Trump and the Korean crisis
It was all too predictable that Trump would create an international crisis as investigators began to close in on him over his dealings with Russia. If you go back to my original post "Trump and the risk of war", it predicts the current course of events. It is important to be clear that the risk of war is serious, immediate and may persist for some time. Neither Trump nor Kim Jong-un have the well being of their nations at heart. Both are little more than overgrown adolescents, with all the poor judgement and self-interest that implies. The conditions are perfect for escalation, for the slippage of rhetoric into action, for insults to become attacks. Nor can the risk of a nuclear exchange be ruled out.
The most likely sequence of events would involve an escalation of aggressive rhetoric from Trump leading to a North Korean attack on South Korea. The North Korean military have the capacity to launch a substantial conventional artillery attack on Seoul. They also have such a large army that a full scale attack on South Korea could not be immediately repulsed by the available conventional forces. If Trump's rhetoric convinces Kim Jong-un that a US attack is imminent, he will strike first. In those circumstances it is hard to believe that Trump would not resort to the nuclear arsenal which is at his, individual, control. Only widespread insurbordination could prevent him exercising that power. However desirable that might be, it is hard to imagine it occurring.
We should never under-estimate the influence self-interest in the acts of politicians. Nor should we ever assume that they are restrained in its pursuit. Those who believe that Trump would not use war to distract the nation from his corruption are simply naive. Thatcher ordered the sinking of the General Belgrano during the Falklands War when unemployment was high and riots were occurring in the worst affected cities. In this context it is worth considering that Thatcher, contemptible as she might have been, was a far more sophisticated and experienced politician than Trump.
Ever the cynical, though ineffective, opportunist Trump cannot be expected to respect the existential risk that would come with his use of nuclear weapons. In the short term it is within the bounds of possibility that China, perceiving a risk, would respond with a nuclear attack on South Korea........and then? In the longer term, assuming Trump's actions did not unleash an immediate wider exchange, the other nuclear powers would be emboldened to use their own arsenals. If it was legitimate for the US to use a nuclear weapon against North Korea, then why shouldn't India, or Pakistan, unleash one against their regional rival?
No doubt, at this point many will think that this is all too unlikely to be worth considering seriously. The point though goes beyond that to the taking of unnecessary risk. A nuclear war would be the greatest disaster ever experienced by mankind. Millions dead, tens of millions displaced. Cities utterly destroyed. There is no justification for taking that risk. To witness, as we are now doing, that risk being raised to an almost unprecedented level by the actions of two leaders in protection of their personal inadequacies, is an unprecedented insult to our common humanity. God fuck them both.
You do realise that North Korea is China's proxy don't you ?
Not a mention ?
Indeed , let's out warmongers.
What Trump may or may not do is contentious , but so far it's all talk .
And talk is cheap.
But if you're all about actions and facts as opposed to aspersions , then let's really talk rogue presidents :https://www.stpete4peace.org/obama-fact-sheet
I can't believe we're still playing the "the U.S. was a righteous place before Trump came along" schtick...
Especially from BB who has been an unrelenting US critic since his first birthday.
" God Fuck Amerika !" .....quote from BB , pre - Trump.
Blowin, when you are President of the USA not doing anything, and it all being just talk, is a huge problem. The reason he can't do anything is that the things he wants to do are so ill considered and dangerous he cannot persuade his own party to vote for them in Congress. If you are implying that I had a positive opinion about pre-Trump America, you might like to quote it. Oh and saying that Trump, has made things worse, does not qualify. No matter how bad things are, they can always get worse, a point Trump seems determined to follow to its logical conclusion.
I don't really agree that the US would use a nuke against the DPRK in any scenario except as retaliation for the North Koreans doing the same thing. If Kim Jung Un suspected he would be vaporized, why wouldn't he just use his nukes up front too? Mutually Assured Destruction is still a policy of the USA so there's no reason to think the North Koreans wouldn't do the same. To me, its not logical that anyone would launch artillery first if they expected a nuke to come second. Also, no ones dropping nukes on their neighbors regardless of how dumb they may be (unless they expect to be vaporized at the same time). If the USA nukes North Korea, they wipe out their allies in the South with radiation. Same thing applies to Pakistan & India. There's a reason no one tests their nuclear weapons in the open anymore.
China says it won't defend North Korea if it fires the first shot but regardless of who fires it the press all across China, North Korea & Russia will be parroting the same line about the US starting WW3 and attacking North Korea. Propaganda is what wins wars, and Russia & China won't accept having the USA occupying their neighbor and troops on their doorstep.
They've probably already written the articles etc just so they can get the message out before the USA gets in first. Russia pretty much owns the game in propaganda as somehow the whole world is STILL talking about Russia bringing down the USA by getting Trump elected.
The US War Department released this video in 1943 to tell Americans not to fall for fascist rhetoric. Sounds familiar.
I understand your point , Stu.
You're saying that indigenous Australians should forget about a treaty because were all just one peopie without division , right ?
Ha...no, I'm saying we've been here before. The road has already been signposted.
As we will be again and again until humanity ceases to exist.
So we should accept it then?
No , let's hashtag how bad it is and go back to our online shopping.
"You, who are on the road
Must have a code that you can live by"
Does this code exclude posting purely in order to generate short term interest between tying rigs , baiting hooks and watching clouds float by ?
Who can say? It's your code, man.
I actually have a very strong moral code.
A lot of it runs contrary to how people may perceive me on here , but when it comes to personal relationships , conducting myself in society correctly and contributing in a positive manner I'm a decent fella.
I've done some average things whilst on the piss - pretty much every shameful or regrettable thing I've ever done has been whilst on the stupid soup - but even those things have been pretty mild in the scheme of things and they're tapering off in frequency as I age.
PS If that's you in the blue shirt and jeans in the video , you really need a haircut. Funny .... I thought you were younger. And more of a rock n roll sort of guy. And not a member of the sort of preachy folk band that makes me want to blindly toss a pint glass over my shoulder then sort shit out.
Correction - the whole WESTERN world (media) is talking about how Russia supposedly hacked the election. Please do yourself a favour and watch John Mcafee or any other INDEPENDENT signals security expert and their evaluations of the reports released unanimously by intelligence community (while your at it watch Putins interviews with Oliver Stone - long but oh so worth it.) In short the meta data provided shows the emails at least where physically transferred from inside the DNC. The rate of file transfer "they" used to export the emails shows it literally came off of a USB that was plugged into a DNC comp. The "Russian language" element came about because the data was copied into a word.doc that had its language set to Russian. Now back up to Wikileaks Vault 7 release where they showed us that this is the exact process the CIA uses to cover its tracks / shift blame to foreign entities. What is really going on here? We wont know if we only watch the media.
Correction - the whole WESTERN world (media) is talking about how Russia supposedly hacked the election. Please do yourself a favour and watch John Mcafee or any other INDEPENDENT signals security expert and their evaluations of the reports released unanimously by intelligence community (while your at it watch Putins interviews with Oliver Stone - long but oh so worth it.) In short the meta data provided shows the emails at least where physically transferred from inside the DNC. The rate of file transfer "they" used to export the emails shows it literally came off of a USB that was plugged into a DNC comp. The "Russian language" element came about because the data was copied into a word.doc that had its language set to Russian. Now back up to Wikileaks Vault 7 release where they showed us that this is the exact process the CIA uses to cover its tracks / shift blame to foreign entities. What is really going on here? We wont know if we only watch the media.
Nice one stu, given the forum topic Wooden Ships and After the Goldrush could also be added.
DaButton, the main take away from the Putin interviews was that Trump was an inexperienced lightweight taking on a heavyweight champion. Beyond that, Stone did not really challenge Putin and just accepted his account of events. The dirty back room dealings of the superpowers usually take a long time to come out but in this situation they are less important than the risk created by a bumbling narcissistic idiot in charge of the world's largest nuclear arsenal, insulting and threatening an equally narcissistic paranoid dictator with a couple of nukes and a hell of an army.
I like guitars, man, I could've played.
Clint Eastwood in his revelatory movie with his car. We stacked your bodies up, to stop the bullets. It will happen again.
Sounds like how we have been treating any other sovereign nation who wants freedom from central banks doesn't it? Dont get me wrong, the whole North Korea fiasco would have huge backroom agendas being pushed into it. Do you honestly think we "liberated" Iraq because of WMD's? DPRK has no central bank and a fuck ton of natural resources, that seems like an agenda in line with the previous iterations of US foreign policy started by Nixon. From my point of view Russia want freedom from IMF and are starting BRICS. Russia controls EU gas, hence Syria situation trying to route new pipelines thru Syria and Turkey instead of thru Iran. This activity goes all the way back to US initially arming Al Queda to rid Afganistan of the Soviets. War is always for profit.
@Button - The argument actually has some weight because Russia benefits the most from the DPRK's resources, given both countries are heavily sanctioned by the USA.
Also, both China and the DPRK either currently use Russian military hardware or have previously and are now in the process of cloning it.
What a bunch of pussies and commie-lovers we have on this site. Blindboy must be the softest and pinkest of all, closely followed by stu. Take your socialist-loving, American-hating blinkers off fellers. Hopefully Kim will push the button so Don has the opportunity to wipe these fuckers off the face of the earth once and for all.
Haha what a Weenis.
Im loathe to keep the trumpathon going but i am curious. What happens with the North Korean Circus if the Trump resignation beatup has any water to it? Return to the previous status quo? Also who replaces him?
Now that Bannon is back with Brietbart and politically offline with Trump: re Afghanistan, how long until Trump calls Brietbart fake news?
ABC news - North Korea
Office 39 - a Defector tells how Kim Jong gets his cash.
Its basically a large sock puppet show. Trump is a Freemason as is Putin, Lil Kim is one also. Gaddafi was one. They're ALL Freemasons and Deuteronomy 20:16 has been going for 100 years now as a result. Its all a show even orange Pauline is controlled opposition as an Eastern Star member..
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>>please delete these dud comments mods. Quint is a keyboard kook also..
Mr Trump smiled to himself, if they only knew he was actually a transvestite and was busy poisoning primary school children with disturbing information about how to feel ok about being a transvestite at 7 years old and same sex marriage...all he really cared about was how to make fake tits look real and how to turn his pussy inside out... don't even get me started about the greens
we need a nuclear war as soon as possible
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