Regarding the current North Korea missile crisis, President Trump’s teleprompter-led address to the United Nations General Assembly was provocative, and perhaps counter-productive in terms of achieving peace and stability in the Far East region. Some will even say that it ranks as one of the most embarrassing moments in the history of American international diplomacy.
This post was published at 21st Century Wire on SEPTEMBER 26, 2017.
As tensions between North Korea and the U. S. continue to escalate with every Trump tweet and subsequent response by Kim Jong-Un, National Security Adviser H. R. McMaster said that the U. S. has prepared “four or five different scenarios” for how the crisis with North Korea will be resolved, adding ominously that ‘some are uglier than others.”
McMaster declined to comment on the extent to which North Korea’s deeply-buried nuclear program was vulnerable to U. S. military strikes — an assessment made of Iran before the 2015 framework agreement designed to stop its nuclear program.
He acknowledged that every military option assumed a reaction from North Korea that endangered South Korean citizens, adding it’s ‘foremost in our minds.’ That danger ‘is certainly taken into consideration in all our planning and war gaming, table-top exercise efforts,’ McMaster said.
Still, while McMaster said the threat from Pyongyang is ‘much further advanced’ than anticipated and the Pentagon said the president has a ‘deep arsenal’ to draw upon if needed, Bloomberg quoted U. S. officials who dismissed North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho’s comment that President Donald Trump’s warnings to Pyongyang at the United Nations amounted to a declaration of war.
That said, both governments have said ‘all options’ are on the table in dealing with the tensions. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, speaking in India on Tuesday, said the U. S. wants to keep engagement with North Korea in the diplomatic realm as long as possible. But on Monday Ri escalated tensions with his remark that North Korea would be within its rights to shoot down U. S. warplanes flying in international airspace. That startled markets, coming just days after the Pentagon sent planes near North Korea’s border.
This post was published at Zero Hedge on Sep 26, 2017.
Natural disasters are coming fast and furious around the globe. About 6,000 people have been evacuated from the Pacific island nation of Vanuatu because of an erupting volcano.
Although the Monaro volcano on Ambae island has been active since 2005, however, sudden activity on Saturday raised fears of a major eruption. The director of Vanuatu’s National Disaster Management Office Shadrack Welegtabit said on Tuesday that Vanuatu would declare an emergency on the island after the volcano’s activity measure was raised to Level Four for the first time over the weekend.
Vanuatu is located about one-quarter of the way from Australia to Hawaii. It’s made up of 80 islands, about 65 of which are inhabited, and is home to around 280,000 people. The nation is considered one of the world’s most prone to natural disasters, with a half-dozen active volcanoes as well as regular cyclones and earthquakes. It rests on the Pacific’s ‘Ring of Fire,’ the arc of seismic faults around the Pacific Ocean where earthquakes and volcanoes are common.
Welegtabit also said those villagers had been moved into schools and community halls in the island’s eastern and western regions and that authorities have already planned to send a ship to the island filled with water, food, and other supplies to help those people who had been displaced. That ship is due to arrive on Wednesday.
This post was published at shtfplan on September 26th, 2017.
As relations between the US and Russia continue to strain, US officials are preparing restrictions for Russian military flights over American territory, permitted by the Treaty on Open Skies, a 2002 agreement involving 34 countries that allows signatories to conduct aerial surveillance of military installations and other sensitive sites, according to the Wall Street Journal. Tensions over the treaty intensified over two days in early August when, as we reported, a Russian jet flew over several US cities including Washington DC and Bedminster NJ, while President Donald Trump was staying at the Trump National Golf Club in the town.
The Open Skies Treaty has been in effect since 2002, and has enabled more than 1,200 flights meant to help verify that signatories are in compliance with arms control agreements, according to the US Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA). Notably, under the freedom permitted by Open Skies, the Russian plane was authorized to enter P-56, the highly secure airspace surrounding the White House.
But now, predictably, US military officials suspect that Russia is trying to hide something from the prying eyes of spy planes flying overhead: Recently, the Kremlin imposed restrictions on flights over Kaliningrad, Russia’s Baltic Sea exclave, which US officials believe is host to a cache of sophisticated weapons, according to the WSJ.
While the treaty allows for a per-flight range of 5,500 kilometers (3,418 miles), Russia has enforced a ‘sub-limit’ of 500 kilometers for flights over Kaliningrad. Since it requires roughly 1,200 kilometers to cover the entirety of Kaliningrad during an Open Skies flight, according to Pentagon officials. This restriction compels treaty members to reallocate two flights that would otherwise be used to observe other portions of Russia.
This post was published at Zero Hedge on Sep 26, 2017.
Hillary Clinton’s book tour for What Happened? has become nothing more than the blame game she started seconds after she lost the presidential election to Donald Trump. Now she’s blaming women, and oddly enough, this isn’t the first time she disparaged female voters.
In an interview with MSNBC’s Joy Reid on Saturday, bitter presidential candidate, and loser, Hillary Clinton pointed her finger at a peculiar group of women who must surely have no respect for themselves: those who didn’t vote for the corrupt democrat. When asked what she thought of women wearing T-shirts or buttons deriding her during the election, Hillary said, ‘When I see women…and it’s predominantly white women… I won women; I lost white women, although I got more white women’s votes than President Obama did in 2012…but when I see women doing that, I think, ‘Why are they disrespecting themselves?”
So if you have decided to wear political gear that is not in support of Hillary Clinton and you’re a woman, you’ve got no self-respect.
This post was published at The Daily Sheeple on SEPTEMBER 25, 2017.
Looking at the global political landscape over the last month, two trends are becoming more apparent.
The infamous military and economic power at America’s disposal is declining, whereas in the multipolar field, an acceleration has occurred in the creation of a series of infrastructures, mechanisms and procedures to contain and limit the negative effects of America’s declining unipolar moment. This series of three articles will focus firstly on the military aspect of these ongoing changes, then the economics at play, and finally, how and why smaller countries are transitioning from the unipolar camp to the multipolar field.
***
One of the most tangible consequences of the decline of US military power can be observed in the Syrian conflict. Over the past few weeks, the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) and its allies have completed the historic and strategic liberation of Deir ez-Zor, a city besieged for more than five years by Islamists belonging to Al Qaeda and Daesh. The focus has now shifted to the oilfields south of the liberated city, with a frantic rush by both the US-supported Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and the SAA to free territories still held by Daesh. The final goal is to claim Syria’s resources and strengthen a weak US position (the US is not even part of the Astana peace talks) in future negotiations concerning the country’s future. To understand how much the US dream of partitioning Syria is failing, one only need note repeated US failures as seen in the liberation of Aleppo and then Deir Ez-Zor, and now the crossing of the Euphrates river. In spite of American intimidation, threats, and sometimes even direct aggression, the Syrian army continued to work against Daesh in the province of Deir Ez-Zor, advancing on oil rich sites. Thanks to the protection given by the Russian Federation Air Force during the conflict, Damascus has obtained a protective umbrella necessary to withstand attempts by the US of balkanize the country.
This post was published at Zero Hedge on Sep 26, 2017.
There German election was on par with the global trend that is rising up against the establishment as we have known it. Angela Merkel has been accused of weakening her respective coalition partner. The election result of the Bundestag election shows that not only the SPD has to worry about losing ground, but the Union of the CDU and the CSU in Bavaria has been substantially weakened.
Merkel has always created a coalition by incorporating the key program points of the other parties into the Union. However, the election saw the Union lost nearly 9%, which is a historic defeat. In addition, there is a real rift emerging now with the CSU in Bavaria, where the CSU fell below 40% for the first time. In both cases, this has been caused by the refugee issue Merkel has tried to pretend is not a crisis.
This post was published at Armstrong Economics on Sep 26, 2017.
The Roman Empire never doubted that it was the defender of civilization. Its good intentions were peace, law and order. The Spanish Empire added salvation. The British Empire added the noble myth of the white man’s burden. We have added freedom and democracy.
– Garet Garrett, Rise of Empire
The first step in creating Empire is to morally justify the invasion and occupation of another nation even if it poses no credible or substantial threat. But if that’s the entering strategy, what is the exit one?
One approach to answering is to explore how Empire has arisen through history and whether the process can be reversed. Another is to conclude that no exit is possible; an Empire inevitably self-destructs under the increasing weight of what it is – a nation exercising ultimate authority over an array of satellite states. Empires are vulnerable to overreach, rebellion, war, domestic turmoil, financial exhaustion, and competition for dominance.
In his monograph Rise of Empire, the libertarian journalist Garet Garrett (1878 – 1954), lays out a blueprint for how Empire could possibly be reversed as well as the reason he believes reversal would not occur. Garrett was in a unique position to comment insightfully on the American empire because he’d had a front-row seat to events that cemented its status: World War II and the Cold War. World War II America already had a history of conquest and occupation, of course, but, during the mid to late 20th century, the nation became a self-consciously and unapologetic empire with a self-granted mandate to spread its ideology around the world.
This post was published at Zero Hedge on Sep 25, 2017.
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