What's really going on in N. Korea

Excerpt: It should now be clear to North Korea (and China) that the US troops in South Korea and Japan, and the US military presence in the Western Pacific, are not on the table for discussion.

The Trump administration took office after eight years of "strategic patience," which led only to more North Korean missiles, nuclear bombs and weapons shipments to terror states. The proponents of these policies -- having failed miserably -- now lecture the Trump administration about what America's North Korean policy should be. They seem, however, unwilling to see that the very nature of the discussion has now been changed -- to a necessary focus on North Korea's nuclear capability and not on the US military presence or ostensible US "hostile policy" in the region.

Dr. Peter Huessy is President of GeoStrategic Analysis, a defense consulting firm he founded in 1981, as well as Director of Strategic Deterrent Studies at the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies. He was also for 20 years, the senior defense consultant at the National Defense University Foundation.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13840/north-korea-discussion

The Death Toll Of Communism

Eight Sketches of Life Inside North Korea’s Prison Camps That Will Haunt You

THE BLAZE:

People being forced to stand for hours. Prisoners feeding off of rats and snakes. Forty people forced into the same cell and made to crawl on their hands and knees.

That’s the reality of life in a North Korea prison camp, as depicted by a series of haunting sketches included in a United Nations commission report this week.

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22 Signs That Barack Obama Is Transforming America Into A Larger Version Of North Korea

If there is one country in the world that you would not want to live in, it would be North Korea.

Unfortunately, the United States of America is becoming more like North Korea with each passing day.  North Korea is a totalitarian police state hellhole where the state rules supreme, the “leader” is lavishly worshipped, no dissent is tolerated, and the government micromanages everything.  America is supposed to be the opposite of that, but now Barack Obama is implementing his version of “change” and he has promised to engage in the “remaking” of this nation and to transform it “brick by brick“.  A tremendous “cult of personality” has been built up around Obama, and under his leadership the U.S. government has become larger and more repressive than ever before.  But do we really want to “change” America so that it more closely resembles totalitarian regimes such as North Korea, communist China, the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany?  After all, all of those regimes have a nightmarish history of brutality and death.  Even today, there are starving North Koreans that are eating their own children.  Is that really where we want to end up as a nation?

The truth is that we desperately need to take America in the opposite direction of where Barack Obama is trying to take us.  We need a much smaller federal government, a much greater emphasis on freedom and liberty, a return to true free market capitalism, and politicians that are willing to take a low profile and that are actually there to serve the American people.

But what we need and what we are getting are two very different things.

The following are 22 signs that Barack Obama is transforming America into a larger version of North Korea…

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North Korea promotes nuclear and missile chiefs as Kim Jong-un consolidates power before rocket launch

Kim Jong-un, the new North Korean leader, has strenthened his grip on power by promoting heads of the regime’s nuclear and missile programmes to his inner circle.

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HAT TIP: Foreign Confidential

5 YEARS FROM ARMAGEDDON

China Confidential: US DEFENSE CHIEF SAYS NK BECOMING 'DIRECT THREAT'

BREAKING: WAR IS IMMINENT!

North Korea Declares War Imminent, South Koreans Told to Move to Bunkers

The poisonous fruit of Obama's capitulation to Russia and China resulted in further deterioration of America leadership.

Obama Risks War With Nuclear-Armed North Korea While Pursuing Phony Peace with Nuclearizing Iran

Early Warning from China Confidential

The Wizard of O No!

Pie in the sky...lofty rhetoric...and a dime will get you ZERO (which is what some people actually call Obama. I say: three strikes and you're out as far as that damned Nobel Peace Prize goes...Yasser Arafat, Jimmy Carter, and now Barack Obama--enough already.

Obama set expectations high last year in Prague when he declared it was time to end "Cold War thinking" and committed the United States to seeking a nuclear weapons-free world.

He acknowledged it was an achievement he was not likely to see in his lifetime, but his lofty oratory was enough to help him win the Nobel Peace Prize.

N.Korea crisis latest blow to Obama's nuclear agenda

REND: Experts estimate that only 10% of the population would survive an EMP attack

Not for nothing, analysts assert, have Iran and North Korea developed and tested concealed systems for firing ballistic missiles from cargo ships...

Imagine Iran With Nukes

Strap yourselves in, baby: The Korean situation is escalating sharply, as predicted

China Watches as Korean Situation Escalates

Korea at DEFCON 1?...

or

Breaking: US Army moves to DEFCON 2???

US Orders Blackout Over North Korean Torpedoing Of Gulf Of Mexico Oil Rig

A grim report circulating in the Kremlin today written by Russia’s Northern Fleet is reporting that the United States has ordered a complete media blackout over North Korea’s torpedoing of the giant Deepwater Horizon oil platform owned by the World’s largest offshore drilling contractor Transocean that was built and financed by South Korea’s Hyundai Heavy Industries Co. Ltd., that has caused great loss of life, untold billions in economic damage to the South Korean economy, and an environmental catastrophe to the United States.

Most important to understand about this latest attack by North Korea against its South Korean enemy is that under the existing “laws of war” it was a permissible action as they remain in a state of war against each other due to South Korea’s refusal to sign the 1953 Armistice ending the Korean War.

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From Canada Free Press: Oil Spill a Catastrophe of Monumental Proportions: Is It Sabotage?

U.S. is trying to force Honduras to violate its own constitution

What does it say about Mr. Obama's respect for the separation of powers that he would instruct Mrs. Clinton to punish an independent court because it did not issue the ruling he wanted?

How many of you, like me, are feeling this way:

Thousands of readers have written to me asking how all this can happen in the U.S., where democratic principles have been recognized since the nation's founding. Many readers have written that they are "ashamed" of the U.S. and have asked, in effect, "How can I help Honduras?" A more pertinent question may turn out to be, how can they help their own country?

In its actions toward Honduras, the Obama administration is demonstrating contempt for the fundamentals of democracy. Legal scholars are clear on this...

Hillary's Honduras Obsession

This anti-freedom behavior of the new administration in Washington is not an isolated incident:

President Obama promised he would win America friends where, under George W. Bush, it had antagonists. The reality is that the U.S. is working hard to create antagonists where it previously had friends...The U.S. decision [to scrap a missile-defense agreement the Bush Administration negotiated with Poland and the Czech Republic] also undermines the credibility of the U.S. nuclear defense umbrella. The Bush Administration sought to develop a global defense posture in part to reassure allies that they don't need their own nuclear deterrent, even as rogue regimes seek nuclear arms and the missiles to deliver them. America's Europe reversal tells other countries that they can't rely on the U.S. so it's best to follow the Israeli path and develop their own weapon and defenses. For that matter, this also makes the U.S. East Coast less safe; the ground-based system in Alaska and California covers the East, but barely. The Polish and Czech sites were to provide added protection.

The European switcheroo continues Mr. Obama's trend of courting adversaries while smacking allies. His Administration has sought warmer ties with Iran, Burma, North Korea, Russia and even Venezuela. But it has picked trade fights with Canada and Mexico, sat on trade treaties with Colombia and South Korea, battled Israel over West Bank settlements, ignored Japan in deciding to talk with North Korea, and sanctioned Honduras for its sin of resisting the encroachments of Venezuela's Hugo Chávez.

Obama's Missile Offense

ABC: Obama's "Dialogue-First Diplomacy" Not Working

The Obama Administration came into power with a policy to recast the international perception of American power and to offer direct dialogue with those willing to negotiate, including with rogue regimes. The problem is that events in North Korea and Iran have already outpaced this strategy, and continued devotion to the "dialogue-first" principle amidst changing circumstances has consequences. It may have slowed the Administration's willingness to respond in each case and may be impeding our ability to take full advantage of emerging opportunities to build leverage - along with our international partners - against both Iran and North Korea.

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MISSILE DEFENSE: The Stakes Could Not Be Higher

By National Commander David K. Rehbein

A young girl picking daisies opens one of the most infamous political ads ever devised. It is suggested her life is about to end violently and quickly as a nuclear mushroom cloud appears. President Lyndon Johnson intones, “These are the stakes! To make a world in which all of God’s children can live, or go into the dark. We must either love each other, or we must die.”

While no one in Washington has the power to mandate love, our leaders can protect us by adequately funding and deploying a national missile defense. Mocked by critics in the 1980’s as a Star Wars fantasy, nobody seems to be laughing as North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il has been test-firing missiles like a kid launching fireworks on the fourth of July. Defense Secretary Robert Gates takes the threat seriously enough to have positioned a military ground-based missile defense system to protect Hawaii from missile attack. While The American Legion applauds this decision, the nation’s largest veterans service organization is concerned that the United States is not doing enough to protect us from, well, nuclear annihilation.

In 2008 delegates at The American Legion National Convention in Phoenix unanimously passed Resolution 94. It urges the U.S. government to develop and continue to deploy a national missile defense system which is in the national interest of the United States and the American people and an essential ingredient of our homeland security.

In recent months, North Korea has repeatedly tested its nuclear weapons and long-range ballistic missile capabilities. Moreover, the Iranian President Ahmadinejad has given no indication that he plans to retract his public promises to make his country a nuclear power. While some may naively believe that these leaders are of stable mind and would be deterred by America’s military might and nuclear capabilities, often overlooked is the history these rogue regimes have of proliferating weapons to terrorists.

Referring to the possibility of capturing Pakistan’s nuclear weapons, a top al Qaeda commander said, “God willing, the nuclear weapons will not fall into the hands of the Americans and the Mujahideen would take them and use them against the Americans.”

But despite all of this, the Obama administration has called for a $1.62 billion reduction in missile defense for 2010, nearly a 15 percent decline from the 2009 appropriation. The 2010 Defense Authorization Bill includes a provision to reduce the number of Ground-Based Midcourse Defense Interceptors from 44 to 30. These cuts are hardly signs that Washington is committed to providing an impenetrable national missile defense.

The Heritage Foundation has produced a chilling documentary titled 33 Minutes: Protecting America in the New Missile Age. A trailer of the film can be viewed at www.legion.org. It makes the sobering point that a ballistic missile fired at the United States could reach its target in 33 minutes or less. It is a moral imperative that our leaders in Washington protect America from this catastrophic possibility.

As Gates recently said about protecting Hawaii with a ground-based system, “We are in a good position, should it become necessary, to protect Americans and American territory.” But is “good” really good enough? As LBJ said of the poor daisy-picking girl, “These are the stakes!”

David K. Rehbein, of Ames, Iowa, is national commander of the 2.6 million-member American Legion, www.legion.org, the nation's largest wartime veterans organization.

http://ourvoice.legion.org/story/1893/missile-defense-the-stakes-could-not-be-higher

Background Report: North Korean Prisons

According to the U.S. Committee for Human Rights in North Korea, there exists a vast network of structured institutions for punishment in North Korea including forced-labor colonies, camps, prisons, and short term detention facilities along the North Korea-China border. Prisoners are brutally treated in these institutions with testimonies from North Korean defectors describing the application of torture techniques, hard labor, starvation, forced abortions, infanticide, families of up to three generations imprisoned, detention without judicial process, public executions, chemical and medical experimentation on prisoners, and gas chambers, resulting in thousands of deaths. Comparisons have been frequently made to the Nazi concentration camps. China Confidential

THE LETTER TO CHINA: An Open Letter to China's Paramount Leader: Please Persuade North Korea to Let Our People Go

BREAKING NEWS

U.S. to Respond to North Korea with
‘Strongest Possible Adjectives'
Obama: We are Prepared to Consult Thesaurus

One day after North Korea launched a successful test of a nuclear weapon, President Obama said that the United States was prepared to respond to the threat with "the strongest possible adjectives."

In remarks to reporters at the White House, Mr. Obama said that North Korea should fear the "full force and might of the United States' arsenal of adjectives" and called the missile test "reckless, reprehensible, objectionable, senseless, egregious and condemnable."

Standing at the President's side, Vice President Joseph Biden weighed in with some tough adjectives of his own, branding North Korean President Kim Jong-Il "totally wack and illin'."

Later in the day, Defense Secretary Robert Gates called the North Korean nuclear test "supercilious and jejune," leading some in diplomatic circles to worry that the U.S. might be running out of appropriate adjectives with which to craft its response.

But President Obama attempted to calm those fears, saying that the United States was prepared to "scour the thesaurus" to come up with additional adjectives and was "prepared to use adverbs" if necessary.

"Let's be clear: we are not taking adverbs off the table," Mr. Obama said. "If the need arises, we will use them forcefully, aggressively, swiftly, overwhelmingly and commandingly."

Obama beats up friends and cowers before enemies

Obama administration has basically responded to North Korea's missile and nuclear tests by getting tough with .... Israel ... to the delight of North Korea's nuclear-arming ally, Iran, which assists and helps to finance North Korea's nuclear/missile programs while vowing to incinerate Israel (ahead of wiping out America). President Obama's obsession with pressuring Israel to withdraw to indefensible borders seems to become more pronounced as the North Korean/Iranian threat grows more menacing.

North Korea Believes it Has Built a Nuclear Shield

China Confindential: consistently out-reported mainstream media on twin threats to world peace--nuclear-arming North Korea & nuclear-armed Iran

China Confidential is the only media outlet to have accurately predicted both North Korean nuclear tests, including predicting the exact test dates. Using open source intelligence and an international network of volunteer stringers and analysts, China Confidential has consistently out-reported the mainstream media on the twin threats to world peace--nuclear-arming North Korea and nuclear-armed Iran.

POSTSCRIPT: Israeli defense experts are increasingly concerned about a possible EMP attack on the Jewish State. A knockout blow to electronic and communication systems could paralyze the country and allow for an all-out assault by Hezbollah, Hamas, and Syria with coordinated uprisings by radicalized Israeli Arabs. In such a scenario, Iran could be responsible for the sneak attack--delivered by a foreign-flagged vessel--that could theoretically pave the way for the conquest of Israel while affording Iran a measure of plausible deniability.

Could Iran Outsource an A-Bomb Test to N. Korea?

Susan Rice is confused about international law and North Korea!

It's strange enough that the Obama Administration is hyping last week's toothless statement by the United Nations Security Council condemning North Korea's recent rocket launch. Even more amazing, it says the U.N. move is "legally binding" on member states.

Those were the words used by Susan Rice, U.S. ambassador to the U.N., and repeated by a State Department spokesman. Ms. Rice is badly misinformed. As she ought to know, a "presidential statement" issued by the Security Council is legally binding on no one.

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