second nuclear test conducted on May 25 by the Kim Jong-il administration of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) is that it was a highly successful fission trigger test for multi-megaton warheads.

These types of warheads can be detonated in outer space, far above the United States, evaporating its key targets. This is a significant indication of the supreme leader's game plan for



nuclear war with the crippled superpower and its allies, Japan and South Korea.

The North Korean Foreign Ministry on April 29 announced its plan to test-fire what it termed a long-awaited "intercontinental ballistic missile" (ICBM), the first public ICBM test after numerous missile tests, short-range, medium-range, and long-range, were conducted without notice.

On March 9, the General Staff of the nuclear-armed Korean People's Army had begun preparing to launch simultaneous retaliatory strikes on the US, Japan and South Korea in response to their act of war.

Although no appropriate test site for a thermonuclear bomb is available on the Korean Peninsula, North Korean scientists and engineers are confident, as a series of computer simulations have proved that their hydrogen bombs will be operational. The North Korean message is that any soft spots of the US, Japan and South Korea's defense lines will be used as the testing grounds for their thermonuclear weapons.

The Korean Central News Agency said on May 25 that the underground nuclear test was carried out at the request of nuclear scientists and engineers and reported:
The current nuclear test was safely conducted on a new higher level in terms of its explosive power and technology of its control and the results of the test helped satisfactorily settle the scientific and technological problems arising in further increasing the power of nuclear weapons and steadily developing nuclear technology.
John Pike, the founder and director of globalsecurity.org, told the Weekly Standard on October 19, 2006, that the North Korean nuclear test that year may have been a test of a "trigger device" for a much larger hydrogen bomb. Writing in the New York Times on April 7, 2009, he revealed that "North Korea's low-yield nuclear test in October 2006 did "coincide with the sub-kiloton tests of the fission trigger for a hydrogen bomb". He added, "possibly North Korea's hydrogen bombs can be easily fitted on missiles".

The Kim Jong-il administration has developed its global nuclear strike capability primarily as a deterrent to US invasion to keep the Korean Peninsula out of war. Secondly, it needs operational nuclear missiles targeted at US and Japanese targets in the event of a DPRK-US war.

The North Korean state-run newspaper, Minjo Joson, vowed on June 9 to use nuclear weapons in war as "merciless means of offense to deal retaliatory strikes" against anyone who "dares infringe upon the dignity and sovereignty of the DPRK even a bit".

Scenario for nuclear war
After shifting to a plan B, Supreme Leader Kim Jong-il has put in place a nuclear game plan as a part of the plan's military first policy to deal with nuclear rogue state America and its allies South Korea and Japan. (See Kim Jong-il shifts to plan B, Asia Times Online, May 21)

The nuclear game plan is designed firstly to militarily prevent the US from throwing a monkey wrench into the plans of the Kim Jong-il administration for economic prosperity by 2012 - the centenary of the birth of founding father Kim Il-sung - in a bid to complete its membership of the three elite clubs of nuclear, space and economic powers.

Its second aim is to win the hearts and minds of the 70 million Korean people, North, South and abroad, and leave little doubt in their eyes that Kim Jong-il has what it takes to neutralize and phase out the American presence in Korea. This will hasten the divided parts of ancestral Korean land - bequeathed by Dankun 5,000 years ago and Jumon 2,000 years ago - coming together under a confederal umbrella as a reunified state.

It is designed to impress upon the Korean population that Kim Jong-il is a Korean David heroically standing up to the American Goliath, that he can lead the epic effort to settle long-smoldering moral scores with the US over a more than 100-year-old grudge match that dates as far as the 1905 Taft-Katsura Agreement and the 1866 invasion of Korea by the USS General Sherman.

Third, Kim Jong-il has described the shift to plan B as a stern notice for the governments of the US and its junior allies that they cannot get away with their hostile behavior any longer, unless they are prepared to leave their booming economies consumed in a great conflagration of retaliatory thermonuclear attacks.

The game plan assumes that the US is unlikely to shake off its aggressive behavior until it is wiped off this planet. The Barack Obama administration has not taken much time to reveal its true colors, which are no different from the George W Bush administration. There have been four compelling signs:

First, the March 9-20 Key Resolve (Team Spirit) joint war games between the US and South Korea.

Second, the US-led United Nation Security Council's (UNSC) condemnation of an innocuous April 5 satellite launch.

Third, the rehashing of counterfeit money charges that the US has failed to produce compelling evidence to support. As Newsweek wrote in its June 8 issue, "The Treasury Department couldn't find a single shred of hard evidence pointing to North Korean production of counterfeit money."

Fourth, the presence of Bush holdovers in the Obama administration, such as Stuart Levy, the architect of Bush-era financial sanctions intended to criminalize the DPRK.

Four types of hydrogen bomb raids
The game plan for nuclear war specifies four types of thermonuclear assault: (1) the bombing of operating nuclear power stations; (2) detonations of a hydrogen bombs in seas off the US, Japan and South Korea; (3) detonations of H-bombs in space far above their heartlands; and (4) thermonuclear attacks on their urban centers.

The first attack involves converting operating nuclear power plants on the coastline of the three countries into makeshift multi-megaton H-bombs.

The New York Times on January 24, 1994, quoted Paul Leventhal, president of the Nuclear Control Institute, warning that North Korea could easily launch de-facto hydrogen bomb attacks on South Korea.

"North Korean retaliation to bombing could result in vastly more fallout in the South than in the North ... North Korean retaliatory bombing could bring Chernobyls multiplied."

If bombed, one average operating nuclear power station is estimated to spew out as much deadly fallout as 150-180 H-bombs. Bombing one nuclear power station would render the Japanese archipelago and South Korea uninhabitable. Doing the same to the US may require bombing one plant on its west coast and another on its east coast.

Nothing is easier than bombing a power plant on a coastline. There is no need to use a ballistic missile. Primitive means will do the job.

The US has 103 operating nuclear power stations with onsite storage of a huge quantity of spent fuel rods and Japan has 53 operating atomic power stations. Japan has a stockpile of weapons-grade plutonium - enough to assemble more than 1,000 atomic bombs in a short period of time. South Korea has 20 operating nuclear power stations with onsite storage of a huge quantity of spent fuel rods.

The detonation of sea-borne or undersea H-bombs planted on the three countries' continental shelves will trigger nuclear tsunamis with devastating consequences.

A 2006 RAND study of a ship-based 10-kiloton nuclear blast on the Port of Long Beach had some harrowing conclusions:
"Within the first 72 hours, the attack would devastate a vast portion of the Los Angeles metropolitan area. Because ground-burst explosions generate particularly large amounts of highly radioactive debris, fallout from the blast would cause much of the destruction. In some of the most dramatic possible outcomes:
Sixty thousand people might die instantly from the blast itself or quickly thereafter from radiation poisoning.

One hundred and fifty thousand more might be exposed to hazardous levels of radioactive water and sediment from the port, requiring emergency medical treatment.

The blast and subsequent fires might completely destroy the entire infrastructure and all ships in the Port of Long Beach and the adjoining Port of Los Angeles.

Six million people might try to evacuate the Los Angeles region.

Two to three million people might need relocation because fallout will have contaminated a 500-square-kilometer area.

Gasoline supplies might run critically short across the entire region because of the loss of Long Beach's refineries - responsible for one-third of the gas west of the Rocky Mountains.
RAND projects that the economic costs would exceed $1 trillion.
The third possible attack, a high-altitude detonation of hydrogen bombs that would create a powerful electromagnetic pulse (EMP), would disrupt the communications and electrical infrastructure of the US, the whole of Japan, and South Korea.

Many of the essential systems needed to survive war would be knocked out, as computers are instantly rendered malfunctioning or unusable. Military and communications systems such as radars, antennas, and missiles, government offices, would be put out of use, as would energy sources such as nuclear power stations and transport and communications systems including airports, airplanes, railways, cars and cell phones.

Ironically the ubiquity of high-tech computing gadgets in the US, Japan and South Korea has made them most vulnerable to EMP attacks.

The last and fourth attack would be to order into action a global nuclear strike force of dozens of MIRVed ICBMs - each bearing a thermonuclear warhead on a prefixed target.

The Yongbyon nuclear site has always been a decoy to attract American attention and bring it into negotiations on a peace treaty to formally end the Korean War. Since as far back as the mid-1980, North Korea has assembled 100-300 nuclear warheads in an ultra-clandestine nuclear weapons program. The missiles can be mounted on medium-range missiles designed to be nuclear capable.

A prototype ICBM was assembled by the end of the 1980s. Two prototype ICBMs were test-fired on May 29, 1993, with one splashing down off Honolulu and the other off Guam. The Kim Jong-il administration gave an advance notice to the US government of the long-range missile test. But the American reaction was skeptical.

In April 2001, the Associated Press quoted Navy representative Mark Kirk's "terrifying encounter in 1993 with what seemed possible nuclear attack" from North Korea. He recalled:
It was a no notice, no warning missile launch out of North Korea, and for the first and only time in my career in the NMJIC [National Military Joint Intelligence Center], I got to see all of the panoply of the United States military wake up in a few seconds.

We did not know what kind of missile it was, so the impact area, at the beginning, was the entire United States, and you thought about what we might be doing in the next 12 minutes: would we be notifying the president that we had lost an American city? We were going to know the answer in 12 minutes.

At first it still included the Pacific Coast, then it included Hawaii.
AP added: "Little was made of the 1993 launch at the time because it wasn't determined until later that it likely flew over Japan and landed in the Pacific Ocean, Kirk said."

It was not until 1998 that the US notified the Japanese government of the flyover of a North Korean long-range missile before splashing down off Hawaii. The US National Aeronautics and Space Administration quietly labeled the 1998 satellite launch a success.

According to a February 12, 2003, AP report, US intelligence had concluded a few years earlier that North Korea has a ballistic missile capable of hitting the western United States and possibly targets farther inland.

Kim Myong Chol is author of a number of books and papers in Korean, Japanese and English on North Korea, including Kim Jong-il's Strategy for Reunification. He has a PhD from the Democratic People's Republic of Korea's Academy of Social Sciences and is often called an "unofficial" spokesman of Kim Jong-il and North Korea.

Can you imagine the havco a EMP attack would create here!!!! Forget the government, just look at our private sector dependence on eletronics.........lol we would be a 3rd world country in days!!!

 

[layoutshooter]

I personally believe Kim is looking for a confrontation..he will do this weapons test and he will have a nuke on the pad ready as soon as their is any type of effort to enforce the borading of NK ships...he simply does not care..he wants this and has planned for it for along time and he sees barry as weak and now his efforts will come off, no matter if his country is destroyed, he is seen by some as the "little kids on the block that took on the bully" and that is all he wants. He wants a Nuclear War, and is working to bring it off....

Korea
Jun 12, 2009
Asia Times Online :: Korea News and Korean Business and Economy, Pyongyang News


Nuclear war is Kim Jong-il's game plan
By Kim Myong Chol





Can you imagine the havco a EMP attack would create here!!!! Forget the government, just look at our private sector dependence on eletronics.........lol we would be a 3rd world country in days!!!

Most people have NO idea in the world what EMP is let alone what it can do to us. We are VERY weak in our EMP defenses. We have NEVER taken this threat very seriously. Russia and China have. We keep setting ourselfs up for attacks on every front. Why are we doing this?

 

[chefdennis]

layout wrote:

Most people have NO idea in the world what EMP is let alone what it can do to us. We are VERY weak in our EMP defenses. We have NEVER taken this threat very seriously. Russia and China have. We keep setting ourselfs up for attacks on every front. Why are we doing this?

We WERE the big dog on the porch, no one was going to tug on our chain...so we got complacent. Now the rest of the world has caught up with us, some even passing us when the libs decided to reduce defense spending.....now we have the apologist in chief and he has no guts for war or even to defend ourselves ( he said that NK was nothing, small, no threat to us) and all he wants to do is talk, well he better fire up the script writers and the tele-prompter cause he is going to need it sooner then later...Kim is laughing his AZZ off at us and the UN....and don't think china is real big on stopping NK, a EMP attack of massive proportions can destroy this counrty and china can pickup the pieces without there being any real "physical destruction" they can forget our debt to them and take what they want and the conversion will be seemless....I don't see china doing that, but i don't see them stepping on NK either, maybe a little control, but nothing mayor, they will let kim have his fun to a point.....and russia doesn't care what happens to us one way or the other...they to think barry is a joke and weak....as does china...

 

[layoutshooter]

Things are getting very dangerous. From what the media is putting out it appears that this administration has no clue as to what is going on. There is always the possibility that there are things going on in the backround but Obama does NOT put forward a feeling of confidence. He seems almost childish in his outlook on North Korea and the rest of the "nasties" out there. IF all is as it seems on the news we are in deep deep trouble.

 

[LDB]

Eliminate them all and let Budha and Allah figure it all out afterward.

 

[layoutshooter]

It is quickly headed down the path of kill or be killed. Our weakens and "talk only" attitude is helping it head that way. All I can say is that NONE of this happend on MY watch.

 

[chefdennis]

These 2 articles show that we are in trouble with kim...1st his intent and then the view of others as to just how strong the U.S./UN sanactions are thought to be.

N. Korea Warns of Nuclear War Amid Rising Tensions
Sunday , June 14, 2009
N. Korea Warns of Nuclear War Amid Rising Tensions - North Korea | Map | Government - FOXNews.com

SEOUL, South Korea —

North Korea's communist regime has warned of a nuclear war on the Korean peninsula while vowing to step up its atomic bomb-making program in defiance of new U.N. sanctions.

The North's defiance presents a growing diplomatic headache for President Barack Obama as he prepares for talks Tuesday with his South Korean counterpart on the North's missile and nuclear programs.
A commentary Sunday in the North's the main state-run Rodong Sinmun newspaper, carried by the official Korean Central News Agency, claimed the U.S. has 1,000 nuclear weapons in South Korea. Another commentary published Saturday in the state-run Tongil Sinbo weekly claimed the U.S. has been deploying a vast amount of nuclear weapons in South Korea and Japan.
North Korea "is completely within the range of U.S. nuclear attack and the Korean peninsula is becoming an area where the chances of a nuclear war are the highest in the world," the Tongil Sinbo commentary said.
Kim Yong-kyu, a spokesman at the U.S. military command in Seoul, called the latest accusation "baseless," saying Washington has no nuclear bombs in South Korea. U.S. tactical nuclear weapons were removed from South Korea in 1991 as part of arms reductions following the Cold War.
On Saturday, North Korea's Foreign Ministry threatened war on any country that dared to stop its ships on the high seas under the new sanctions approved by the U.N. Security Council on Friday as punishment for the North's latest nuclear test.
It is not clear if the statements are simply rhetorical. Still, they are a huge setback for international attempts to rein in North Korea's nuclear ambitions following its second nuclear test on May 25. It first tested a nuclear device in 2006.
In its Saturday's statement, North Korea said it has been enriching uranium to provide fuel for its light-water reactor. It was the first public acknowledgment the North is running a uranium enrichment program in addition to its known plutonium-based program. The two radioactive materials are key ingredients in making atomic bombs.
On Sunday, Yonhap news agency reported South Korea and the U.S. have mobilized spy satellites, reconnaissance aircraft and human intelligence networks to obtain evidence that the North has been running a uranium enrichment program.
South Korea's Defense Ministry said it cannot confirm the report. The National Intelligence Service — South Korea's main spy agency — was not available for comment.
North Korea said more than one-third of 8,000 spent fuel rods in its possession has been reprocessed and all the plutonium extracted would be used to make atomic bombs. The country could harvest 13-18 pounds (6-8 kilograms) of plutonium — enough to make at least one nuclear bomb — if all the rods are reprocessed.
In addition, North Korea is believed to have enough plutonium for at least half a dozen atomic bombs.
North Korea says its nuclear program is a deterrent against the U.S., which it routinely accuses of plotting to topple its regime. Washington, which has 28,500 troops in South Korea, has repeatedly said it has no such intention.
The new U.N. sanctions are aimed at depriving the North of the financing used to build its rogue nuclear program. The resolution also authorized searches of North Korean ships suspected of transporting illicit ballistic missile and nuclear materials.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said the new U.N. penalties provide the necessary tools to help check North Korea's continued pursuit of nuclear weapons.
The sanctions show that "North Korea's pursuit of nuclear weapons and the capacity to deliver those weapons through missiles is not going to be accepted by the neighbors as well as the greater international community," Clinton said Saturday at a news conference in Canada.

And now the view from the foreign press:

Wow you think Russia and China backed these worthless sancations because they knoew that they were...well worthless and nothing more then a "slap on the wrist" to NK...then you have China warning the US not to use force against NK ships...lol ....oh well here is the article:

Korea
Jun 13, 2009

North Korea resolution lacks teeth
By Donald Kirk
Asia Times Online :: Korea News and Korean Business and Economy, Pyongyang News

WASHINGTON - The United Nations Security Council's draft resolution on North Korea's second underground nuclear test amounts to a slap on the wrist that's likely to have minimal impact after an initial burst of rhetoric and headlines.

That's the impression given by an exercise in diplomatic sleight of hand that's gotten the reluctant Chinese and Russians to go along with a draft that condemns the nuclear test of May 25 "in the strongest terms" and demands the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) "not conduct any further nuclear test" or launch more ballistic missiles.

The resolution goes on with equally unenforceable demands for the DPRK to "suspend all activities" related to ballistic missiles, to "comply fully" with the previous resolutions demanding the



same thing after its first nuclear test in October 2006, and to "abandon all nuclear weapons and existing nuclear programs in a complete, verifiable and irreversible manner".

So what distinguishes this resolution from all the other "demands" aimed at Pyongyang in recent years for North Korea to give up its nuclear program and pour the billions needed for nukes and missiles resources into feeding its people and repairing its decrepit economy?

The answer, in the hopeful view of the US diplomats responsible for fashioning the resolution, lies in calls lower down for "all states" to inspect suspicious cargo in their territory and even to stop vessels "on the high seas" if they're believed to be carrying nuclear materiel or components - or the missiles for firing them to distant targets.

For all such lingo, the resolution waffles on doing anything to stop North Korea from carrying on as a newly minted member of the global nuclear elite. China insisted on language that would make any real action voluntary - and was responsible for the qualifying the call for inspections by saying they are to go on "with the consent of the flag state".

The resolution also doesn't bother with the more difficult question of what to do about suspicious aircraft. There is no mention of forcing down suspicious planes, most of which presumably pass through Chinese or Russian air space in transit between the DPRK and Middle Eastern clients and benefactors.

That omission is a fatal flaw because the DPRK in recent years is believed to have cut down on shipments by sea in response to the US-inspired Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI). Scores of nations, banded together under the PSI, are cooperating on exchanging information about nuclear proliferation. Although they have not yet done so, they also claim the right to stop and board ships and planes.

"North Koreans do a lot less business by sea because they are worried about PSI," said John Bolton, noted for his tough line on North Korea while serving in the George W Bush administration as US under secretary of state for arms control and then as ambassador to the United Nations. "A lot goes overland and by air over Russia," Bolton said.

The resolution is equally toothless on the issue of what to do about North Korea's relationships with companies and financial firms through which it imports components or exports arms and narcotics. Without establishing any enforcement mechanism, it calls on member states to freeze "financial or other assets or resources" that could "contribute" to the DPRK's nuclear and missile programs. It also prohibits providing financial support that might aid such programs and entering into new arrangements with the DPRK.

While China is paying lip service to this formulation, analysts doubt if such verbiage will have much impact on China's role as the DPRK's only real ally and the source of 80% of the aid it receives in the form of food, fuel and fertilizer. China and Russia also continue to sell spare parts to the North Korean armed forces, though shipments have fallen off markedly in recent years as a result of the DPRK's failure to pay.

Nick Eberstadt, an expert on North Korea and resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, cautioned against placing too much confidence in China as the solution to the North Korean issue.

"Almost everyone in Washington and in Asia believes China is the road to solution of the DPRK problem," he said. "I'm not sure that's right." Why, he asked, has China in recent years quadrupled its aid to North Korea?

At the same time, Eberstadt noted, South Korea has lost heavily in trade with North Korea, which wants to exclude the South from negotiations on the future of the Korean Peninsula. China also has invested heavily in mining natural resources in North Korea, the repository of mineral wealth ranging from gold to uranium, while carrying on mounting trade, much of it on the free market across the Yalu and Tumen river borders.

Against this background, John Bolton called for greater pressure on China to pressure North Korea.

"What we really need is to go to China and explain China's policy is schizophrenic and inconsistent," he said. "China fears if it does anything, it will collapse the regime." Such an outcome would bring about chaos in the North and possibly lead to thousands more North Koreans fleeing into northeast China.

"If China were to turn off assistance," Bolton said, "it could make any change it wanted" in North Korean policy. "It should be easy to persuade China," he added. "We're not interested in hostilities with them."

North Korean strategists were believed to be confident enough to formulate shrill denunciations of any UN resolution, as they did in response to a statement of "condemnation" issued by the UN Security Council after the test of a long-range missile on April 5. There were even reports here that North Korea was preparing to test a third nuclear device - and may soon fire another long-range missile.

"The North Koreans are not voluntarily going to give up their nuclear capability," said Bolton. "The more you delay, the more they will come up with increasingly sophisticated and ingenious designs."

Journalist Donald Kirk has been covering Korea - and the confrontation of forces in Northeast Asia - for more than 30 years.

Yeap we are going to make NK behave and Kim will be good!! LOL.....With barry and hiliary out front our enemies know they have an apology coming and nothing more!!

 

[greg334]

The press is making a lot of this out as something that is happening in our backyard, like Cuba or Mexico. It is a slow news day and the news wants to pump up Obama with some amazing feats, what else can it be.

China and Japan are the ones who actually will come out the losers in all of this if they limit their involvement. Japan has a history with NK that goes back to the '50s and it is Japan who will consoder themselves to be the first target of any attack.

China on the other hand knows this will destabilized the entire Pacific Asian trade network and cause problems within their country.

I think what may happen if NK makes a serious move is china being involved directly without UN approval. Don't forget that NK has a starving population and China can come to their rescue by invading the country. I can bet that if this happens, many in the NK army will surrender and fight for the chinese.

 

[chefdennis]

Oh i have no doubt that the NK people would walk open armed into the hands of china...sure they would, but has i said, Kim doesn't care about them, it is all about him and his ego...nothing more...in all honesty, i am looking forward to the fireworks! Popcorn and a good seat along with few adult "pops'...i'll be disappointed if kim doesn't get another test off....but i really don't think i will be, he is going to do it....now, the next thing is barry brave enough to force boarding of NK ships in direct defiance of the warning from china not to use force.... i don't think so, so we probably won't see a nuke in the air anytime soon...barry isn't built right to take out NK, he knows china will smack him down....

This whole thing is going to show that what was once the strongest military in the world is nothing more then a sidenote in history now...........that is not only sad, but it is dangerous..but hey maybe when its all said and done, barry will apologies to the american people.....nah, not a chance....besides it would be another lie that he has told the people.....

 

[pelicn]

I listened to this author on the radio one night while driving.

One Second After

 

[chefdennis]

Pelicn, that article is one of my bookmarks on the EMP attack topic. It has alot of good info.

To add another prospective, read what Mark Steyn has to say, its pretty telling when you look at it in this light!!

One Second After

Given our massive debt load, this apocalyptic scenario’s not looking that bad

By Mark Steyn

‘Hey, Dad, something strange.’

“ ‘Yeah?’

“ ‘Listen.’

“He stood there silent for a moment. It was a quiet spring evening, silent except for a few birds chirping, the distant bark of a dog . . . rather nice, actually.

“ ‘I don’t hear anything.’

“ ‘That’s it, Dad. There’s no traffic noise from the interstate.’

“He turned and faced toward the road. It was concealed by the trees . . . but she was right; there was absolute silence. When he had first purchased the house, that had been one disappointment he had not thought of while inspecting it but was aware of the first night in, the rumble of traffic from the interstate a half mile away. The only time it fell silent was in the winter during a snowstorm or an accident . . .

“ ‘Most likely the accident’s further on and people were told to pull over and wait,’ he said.

“The girls nodded . . . It was almost eerie. You figure you’d hear something, a police siren if there was indeed an accident, cars down on old Highway 70 should still be passing by.

“And then he looked up. He felt a bit of a chill.

“This time of day any high-flying jets would be pulling contrails . . . ”

But there aren’t any contrails, or jets. It’s America “one second after,” to use the title of William R. Forstchen’s novel.

One Second After what? After an EMP attack. What’s EMP? “Electromagnetic pulse.” You’re on a ship hundreds of miles offshore floating around the ocean, and you fire a nuke. Don’t worry, it doesn’t hit Cleveland, or even Winnipeg. Instead, it detonates 300 miles up in the sky at a point roughly over the middle of the continent. No mushroom cloud, no fallout, you don’t even notice it. That’s the “second” in One Second After and what comes after is America (and presumably pretty much all of Canada south of Yellowknife) circa 1875—before Edison. The cars on the interstate stop because they all run on computers, except for Grandma’s 1959 Edsel. And so do the phones and fridges and pretty much everything else. If you were taking a hairpin bend when your Toyota Corolla conked out, don’t bet on the local emergency room: they’re computerized, too. And, if you’ve only got $27.43 in your purse, better make it last. The ATM won’t be working, and anyway whatever you had in your account just vanished with the computer screen.

Mr. Forstchen tells his tale well, putting an up-to-the-minute scientifically sound high-tech gloss on an old-fashioned yarn. One Second After is set in small-town North Carolina, but the stock characters of Anyburg, U.S.A. are all here—the sick kid, slow-on-the-uptake local officials, gangs of neo-barbarians, the usual conflict between self-reliant can-do types and the useless old hippies. I liked this passage:

“ ‘What a world we once had,’ he sighed.

“The parking lot of the bank at the next corner was becoming weed-choked, though that was being held back a bit by children from the refugee center plucking out any dandelions they saw and eating them.”

And at that point I stopped thinking of One Second After as a movie-thriller narrative, and more in geopolitical terms. After all, the banks in America and western Europe are already metaphorically weed-choked, and may yet become literally so. In the Wall Street Journal a couple of months back, Peggy Noonan predicted that by next year the mayor of New York, “in a variation on broken-window theory, will quietly enact a bright-light theory, demanding that developers leave the lights on whether there are tenants in the buildings or not, lest the world stand on a rise in New Jersey and get the impression no one’s here and nobody cares”—or, to put it another way, lest the world stand on a rise in New Jersey and get the impression Manhattan’s already been hit by an EMP attack. A friend of mine saw his broker in February and asked him where he should be moving his money, expecting to be pointed in the direction of various under-publicized stocks or perhaps some artfully leveraged instrument novel enough to fly below the Obama radar. His broker, wearing a somewhat haunted look, advised him to look for a remote location and a property he could pay cash for and with enough cleared land and a long growing season. My friend’s idea of rural wilderness is Martha’s Vineyard, so this wasn’t exactly what he wanted to hear.

And this is before EMP hits.

So it wipes out your bank accounts. What’s in there? I mean, really. The average American household is carrying $121,953 in personal debt. What would be so bad if something goofy happened and all the meters got reset to zero? And Joe Schmoe’s credit card debt is as nothing compared to what the government’s signed him up for: USA Today recently calculated that the average American household is on the hook for $546,668 in federal debt—i.e., not including state and municipal. The Atlantic crunched the numbers further and reckoned that, to pay off the federal/personal debt over half a century at three per cent, the average household would have to write an annual cheque for $25,971. U.S. median household income is 50 grand, before taxes—and that $26,000 cheque assumes no further increase in federal or personal liabilities.

Critics of USA Today’s methodology say they’ve conflated two separate things—hard government debt, and the rather more amorphous obligations of Medicare, social security and other unsustainable entitlement programs. But, insofar as that’s a distinction with a difference, it’s the entitlements that are harder to slough off. A couple of decades down the road, Greece’s public pensions liabilities will be approaching 25 per cent of GDP: for the political class, it’s easier to default on foreign debt and risk unknown consequences than to renege on social commitments and ensure the certainty of violent insurrection. As attractive as it might be to tell ingrate geezers to go eat dog food, it’s not politically feasible in a democracy in which they’re the most electorally vindictive demographic group.

Besides, in a society that’s all but eliminated the concept of moral hazard, who isn’t entitled to government largesse? The North American auto industry pays its workers so much that it’s unable to make a car at a price anyone’s prepared to pay for it. So naturally it’s been delivered into the corporate control of the very same unions who demanded those salaries. Under the hilarious Canadian bailout, “social justice” requires that auto workers who make $70 per hour be subsidized by taxpayers making less than a third thereof. If it’s unreasonable to expect a guy on 70 bucks an hour to make provision for lean times, why should anyone else? The advanced Western democracy has, in effect, jumped the bounds of temporal and spatial reality: America lives beyond the means of its 300 million citizens to pay for it, so passes the check to its children and grandchildren. Most of the rest of the West does likewise, but demographically has no kids to stick it to.

Professor Glenn Reynolds, America’s Instapundit, noted that USA Today figure of $668,621 federal/personal debt per household and observed tersely: “Debts that can’t be repaid won’t be repaid.” Or to extend the old saw: if you owe the bank a thousand dollars, you have a problem. If you owe the bank a million dollars, the bank has a problem. If everyone owes a million dollars, civilizational survival has a problem. When I first heard about EMP a few years back, the big worry was that in a split-second it would vaporize trillions of dollars of wealth. From the perspective of 2009, vaporizing trillions of dollars of debt has something to commend it.

Published more or less simultaneously with William Forstchen’s EMPocalypse now is Soft Despotism, Democracy’s Drift by Paul A. Rahe, a scholarly analysis of Montesquieu, Rousseau, Tocqueville and their lessons for us today. Yet both books are concerned at least in part with the relationship between the modern state and technology. Professor Rahe cites Tocqueville’s observation on absolute monarchs in whom resided “a power almost without limits”—in theory. But in practice, wrote Tocqueville, “almost never did it happen that they made use of it.” They lacked the machinery: you were in your peasant hovel upcountry and His Majesty was in his palace hundreds of miles away, and “the details of social life and of individual existence ordinarily escaped his control.” Not anymore: regulations for this, permits for that, government identity numbers for routine transactions, computer records for every humdrum manoeuvre of existence, fulfilling Tocqueville’s vision of an administrative despotism in which all the King’s subjects could be made subordinate to “the details of a uniform set of regulations.” As the “bailouts” and “stimulus” pile up, so the micro-regulatory regime will intensify.

At least until the EMP attack.

I’m not suggesting it’s the solution to all our problems. Just saying that, compared to the various other options for advanced democratic society, William Forstchen’s apocalyptic scenario may be one of those 1950s creature features where you wind up rooting for the creature.

from another post on another board i frequent by a very well informed poster:

What I find horrifying, is not the EMP or the effects and aftermath of such an attack...

..But the fact Mark Steyn sees that as a better future than the one we are going to get under Obama as the effects of all this debt take us to worse places than living the 1800's again.