If the theory of nuclear deterrence holds true – and it is the only argument the supporters of WMD have got – then we should all be cheering the North Korean bomb. The logic of nuclear deterrence is that it is much better that every state has nuclear weapons, because then we can all deter each other. It is demonstrably true that possession of nuclear weapons is not a deterrent to other nations acquiring them. But it is supposed to deter other nations from using them. In which case, surely the more the merrier, so we can all deter each other.
The madness of the argument is self-evident. We are borrowing hundreds of billions we cannot afford for Trident, yet in all the reams of analysis of what to do about North Korea, Trident never gets a mention. It is a system entirely useless even in the one situation in which it was supposed to be effective.
How did we get here? In the 1950s the USA dropped 635,000 tonnes of bombs on North Korea including 35,000 tonnes of napalm. The US killed an estimated 20% of the North Korean population. For comparison, approximately 2% of the UK population was killed during World War II.
That this massive destruction of North Korea resulted in a xenophobic, American-hating state with an obsession with developing powerful weapons systems to ensure national survival, is not exactly surprising. The western media treat the existence of the Kim Jong-un regime as an inexplicable and eccentric manifestation of evil. In fact, it is caused. Unless those causes are addressed the situation can never be resolved. Has any western politician ever referenced the history I have just given in discussing North Korea?
This has so often been my despair. My book The Catholic Orangemen of Togo recounts my frustration whilst Deputy Head of the FCO’s Africa Department, at failing to get the Blair government to pay attention to the massive historical and continuing grievances that underlay the horrific violence in Sierra Leone. Politicians prefer a simplistic world of enemies who are “evil” for no reason. Newspaper editors prefer it even more. It justifies war. The truth is always a great deal more complicated.
The only way to address North Korea is with talks and diplomacy a military response would be catastrophic. It seems the MIC is fully in control of the White House and looking for yet more justification for budget increases. When militarism owns a country, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Expect it to get worse with the rise of BRICS/ASIA, how we navigate the changing geopolitical landscape is going to be the defining history of our time.
Three things occured to me:
1. DPRK’s ICBM in July seemed a big surprise to the US. If DPRK’s latest claim about being able to mount a thermonuclear warhead on an ICBM is true, then can they really be making these huge leaps without the assistance of another state?
2. Will Japan continue to rely on the US or – despite its constitution – will it start building nukes?
3. If DPRK has skimped on safety mechanisms and one of these devices goes off in error …?
But if every nation had nukes, how would the Great Satan, the US, and it’s minions such as Britain be able to unjustly invade, murder and asset strip them.
British nukes are nothing more than a vanity project, a Westminster, and dare I say imperial phallic symbol, that’s meant to shore up and hide Britain’s ever increasing global impotency.
Pot Shards: Fragments of a Life Lived in CIA, the White House, and the Two Koreas https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0990447103/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_wlbRzb07Z3S1Y
Safe enough Dennis Rodman & the Harlem Globetrotters play there
At least he must know the identity of James Church , author of the Inspector Oh novels from ‘The Corpse in the Koryo’ on wards that give a much more nuanced picture of North Korean society that anything we get from the Luegenpress
The US involvement in the Korean War being a United Nations effort was a sham. In the early days of the UN – before the development of the non-aligned bloc and the recovery from the war of the Soviet Union – the organisation was virtually a rubber stamp for US foreign policy. In no small measure due to the first Secretary-General, the Norwegian Trygve Lie.
Are we then to assume that Stalin was unaware of the consequences of continuing to abstain from participation in the Security Council whe nintervention in Korea was under discussion?
The Soviet Union was boycotting the UN at the time of the Security Council vote in favour of military intervention. The Soviet boycott was over the decision to give Taiwan/Formosa UN membership to the exclusion of Communist China.
The Soviet Union refused to participate in the security council discussions because in those days, China was represented by Taiwan.
An eloquent post indeed Craig
And now we have speculation over A possible North Korean H-Bomb.. (Even the first American H bomb had a yield 500 times more powerful than The Nagasaki Bomb ) What caused the 6.3-magnitude tremor in NK ?
This Brinkmanship is going too far
The British involvement in the Korean War was substantial, 12,000 men for a start.
I remember all the jingoism at the time – the Glorious Glosters etc. There were massive losses on both sides. Yet WWII was not very far back.
http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/battles/korea/
Sharp Ears “The British involvement in the Korean War was substantial, 12,000 men for a start.”
Conscription I believe.Who were defending themselves from?
Very good point Dave Lawton. It demonstrates most clearly why orders should not be obeyed.
Yes well done Craig for pointing this out. Most people in the West have no knowledge of the Korean war and the number of people killed.
In relation to the nuclear deterrent it has become purely a nuclear blackmail. Those who possess the weapon can blackmail others who do not have it and want to prevent them from having it. Those who voluntarily or were tricked or forced to give up the deterrent got clobbered or are vulnerable to being clobbered.
Absolutely.
Craig,
It seems quite simple to me once I reflect on the fate of Libya, once Gadhafi gave up his quest for a nuclear weapon:-
https://www.pambazuka.org/human-security/natos-neo-colonial-war-whither-international-law
So, the absence of global principle or adherence to international law by the ‘great powers’ gives much credence to what you have written. The stupidity of it all is that given the options:-
1. Solely use of conventional weapons; or
2. Use of nuclear weapons
all adds up to a lose-lose scenario. And then just listen to the rhetoric concerning a “solution” via use of military force. Really?
The problem with nuclear weapons is quite obvious. It is related to time, more than anything else. Eventually an accident is inevitable, that will set the lot off. The human race is incredibly lucky, that it hasn’t already destroyed all life on earth within my lifetime, and I’m not that old. The more of them there are, and the more lunatics in control, that have them, then the more inevitable, that we will destroy all life on earth, probably or about the same time as I would naturally drop dead. I think I am incredibly lucky to have got so old. As for most of the rest of you, you stand little chance to get as old as me, unless you have already done it. (if so congratulations)
These people in control, really are insane. A large number of Americans, actually believe, and want the final apocalypse, cos they think they are going to go straight to heaven. They think this whilst creating complete and utter hell for millions of people on earth.
There are solutions to this problem, but unfortunately none of the psychopathic cretins in control of governments want to adopt them.
We could for example convert all this incredibly dangerous nuclear waste and nuclear missile material to safe clean energy. The technology has already largely been developed..but with the current lunatics in control – not a chance. They want to blow up the world, and probably will anytime soon.
https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/187917-startup-gets-funding-for-its-molten-salt-nuclear-reactor-that-eats-radioactive-waste
“Transatomic is an MIT spin-off founded by Leslie Dewan and Mark Massie that aims to make nuclear power more efficient by focusing on smaller, high-efficiency plants that can be built in a factory and shipped by train to their destination. It’s not just the size that’s getting investors all hot and bothered. Transatomic has designed a system that can use different types of fuel, including materials that are discarded as waste from traditional nuclear plants. We might as well eke a little more power out of it instead of sealing it up in metal caskets for 100,000 years, right?”
Tony
Think its fairly obvious by now that the USA has become the primary rogue state of our times. It’s worth noting our own complicity in the ‘American Way’ – our acquiescence and subservience to the banking cartels two centuries ago provided the power and influence that drives the military/industrial/financial complex that sits behind most of our governments’ defence and foreign policy directives. Let’s not forget the central role Israel plays in the greater picture too. America is just pulling the trigger. The question is who is barking the orders – and what to do about it?
The short answer to the latter is probably nothing. Next week is the 16th anniversary of 9/11 – and by now, everyone and their grannie with a basic understanding of physics and engineering knows that all the official report into the atrocity is complete nonsense. The implications that the perpetrators of 9/11 are likely to have been another party other than Saudi nationals with purported links to Bin Laden, are beyond comprehension. If that were the case, where would that leave us? You would think that given all the recent scientific evidence, some investigative journalist would be rushing to copy… But nobody mentions it anymore. Identify those responsible for starting the war on terror sixteen years ago and you go a long way to discovering who is actually pulling the levers and once we do, we might just be able to set humanity on a new course. That would be worthwhile, wouldn’t it? If only we weren’t all inextricably and addictively interwoven into the very system we need to overthrow.
When you see the acquired wisdom displayed by some on the internet these days, you realise the impossibility of humanity’s plight.
Good for North Korea. Should keep the pennies rolling into BAe when the Saudi contracts dry up….
Spot on there.
Mark Russell September 3, 2017 at 18:21
Yep. Spot on. Don’t go with the Avatar, though.
I think more of us than ever before share your frustration at the determined stupidity and pointlessness of it all. Many thanks Craig.
We’ve seen a period of global destruction of cultures and civilisations by western European states and their colonies in the last five hundred years which though scaled up is directly comparable to the main Roman sequence of roughly 500 years of destruction, lies, excuses, justifications and subsequent hagiography. The similarities are really quite striking on so many levels.
J,
These ideas:-
http://www.historyextra.com/article/bbc-world-histories-magazine/why-did-west-dominate-so-long
might assist the discourse which you have invited.
Courtenay
Politicians like to keep it simple because the simplest of repeated narrative is the best method to fool the general population and keep the façade of freedom and apple pie for everyone going and rule the said bunch of blissfully ignorant lot of unwashed. The oligarchs and their lugenpresse just follow suit to cater for those of the unwashed whom did not tune into the tv news to educate these to think the correct thoughts and prevent those flighty unwashed from ever thinking for themselves.
How do you expect these cretinous operatives masquerading as philanthropists working hard to better the lives their “electorate” to come out and say; all that they (great unwashed) think they know is a pile of horse pucky and the reality is might is right and those with the might are making damn sure everyone else is far from ever getting the said might, with a view to keep living off the fat of the land and taxing the whole bally planet?
The fact that DPRK has come out and said they have tested their thermonuclear bomb is being greeted by scepticism, although the rest of the world other than the self appointed sheriff of the planet and his mates even intending to build a nuclear reactor is considered to be an egregious act of aggressions and war with plenty of bad press and literature about the dangers of any such endeavour.
Obviously the DPRK hydrogen bomb is not enough of a deterrent hence the torrent of pantomime fashion chorus: “oh no it isn’t a hydrogen bomb” is designed to keep the population indifferent in preparation for the possible and potential war with a fully unclear DPRK.
The sooner people stopped lying to themselves to convince themselves of the freedom of …….. (fill as applicable) and free trade* etc, the sooner perhaps they will understand the currency of the dynamic of the power; force multipliers and kinetic force, ie the bigger the calibre of guns the more convincing force majeure!
* Mr. T the Ginger C. has indicated that he will sanction anyone ever trading with DPRK, so much for the free trade cock and bull yarn, free trade is a kind of privilege to be bestowed by the purveyors of free trade upon the docile minions and and a concept of it own, in fact trade has many strings attached to it and is far from free, as any trader would know.
The scientists at their earthquake monitoring stations, in numerous parts of the world, will have known within seconds, whether the latest big bang was an earthquake, a conventional explosion, or a nuclear one (and if it was – what type). They used to leak. Maybe they still do. Different types of big bangs produce completely different graphs. If you are trained in such things you will know as soon as you see the graph. However, leaking the truth, could now be considered rather dangerous, and there is so much disinformation flooding the internet as well as The MSM, that without personal contact and trust, it is exceedingly difficult to find out who is telling the truth.
Nuclear Weapons are very real, and if North Korea can develop one, so can any tin pot state – so the chances of our survival are not great.
“Dr. Strangelove Final Scene”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-gb0mxcpPOU
Tony
The “tinpot states” already have – the UK for instance.
@ Tony_0pmoc September 3, 2017 at 19:34
‘….so can any tin pot state …’
What the heck is that supposed to mean – maybe a state which hasn’t in the past invaded and pillaged others, so as to be accepted at the ‘Luciferian Round Table’? Or a state which has the audacity to stand up to the US and it’s poodles?
Wisdom is dangerous in a world of fools
Scotland voted the most beautiful country in the world.
https://www.roughguides.com/gallery/most-beautiful-country-in-the-world/
It would be even more beautiful if we could remove the nukes.
I went there in 2013 and it was shite.
@ Anon1 September 3, 2017 at 21:48
Go there again, and tell them!!
Good Suggestion Paul
Hopefully you’ll never be back.
” In the 1950s the USA dropped 635,000 tonnes of bombs on North Korea including 35,000 tonnes of napalm. The US killed an estimated 20% of the North Korean population.” Conveniently leaving out North Korean INVADED South Korea . Human wave attacks by the North Koreans certainly added to the 20% of the population being killed. Better than 20% of the South Korean victims being killed.
There had been armed border incursions for years before the war by both North and South Korea on each other’s territory. No UN observer team ever saw evidence of an invasion by North Korea that precipitated war.
However just hours after the war started the South Korean government broadcast details of the South’s capture of the North Korean border town of Haeju. Difficult to square with the narrative that it was the North that had launched a major invasion.
Whatever the truth of how the war started it certainly has never been conclusively proved to have been started by North Korea.
It also has to be remembered that the South Korean regime was very corrupt and had many in it’s ranks who had collaborated with the Japanese occupation in WW2.
North Korea spent at least a year preparing for the invasion. Whoever fired the first shots in Ongjin within an hour North Korean forces attacked all along the 38th parallel which is evidence in itself of pre-planning. The North Koreans had 274 Soviet supplied tanks supported by heavy artillery and aircraft. The South Koreans had no tanks, anti-tank weapons, heavy artillery or fighter aircraft.
” It also has to be remembered that the South Korean regime was very corrupt and had many in it’s ranks who had collaborated with the Japanese occupation in WW2. ”
Are you saying this justified regime change?
@ Kempe September 3, 2017 at 22:53
Blimey, Kempe, you’re still around! There are several people awaiting responses from you on another ‘unmentionable’ thread.
It might also be remembered that the CIA set up and controlled the KCIA, which was responsible for horrendous Human Rights abuses for decades.
The US cares not a fig for S. Korea – it is just a chess-piece in their quest for a US-controlled NWO, perhaps not even based in the States, and perhaps not even dominated by Yanks.
And the US and cronies used chemical and biological weapons on North Korea – a charge they deny to this day, but against all the evidence. But then, as Mandy Rice-Davies would have said, ‘Well they would say that, wouldn’t they?
Truth never has been the States (or the Brits) strong suit.
Flattered that you’re all so desperate to hear from me. If you only you were to absorb any of the information I provide. Perhaps when I have more time.
I don’t suppose the Soviet Union cared too much about North Korea either and I doubt China has any empathy for the regime beyond being a useful buffer state.
Adam – I think that’s incorrect, an often repeated but simplistic view. Korea was one country until they got dragged in to the fall out from WW2. At the end of the war it was the allies and the UN who carved up the country between them. The US already had troops in what they claimed was South Korea by 1948, and this was rightly seen as a foreign occupation. Neither government, south or north accepted the other as legitimate, but the north was more cohesive at the time. Therefore, when the north Koreans moved forces into the south they did not regard it as an invasion because for them it was all one country, and the artificial division was forced on them and was illegitimate, and they were simply asserting their right to expel invaders. Of course it was the support for the north by Russia and China that prompted what was by now ‘The West’ to brand North Korea as ‘evil’ in order to justify the disgusting, horrific, relentless campaign of slaughter that ensued. Also bear in mind that the US had just mercilessly dropped two atomic bombs less than 500 miles away from their capital, which confirmed in their minds the unacceptability of US presence in their homeland.
At the time of the North’s invasion there were 200-300 American troops in South Korea so not really much of an occupation. That and defence cuts, diverting money from conventional forces to nuclear weapons, was why the North Koreans were able to invade most of the south so quickly. Incidentally carrying the usual massacre of intellectuals and government officials as they progressed.
The idea that you need an intercontinental ballistic missile to deliver a nuclear or any weapon of mass destruction is extremely naive. I don’t think such things should be discussed, so I won’t as it will just encourage the lunatics. A far better solution to this problem, would be to do the direct opposite of what the Americans are currently doing, which is seriously aggravating and threatening foreign countries, and closing down embassies.
Instead of firing people like Craig Murray, they should be employing a lot more people like him, and sending them to foreign countries to do a bit of diplomacy with the leaders over few bottles of scotch or mint tea.
Why the hell, would anyone want to control North Korea? It’s right next door to Russia, and even they can’t be bothered. Just leave them alone, or give them some nice old Cadillacs, and help them to grow some more of their own food. By continuously threatening them, causes a very large part of the population to be employed within the armed forces, that drastically effects their ability to grow food.
Why do they want to starve them to death? North Korea has never posed a threat to any country, until the Americans almost completely destroyed the country and a large percentage of its population.
Be nice to them instead, and then they wouldn’t pose a problem.
Tony
Craig makes reference to Trident.
Read In the Back p 38 of Private Eye Issue 1450 (August 11-24th) which details the shambles in the Navy’s operation of the nuclear powered submarines.
Instead of four submarines being available, – one at sea, one in reserve, one in training and one being repaired – there are only three. There have been leaks of radioactive gases at Vulcan, the reactor test site at Dounreay. Vulcan is operated by Rolls Royce with a small team from the RN.
It will not be until 2030 that four submarines are in operation.
The reactor of one of the submarines has been taken out and repairs costing £270m are being carried out. The core is being replaced. This has been going on for over three years when Hammond was the Defence Secretary, now Fallon as we all know.
What a farce. Everything had been kept schtum but the Scottish Environment Protection Agency got wind of the disaster. Not literally we trust!
Apparently residents in Faslane, Garelochead and local villages received ‘What To Do In a Radiation Emergency’ leaflets recently.
@ reel guid September 3, 2017 at 22:52
Yeh, but they’re nearer to Russia than London! (Only joshing!).
@ Sharp Ears September 3, 2017 at 20:35
Just as well it wasn’t the US EPA. At least the Scottish EPA seem fit for purpose (so far)!!
Timeline and location of Nuclear Tests Month by Month 1945-1998
https://youtu.be/WAnqRQg-W0k
14 mins. You can only weep.
Cheers for that Sharp Ears
Horrifically Hypnotic Video…
have you heard of / seen ‘ the Grave of The Fireflies ‘ Very sad amime –
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ObVvTnWI0_s
Here we go.
North Korea nuclear threat: Mattis warns of ‘massive military response’
3 mins ago
Pentagon chief James Mattis says any threat to the US or its allies by North Korea will be met with a “massive military response”.
His comments came after a national security briefing with President Donald Trump about the secretive communist state’s latest nuclear test.
/..
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-41140621
I’m completely Astonished (well not completely) he obviously isn’t stupid….but Boris Johnson of all people has actually said something sensible…
“‘Seoul will be vaporised’: Boris Johnson’s warning as US threatens to annihilate North Korea”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/09/03/boris-johnson-warns-donald-trump-taking-military-actions-against/
Well done Boris. I do like my London Bus pass, and my wife is even more delighted. She has actually seen him perform live, but it wasn’t intentional. He just happen to turn up, whilst she was shopping.
I thought his performance at the end of the Chinese Olympics hysterically funny…and I tend to like people like that, though I have never actually met him.
And yes, I did get used to be called Boris, which was a massive improvement on “Jimmy” (Saville)
Personally, I voted for Jeremy Corbyn..and I have met a bloke the spitt’n image of him, but he was much funnier.
Tony
“How did we get here?”
It would be worth looking at the emergence of the Truman Doctrine in response to the Greek civil war of 1946 – 1949. Why the USA went down the cold war route is the question. Good luck with that one.
In addition, the extent to which the use of A bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki were in part to bring the war with Japan to an early end because of the Soviet Union’s rapid progress against Japan in China. This (it seems to me) contributed to the development of the cold war between the USA and the SU.
@ FranzB September 3, 2017 at 23:28
Not to mention Britain’s unconscionable interference in the Greek ‘Civil War’ where they sided with those who had sided with Hitler, yet told the squaddies they were fighting ex- Nazis, when in fact they were fighting the Greek partisans.
At one time the Partisans were in a position to blow up the British HQ in Greece, having planted about a ton of explosives under it in the sewers, but the order to detonate never came, as Churchill happened to visit the HQ, and the Greek Partisan leadership did not want to kill one of the ‘Big Three’ ‘Allied’ leaders (big mistake!).
Now more than ever. There is a need for all nuclear weapons to be transferred form Scotland who doesn’t want it to England who wants to be Billy big balls .
It’s a target not a deterrent.
@ Neil lepick September 3, 2017 at 23:30
Right on!
Neil lepick,
Keep them. Us English certainly don’t want them. Why do you think they are in Scotland? The prevailing winds, rarely blow North to South.
One of our best friends, spent two weeks when she was a student nurse, providing nursing facilities and care to the Women of Greenham Common. Like my wife and me, she is from Lancashire too. She didn’t get paid for it. She just did it instead of going on holiday.
We both love her to bits. She is a total angel.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenham_Common_Women%27s_Peace_Camp
“Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp was a peace camp established to protest at nuclear weapons being sited at RAF Greenham Common in Berkshire, England. The camp began in September 1981 after a Welsh group, Women for Life on Earth, arrived at Greenham to protest against the decision of the British government to allow cruise missiles to be based there.[1] The first blockade of the base occurred in May 1982 with 250 women protesting, during which 34 arrests were made”
“The first instance of the Greenham Common Peace Camp came about when, on September 1981, 36 women chained themselves to the base fence in protest against nuclear weapons.[2] On 29 September 1982, the women were evicted by Newbury District Council but set up a new camp nearby within days.[4] In December 1982, 30,000 women responded to a chain letter sent out and joined hands around the base at the Embrace the Base event.[2]
The camp became well-known when on 1 April 1983, about 70,000 protesters formed a 14-mile (23 km) human chain from Greenham to Aldermaston and the ordnance factory at Burghfield.[5][6] The media attention surrounding the camp “prompted the creation of other peace camps at more than a dozen sites in Britain and elsewhere in Europe”.[1] Another encircling of the base occurred in December 1983, with 50,000 women attending. Sections of the fence were cut and there were hundreds of arrests.[2][7]”
Tony
Keep them Tony? No thanks. Trident subs should be removed from Scotland and tied up alongside HOC on the Thames. The warheads stored in those tunnels under the white cliffs of Dover. Observe how that will concentrate the minds of the local populations regarding the health and safety of their families etc.. Here in communities around Faslane we have had our share. The trundling of nuclear lorry loads through and around the City of Glasgow must cease. Scotland does not want them.
At the moment I am camping in Dorset with my wife, son and grandson. Its not cold, but a bit windy. The full moon rising over Chesil Beach was awesome as the sunset. Couldn’t agree with you more. He is 18 months old, and we want great grandchildren. xx Tony
I.am useless with mobile phones. How do I press send!
If the US was in a position to stop NK it would have done so already.
The question is are China and Russia combined now in a position to face off the world bully and it’s lackeys?
Will the world money elite allow the puppets in Washington to spoil their game?
As the British elite’s attempt to destroy and remove Germany from “their” World Trade in 1914 ended in disaster and eventual vassal (to the US) status, will The US attack on their Chinese and Russian rivals (NK is merely the proxy) end similarly with rearrangement of the world not in their (US) favour?
It would be nice to believe, that all this is yet another fake psyop, and that North Korea really hasn’t developed a Hydrogen Bomb. However, there are some people who have posted religiously on The Internet for many years, who I have enormous respect for, because they are quite obviously independent, and very occasionally go into a sulk, if their credentials are attacked, or their original work, shamelessly copied, by someone much closer to the MSM who is getting paid for it.
Such a person is “B” I think Bernhard is probably German or Dutch, and I have been very close to sending him 10 Euros or was it US Dollars or £’s? I sometimes get in trouble trying to do this, and my bank once locked my account, when I tried to send Tom Feeley of Information Clearing House $10. I phoned my bank up and asked – why have you stopped me sending $10 to Tom Feeley in The USA. Yes it was me. My account has not been hacked. Tom still never got his $10, and I have even more respect for him than Bernhard…
Bernhard seems convinced its real. You should read him, and send him some money. He very rarely asks…and if he is in Europe rather than the USA, your Bank Account probably won’t get frozen.
http://www.moonofalabama.org/2017/09/no-peanut-north-korea-tests-a-thermonuclear-device-continues-to-press-for-negotiations.html
Tony
@ Tony_0pmoc September 3, 2017 at 23:58
Glad you tried to send money to ICH; respect!
Cheers for that Link Tony
I shall try to donate
I cheer no bombs but appreciate the logic of the argument. It is an old argument among nuclear weapons’ enthusiasts, the deterrence argument, except as you say, nobody with nuclear weapons wants to see other countries who have not got them acquire them.
What is just as bad historically as the mass murder of North Koreans was the division of a formally united country. As with the carve-up of Africa by the Great Powers straight lines cut through lives and separated families (in Africa it was tribes and tribal territories). Divide and rule springs to mind! The 38th parallel was the US straight line through Korea. It rules from south of the line. Such carving-up is heartless and there are many South Koreans who wish to unite with the North. There are many islanders in the Korean island of Jeju (in which hundreds were killed by US forces) who do not want a US naval base there. But what choice do they have?
Jeju Island is fast becoming the latest trampling of inhabitants after the Chagos islands to further US military domination of the world.
https://sputniknews.com/asia/201703171051697596-south-korea-military-base/
As a professed Christian (baptised and confirmed in the Catholic Church, though no longer a Catholic – I believe the Vatican is a cesspit) I should not say this, but yes, I am glad N. Korea is increasing it’s military ability to resist attack via it’s new apparently successful hydrogen bomb.
North Korea has no ambitions to attack any other country, though they would like to reunite Korea (as do many in South Korea).
Who should they invade? China? Russia? Japan? Guam? Leave me out!
Compare that with the innumerable invasions of sovereign states or other countries by the US, Brits, French, Belgians, Germans, Spaniards, Portuguese, Norwegians, Romans etc.
Yet they are the ‘Big Bad Rogues’. Says who? Up yours, NATO.
The siege of Dier Ezzor appears to have just been lifted by the SAA whilst according to the torygraph, Britain has quietly stopped training ‘moderate’ rebels on the Jordanian border.
A few days ago di Mistura was on the Today programme interviewed by John Humphrys in his usual garrulous sneering style. di Mistura said that this would happen by October . All that Humphreys was concerned about is how we should still get rid of Assad to achieve peace in Syria. Nobody told him that this demand has been dropped quietly and that it really will be up to the Syrian people to decide. Later he was joined in mutual commiseration by Jeremy Bowen, two sad BBC staff bemoaning their lost dream of regime change. Naturally I complained to the BBC. Awaiting usual answer.
The slugs of the earth, the slime, have infiltrated us, and there is nothing much we can do about it, except maybe, very subtley, try and point them out. Craig Murray is very good at this, so despite the fact that I disagree, with many of his political views, I am very much in agreement – with a lot of his other views, and what he has actually done. I still think he’s a bit of hero, and I wish him well.
I really think he should move back to England though, or alternatively take Elocution lessons in The Edinburgh accent. It is actually very close to the Queen’s English, with a slight acute Scottish twang. I have a few friends who naturally do it very well, but they were born there.
Its quite obvious the SNP hierarchy don’t like him very much, and that is hardly likely to change.
But he would be very welcome back in England.
He should stop beating about the bush and join Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party.
They might even find him a job as an MP.
Tony
Seconded.