A Korean Nuclear Freeze?

The Morons at the New York Times might have come up with a good idea. They touted some leaked information that the God Emperor might have floated the idea of a nuclear freeze with the Little Rocket Man at their last play date. Which you know  is not such a bad idea.

I really doubt that the Slopes will be getting rid of their nukes. Why would they? It is their onlyeverage. They don't want to end up like Qaddafi and being shot dead after broken US promises. Actually the US Government specializes in breaking its word going back to the Indian wars. No one should put any faith in US promises.

You know who specializes in invading Korea? Not us. China. They have done it a lot more than we have and they are really the ones they have to worry about.  There is a baseline resentment about China in Korea, Vietnam and the rest of South East Asia that most people don'r realize exists. We can use that to our advantage.

What if there was a reunification of the two Korea's to build a new nuclear state that can stand as a counter weight to China? I know I know it would be terrible for a screwed up state to have nukes. You know like Pakistan or something. But if the nukes were put under the political control of the South that might work out just fine.

First off we can bring our boys home. Korea can stand on its own two feet with the South Korean economy and North Korean nukes.

Now Little Rocket Man is the problem. The real stumbling block. Along with his henchmen and his security apparatus. He would worry about what would happen to him after reunification. He needs some guaranties if he is to relinquish power.  Scott Adams had a good idea.

Make him King.

"North Korea fires second ballistic missile over Japan"

Via Reddit:  North Korea has fired a ballistic missile across Japan, its second such provocative move in weeks.

South Korea's military said the missile reached an estimated altitude of about 770km (478 miles) and travelled 3,700km before landing in the sea off Hokkaido.

Japan's PM Shinzo Abe said his country would "never tolerate" North Korea's dangerous actions.

"If North Korea continues to walk down this path, it has no bright future," he said in a statement.

(Link to more)

Kludge Report

Overheard:

“This is being put together incrementally and of all the countries and all the issues you deal with, North Korea is not the one to be kludging together statements by the president and cabinet secretaries because the risk of miscalculation is so high.” Link

New verb for me.  To kludge -- as best I can tell -- means to cobble together -- as in a temporary fix. Wiki uses the following photo to illustrate a kludge (noun):

link to original

Is "kludging" even a real word?

Back to basics......why are we in Korea in the first place?

With all this talk about nuclear exchanges and fire and fury I want to go back to the basic question,

Why are we in Korea in the first place?

Stopping Communism?

Subsidizing South Korea's unfair competition with our manufacturing base by paying for their defense?

Pouring money and lives down a rathole?

Why are hundreds of thousands of our soldiers and their dependents held hostage by their presence in South Korea?

We originally were in Korea to stop the North Korean communists from taking over South Korea. We expended vast sums of money and many lives to prevent that. Well that's over. Nobody cares about communism anymore. Witness Vietnam. Or China for that matter. They are economic partners and want sex drugs and rock and roll like everyone else. We are still living like it is 1954. Enough already. If our guys weren't there as hostages and South Korea and Japan had to stand on their own two feet I doubt that we would have to worry about North Korea.

"Wrestling With North Korea, Trump Finds Perilous Options"

Via Drudge:  North Korea’s threat on Thursday to test-fire ballistic missiles soon near the American territory of Guam deepened the challenge confronting the Trump administration: how to defang Pyongyang’s missile programs without risking all-out war.

President Trump has made clear that his goal is to deny North Korea the capability to field a long-range nuclear-tipped missile that could strike the United States.

And though the Pentagon still hopes for a diplomatic solution, highly classified military options are at the ready, last seriously debated when the Clinton administration pondered pre-emptive action to try to thwart North Korea’s nuclear program...

“In the event of a first strike against Kim, even a non-nuclear option, it is highly likely that Kim would retaliate at least conventionally against South Korea,” said James Stavridis, a retired four-star admiral who is now dean of Tufts University’s Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. “This almost certainly would create an upward spiral of violence which would be extremely difficult to manage or to mitigate.”

(Link to more)

"North Korea seriously considering strike on Guam, state media outlet says"

Via Reddit:  North Korea said on Wednesday it is "carefully examining" a plan to strike the U.S. Pacific territory of Guam with missiles, just hours after U.S. President Donald Trump told the North that any threat to the United States would be met with "fire and fury".

A spokesman for the Korean People's Army, in a statement carried by the North's state-run KCNA news agency, said the strike plan will be "put into practice in a multi-current and consecutive way any moment" once leader Kim Jong Un makes a decision.

In another statement citing a different military spokesman, North Korea also said it could carry out a pre-emptive operation if the United States showed signs of provocation.

Earlier Pyongyang said it was ready to give Washington a "severe lesson" with its strategic nuclear force in response to any U.S. military action.

(Link to the rest of the article)

"McMaster: Kim Jong Un should not be sleeping easily at night"

Via Drudge:  McMaster made the remark in an interview Wednesday and emphasized that Kim has become increasingly isolated on the world stage.

McMaster made the remark in an interview Wednesday and emphasized that Kim has become increasingly isolated on the world stage.

"Because he has the whole world against him, right? He's isolated. He's isolated on this. Since 1953 the Korean peninsula has been in a state of armistice. The war never formally ended and there's been no aggression, no aggression from the United States, South Korea, any of our allies."

The national security adviser also said he isn't sure whether things would change in North Korea if the young dictator were taken out of power and argued his behavior means the future of the regime is "almost impossible to predict."

"Well, I'm not sure about that," McMaster said. "I don't think anyone has a very clear picture of the inner workings of that regime."

(Link to more)

"State broadcaster claims North Korea has 'fired missile that has landed in Japanese waters'"

Via Drudge:  Japanese broadcaster have claimed rogue state North Korea have fired yet another missile which has landed in the country's waters.

It comes after claims the state will be able to launch a nuclear-capable an intercontinental ballistic missile as early as next year, US officials say.

The warning about the nation being able to hit cities in North America came from the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency, The Washington Post reports.

It cuts two years off the previous forecast and comes because of the success of recent tests by North Korea, the paper reported.

(Link to story)

For what?

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place: and in the sky
The larks still bravely singing fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the dead: Short days ago,
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved: and now we lie
In Flanders fields!

Take up our quarrel with the foe
To you, from failing hands, we throw
The torch: be yours to hold it high
If ye break faith with us who die,
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields

(John McCrae May 3. 1915)

Why Did America Fight the Korean War?

Link to video

Media Reports North Korea Fires Rocket

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) -- North Korea on Sunday defied international warnings and launched a long-range rocket that the United Nations and others call a cover for a banned test of technology for a missile that could strike the U.S. mainland.

The rocket was fired from North Korea's west coast and tracked separately by the governments Japan and South Korea, which immediately convened a an emergency national security council meeting. South Korean media reported that the rocket may have failed, but provided no other details. The South Korean government couldn't immediately confirm the reports...

The global condemnation began almost immediately.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe called the North Korean rocket launch and the recent nuclear test violations of U.N. agreements.

"We absolutely cannot allow this," he told reporters at the prime minister's residence. "We will take action to totally protect the safety and well-being of our people."

I hate when that happens

An understandable mistake in North Korea. pic.twitter.com/uWLVkY7mXz

— Andrew Malcolm (@AHMalcolm) January 9, 2016

"North Korean Defense Minister Executed by Antiaircraft Fire, South Says"

"Hyon Yong Chol is reportedly killed for falling asleep at military events and showing disrespect to Kim Jong Un"

Mr. Hyon’s execution was watched by hundreds of officials at a public execution site north of Pyongyang, the intelligence service said at the hearing. Satellite images taken in October of that site showed what appeared to be six antiaircraft guns and unidentified people at an imminent execution, a recent report by the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea said.

South Korean government officials have said dozens of officials have been executed, some by machine gun, since Mr. Kim took power. The highest-profile case came in late 2013 when Jang Song Thaek, an influential adviser and an uncle to Mr. Kim, was executed for treason.

Sony Backtracks, Will Now Release The Interview

"The plan is to release the film simultaneously in participating theaters and via video on demand. The Plaza Theater in Atlanta, the MX Theaters in St. Louis and the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema in Austin have now said they will distribute the film. The MX said it would be selling tickets as of 2 p.m Tuesday."

“We have never given up on releasing ‘The Interview’ and we’re excited our movie will be in a number of theaters on Christmas Day,” said Michael Lynton, chairman and CEO of Sony Entertainment. “At the same time, we are continuing our efforts to secure more platforms and more theaters so that this movie reaches the largest possible audience.

“I want to thank our talent on ‘The Interview’ and our employees, who have worked tirelessly through the many challenges we have all faced over the last month. While we hope this is only the first step of the film’s release, we are proud to make it available to the public and to have stood up to those who attempted to suppress free speech.”

James Franco & Seth Rogen

Winter Solstice 2014

The photo is a near perfect disequilibrium. Imagine the border as a cell wall or impermeable membrane which blocks the mixing and spread of enlightenment. There is an unnatural driving force -- almost like a concentration gradient -- the question is whether lightness or darkness will spread. History knows both.

solstice 

mid-13c., from O.Fr. solstice, from L. solstitium "point at which the sun seems to stand still," from sol "sun" (see sol) + pp. stem of sistere "to come to a stop, make stand still" (see assist).  

The etymology of solstice captures a 13th century optical illusion, when people still thought that the sun moved across the sky each day. It traced a bit higher each day in the summer until the end of June when it appeared to stop and reverse course, tracing lower each day until the end of December when it again stood still and then headed back up. Of course the whole reversible motion is a continuous process, but imagine being the first to figure how things all really worked: eppur si muove

The Norks Had Commandos in America

North Korea dispatched covert commando teams to the United States in the 1990s to attack nuclear power plants and major cities in a conflict, according to a declassified Defense Intelligence Agency report.

Dafuq is that all about?  It's bad enough that we have to worry about jihadis and Chicoms and Russkis, but now the pot-bellied doofs who run North Korea are sending terrorists to America?

Sounds awfully improbable.  They have people capable of doing that?

The Reconnaissance Bureau is part of the Ministry of People’s Armed Forces and is in charge of the estimated 60,000 North Korean special operations commandos.

The North Korean Ministry of People’s Armed Forces, the ministry in charge of the military, “established five liaison offices in the early 1990s, to train and infiltrate operatives into the United States to attack nuclear power plants.

One more thing to worry about.  If you are a prepper, you have already prepared for this.

Daily Beast: Has North Korea’s Kim Jong Un Been Toppled?

"Hwang’s trip [to] South [Korea] on Saturday comes on the heels of a widely publicized report that Kim has been deposed. Jang Jin Sung, a former North Korean counterintelligence and propaganda official, is claiming that the Organization and Guidance Department of the Korean Workers’ Party, responsible for promotions within the regime, has taken over the country. Kim, according to Jang, is now merely a “puppet.”

"Leading Korea watchers, however, say they doubt Kim has lost his position at the center of the state founded by his grandfather and passed down to his father, his immediate predecessor. “This kind of travel would be way too out there if anything serious was going on in North Korea, so I don’t think it’s a sign of a coup,” John Delury of Yonsei University in Seoul told The Washington Post of Hwang’s jaunt down to Incheon, near the South Korean capital. Andrei Lankov of nearby Kookmin University, meanwhile, called the surprise visit merely a part of Pyongyang’s recent “charm offensive.” “North Korean diplomacy has been engaged in concerted, well-arranged, well-managed efforts to improve relations with pretty much the entire outside world,” he told the Post. “And you would not expect it to happen with nobody in control.” (read more)

BBC: Why is Kim Jong-un always surrounded by people taking notes?

"In the photographs - from the country's official Central News Agency (KCNA) - Kim Jong-un observes a unit of women conducting a multiple-rocket launching drill. He strides around a fishery station. He gives a pilot on flight training a pep talk. He enjoys the facilities at a renovated youth camp."

But who are those men meticulously taking notes? They're not journalists, but soldiers, party members or government officials, says Prof James Grayson, Korea expert at the University of Sheffield. What is happening is a demonstration of the leader's supposed power, knowledge, wisdom and concern, says Grayson. It's "on-the-spot guidance", something instigated by his grandfather Kim Il-sung in the 1950s. "It's part of the image of the great leader offering benevolent guidance," says Grayson.

Despite the fact that tablets are available in the country, paper notebooks remain the favoured medium. "These are pictures that will be broadcast on television and shown in the state media, so those who are there want to be seen recording Kim Jong-un's every word," says Grayson. "It's about presenting him as having broad knowledge - however, it's ridiculous, he can't possibly know about all of these different things. It's important, however, that the apparatchiks that surround him are seen to be hanging on his every word."

Daily Mail: "Kim Jong Un's uncle executed as a 'traitor'"

"The uncle of North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un has been dragged from a military court and executed for being a 'traitor'."

Jang Song Thaek, 67, who had been considered the second most powerful official in the country and a mentor to his nephew, was killed immediately after a trial.

It is believed he was executed in the customary North Korean way by firing squad.

In a statement Pyongyang called him a 'traitor to the nation for all ages,' 'worse than a dog' and 'despicable human scum' who planned a military coup.

For more click at this link

N. Korea releases apology of detained U.S. tourist Merrill Newman

He is eighty-five years old. It matters. They pulled him off the plane as he was departing from a 10 day visit. His traveling companion was able to stay. Nice people those North Koreans, we're nearly able to match the utter banality of that same mechanistic absence of humanity and propensity for digging into peoples' deeply personal affairs.

The statement said:

the war veteran allegedly attempted to meet with any surviving soldiers he had trained during the Korean War to fight North Korea, and that he admitted to killing civilians and brought an e-book criticizing North Korea. And for these and other reasons he deeply regrets the deplorable interiors and tables in North Korea being so unhelpfully short. 

ny daily news

I changed part of that. It's his own fault for going there etc. 

I am trying to put myself in his shoes. Fresh socks, of course, but trying out the whole thing, pick up the whole load of baggages, the war memories and such, a full life lived very well and now traveling, seeing perhaps how things have changed, struggle to match up things as they were, get a sense of it all, feel it, man, really feel it, and I try to feel or roughly calculate how many years it will take for me to reach the point that this man reached where I just flat don't give a shit what happens, I'm going to North Korea and looking up old chums.

1 year. 

Ago. I'm already there. I don't have to mature at all to get to that point. At first I was thinking, 30, 40 years, but no, I'm already there, a few years ago, in fact. I could do that.  

Merrill! Merrill! *excited and anxious* Buddy, how are you? Are you doing okay? 

Merrill lifts his head wearily, "Eh, I make a living."