What are we to do About North Korea?

 

It would have to have been Kim Jong-un and North Korea who would be the initial test between President Trump and a leader perfectly willing to push their luck beyond all reason. What we have here is a brewing cauldron about to blow its top. North Korea is pressing to get something for nothing and President Trump always has to receive something in order to make a deal. The problem for Kim Jong-un is his nation has nothing to offer other than peace. President Trump believes he already has peace and sees Kim Jong-un as a petulant child throwing a temper tantrum in the super market in order to get his parents to buy him some candy. President Trump is ready to deal some tough love to put Kim Jong-un in his place. Further, President Trump is not going to make any deal where he gets nothing and gives away anything, that’s the title of his book, “The Art of the Deal,” where giving up something for nothing is considered a fool’s game. Meanwhile, playing on the North Korean side of this threat are Russia and China with both preventing the use of the Security Council and the United Nations to calm things down from the current roiling boil. China and Russia have refused to defuse the situation and sit Kim Jong-un down and inform him that his screaming and making noise waving his arms around with a loaded gun in one hand is not working with President Trump and that Trump is a different kind of President than the ones North Korea has dealt with before. Instead, they are allowing this to reach a critical point and for what reason is not clear, but there are theories.

 

The one thing that everybody may be counting on is the claim by Secretary of Defense General Mattis, who said that any war in Korea would be a catastrophe. But on the other side of the coin there is what United States Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley said on Wednesday when she stated that the U.S. is prepared to defend itself from the North Korean threat. Then there were the recent war games with South Korea and Japan where the United States fielded three super-carriers in the waters around Japan and within striking distance of North Korea. There was also the fly-by of within range of North Korea of a B-1B heavy bomber over the Korean Peninsula. Further, there have been B-52’s Nuclear Capable Heavy Bombers now stationed in South Korea along with stealth F-35 Fighter Jets with new floating of plans of B-1 Bombers also being stationed in South Korea in the near future. Much of this brought the area to the brink back in September while the build-up was done as much as a show of force and to have assets in place for the then up-coming war games. Even with time, the area has far from cooled as the latest has reported Kim Jong-un having tested an ICBM, which experts have claimed, is capable of striking the West Coast of the mainland United States. Military analysts have stated that the United States would be unable to prevent any nuclear or conventional attacks on South Korea or Japan and would be relegated to staging some retribution for the possible destruction of these allies and the deaths of United States service personnel stationed in these countries. Some have questioned the wisdom of staging such a retribution as it would do little to save the American allies which would have been decimated even if Kim Jong-un simply used conventional weapons and with nuclear weapons he could destroy both Japan and South Korea within minutes of ordering the strikes, and the United States would be left with the choice of escalation or conversation.

 

North Korea with South Korea and Japan

 

We would not pretend to understand or be capable of accurately predicting what reaction President Trump might take. What we can safely predict is testing President Trump with the wholesale destruction of South Korea, Japan or both would not likely end well for anybody. Such a provocation would very conceivably result in the rapid destruction of everything between the Korean Demilitarized Zone on the 38th Parallel north to the border with China. The North Koreans have made their position on unification of the Korean Peninsula clear from the very start of the armistice setting up the DMZ signed on July 27, 1953, in P’anmunjŏm of the North Hwanghae Province just above the delineated Armistice Line. Their idea of any unified Korea, they insist, would be simply the spread of their rule over the entire peninsula and the surrender of South Korea at which point all the wealth and industry of South Korea would enhance the Kim family’s iron grip on Korea and be used to produce weapons of mass destruction with which to threaten the rest of the world. The leadership of North Korea are only willing to accept one end to the standoff on what they consider their peninsula with South Korea simple being an American colonial outpost imposed upon them through the United Nations and deceptions sold there. This is a viewpoint President Trump had best get his arms around as it is the exact same view Hamas and the Palestinian Authority (or PLO) have concerning Israel seeing it as an American colony forced upon them through the United Nations and deceptions sold there. This was also the view of the North Vietnamese towards South Viet Nam, which originally may have been a French colony, but soon became an American colony imposed upon the people of Viet Nam. Russia under Putin sees many of the East European nations as stolen and made into American colonies and are a result of American Imperialism which is as much a cultural imperialism as it is a military one.

 

What is the solution to such view in which many see the world as being in a number of different camps all against the same enemy, American Imperialism? The Islamists view Europe as a rotting corpse being held up by the United States who treats them as if they were her colonies being kept protected through the NATO enforced American Imperialism. China sees the only threat to their spread into the South China Sea as an attempt by the United States to dictate to the Chinese what they are permitted to do and what is forbidden them because the American Imperialist views the entire world as theirs to define as they please and further that the Americans are simply looking out for their imperialist protections of Japan and the Philippines. It’s only a matter of time before Maduro claims that his opposition in Venezuela is nothing more than the fascist American Imperialist interests funneling funds to prop up those fighting against a better future for Venezuela and keeping it as an American colony and furthering American Imperialism. We have witnessed similar language coming from Fidel Castro against President Kennedy and will possibly hear the same from Raoul Castro should Trump prevent United States wealth from flowing into the Cuban economy propping up the Communist government in Cuba. All the other uses of the claim that American Imperialism is threatening some dictatorial kleptocracy, such as the bankrupt government of North Korea which still manages to grant Kim Jong-un and his closest compadres an extravagant and lavish life-style with grand feasts and banquets and celebrations as well as paying for their nuclear and missile programs while his people starve living off the scraps from his tables, are the simple fare of a world in revolt thrashing against what they all view as their lack of power against the democratic industrialized information age world against which they feel helpless. They know that there are weak points in this American Goliath, this behemoth which spreads its culture, music, movies, television, dances and dress, especially blue jeans, around the world robbing others of their ethnicity and culture often rooted in centuries passed. For Islam the time was a millennia ago when their thrusts into the world ended and their dream of world conquest, well, that did not die and they know that if they are to succeed in that conquest they must do so now. This is why Iran, whose glory was the Persian Empire which fell to the Greeks and the Greek culture today is represented to them by the American culture where there exists, in their eyes, a people fully debauched and ravaged by sexual misconduct and an overly sexually based culture robbed of any moral character. This is not the United States heartland but is the picture most often painted in film and music and is the impression they see. Iran has a plan to bring down the American cultural machine. North Korea has a plan to bring down the American cultural machine.

 

They shared this plan with one another and are both using the identical playbook and are cooperating with one another sharing technology and testing missiles and nuclear devices for each other. Currently Iran cannot test a nuclear device without it being detected and then President Trump having everything he would need to sanction Iran back to the Stone Age, trading-wise with Europe as well as the United States. Europe would complain as they trade with Iran and have been making hay since President Obama opened Iran up to the world and freed them from the crippling sanction they had been under since they took the American Embassy and kept the staff hostage back in 1979 during the Presidency of Jimmy Carter. When President Obama opened Iran to the world allowing them free trading with Europe as well as the United States, the industrial world celebrated making deals right and left. President Trump has rolled back some of the freedoms placing sanctions on Iran for missile tests. A nuclear test by Iran would seal the deal and they would be cut off and anybody risking trading with Iran would face the wrath of United States sanctions. Thus, Iran cannot test their own nuclear devices, but North Korea is free to test anything they wish, they are already sanctioned to the hilt. Thus, the recent North Korean nuclear tests have shown very different signatures than their earlier tests. North Korea claims this is because they are using a new type of device, which is quite different than their earlier tests. They are telling the truth as the newer test devices are of Iranian design and are made for one kind of explosion, an EMP device which has a yield of approximately fifteen to twenty-five kilotons but sends a massive EMP pulse which would destroy most electronic devices over a large region depending on the location of the detonation. The prime location for maximum area of effect would be approximately five-hundred miles over the center of the target. Such a device could, if exploded over the central United States, destroy much of the electrical grid and pose a direct threat to the survival of much of the American population. This is the design for an attack by both Iran and North Korea. This is the point where the two nations differ, North Korea has developed longer range missiles even to their recent claim to have developed an ICBM. Iran has largely medium range ballistic missiles with a far lesser range but have perfected launching them from freighter ships which disguise the launcher covering it with shipping containers.

 

The Iranian attack would launch several devices from such ships off the three coasts, Atlantic, Pacific and Gulf of Mexico with each EMP device being exploded as the missiles reached apogee destroying the coasts electrical grids and making the major coastal cities into a dark place without power until the transformers could be replaced. This process could easily take as much as a decade. North Korea has a completely different approach as they have satellite launch capability which means they can strike anywhere on the globe they decide to target. The only item would be how long it would take their satellite to get into position. They proved this as they already have a satellite circling the globe that passes over the United States as well as the rest of the planet many times each day. What this satellite does remains unknown and for anybody knows, it is a circling nuclear warhead or simply a large chunk of orbiting proof of an ability. This satellite does have an interesting orbit as it circles from the poles and comes across the United States often orbiting from the south through the gulf and continuing through the center of the nation. What is interesting about this trajectory is it exactly matches the orbit developed by the Soviet Union and China to defeat the NORAD defense grid. The Soviets and the Chinese realized that the United States NORAD grid faced out from the east and west coasts and continued north across northern Canada and Alaska but had almost no coverage facing south. This information was shared with the North Koreans by China and the Soviet Union and they shared the information with Iran. Fortunately, for the United States, Iran is not yet capable of implementing such a strike, but North Korea is capable, as their satellite has proven.

 

That brings us back to where the standoff stands today with Kim Jong-un waving his missiles in everybody’s face almost as if daring them to jump if they feel froggy. They do not fear the United States because they believe, quite possibly rightfully, that the United States would do nothing if both South Korea and Japan disappeared under a barrage of conventional and nuclear missiles tomorrow. If that is the case and North Korea tests the promises of America and is not destroyed immediately thereafter, that will be a lesson every nation will understand and the world will collapse into inevitable warfare from every angle. There will no longer be any threat of consequence for attacking whomever you please, as long as you leave the United States alone. That may have been the real lesson of the two World Wars that the United States never entered until she herself felt she was attacked. World War I it was the murder of her citizens on the Lusitania and World War II it took Pearle harbor, so maybe the United States is no more than the threat of power and never the use of power unless in her own interests. That would be a wake up call to every psychotic dictator and power hungry psycho on the planet to realize the United States talks the talk but won’t walk the walk unless it is in her defense or her own interests. Of course one can never tell quite what might tickle the interests of either the CIA or the State Department, which somehow always means that the Department of Defense will be close behind to finish the dirty work. Things appear to be heating up in the kitchen and we can only hope that Kim Jong-un does not plan on stirring things up just to see what shakes out, the world might not enjoy the answers. There is one thing assured, should Kim Jong-un explode anything in the mix, the world will be watching what follows with great interests, both the friends and enemies of America as they all have an interest in the outcome.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

Middle East Wrap Up for Entering August

 

Turkey is as good a place to start as any. Turkey is in the midst of a purge which would make Stalin proud. Over six thousand judges and lawyers as well as military ranking officers and others whom Recep Tayyip Erdoğan decided might not be with his Islamization of Turkey. Turkey is now a lost cause and will now, unless something completely unforeseen should disrupt Erdoğan and his plans, slowly sink under the yoke of Islamism. The military, which Mustafa Kemal Atatürk originally tasked with protecting the realm and preserving the secular rule in Turkey has been completely cleansed of its officers dedicated to their Constitutional tasks and Turkey no longer has a savior. When the military could have easily replaced Erdoğan and his Justice and Development Party early in his rule and were prevented by the European Union (EU) and President George W. Bush and were continually prevented by President Obama and the EU, it led to this purge which was required before President Obama left office. It was recognized that should Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton, the upper hand held by Erdoğan may pass from the possible. That is why Erdoğan knew his time was limited and the recent coup gave him the cover to execute his planned purge. Whether the coup was a false flag executed by Erdoğan or Fethullah Gulen and his loyal followers saw the purge coming and acted hastily, which the numerous failures to control critical infrastructure intimated, brought forth a perfect storm allowing for the witch hunt. Turkey has fallen to the Islamist side and into darkness from which it may never return. The sooner NATO and EU member states realize such and divorce themselves from Turkey, the better.

 

 

Moving on to Syria and we are facing the cauldron of discontent. The forces are almost as diverse as could be imagined. There is the swath controlled by the Islamic State with al-Nusra and other al-Qaeda associated forces, Bashir al-Assad representing the Alawite who are Shia and backed by Iranian forces including IRGC (Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps) as well as Hezballah terror elite from Lebanon and having Russian support in defense of their Mediterranean fleet bases being far forward and independent of the Black Sea fleet bases in the Crimea which could have been choked by Turkey and their control of the Bosporus. Syria, as the refugee situation has proven, is no longer a state in control of its territory and unable to enforce any form of legal control or sense of order. Continuing to Iraq and the situation also includes Islamic State and both Sunni and Shia forces in dispute over territory. The one constant in both north-eastern Syria and Northern Iraq has been the Kurdish Militias, Peshmerga, who have proven to be some of the best equipped and motivated against the Islamic State defeating them regularly and even regaining land and cities previously overrun. These forces would be best used to fight the Islamic State except that the Turkish Air Force has claimed to be bombing the Islamic state front lines when in reality they have bombed the Kurds more regularly than any other targets. Assisting the Kurds and even granting them a homeland as was promised them at the end of World War I before oil was struck around Mosul caused the British to renege and give the promised Kurdish lands to their chosen ruler of Iraq in exchange for the oil rights. The British were not exactly the most dependable when it came to promises made during World War I, just as the Jewish State of Israel which was delayed and directly prevented from establishing a homeland for the Jews at the start of World War II when the Jews desperately could have used a safe home to which to flee Germany and the advance of the Reich and the gas chambers. During these years the British limited Jewish emigration to seventy-five-thousand a year allowing less than thirty-thousand at best under the pretense that they required time to process applicants.

 

Jordan is one of the few breaths of fresh air. The Monarchy has permitted further democrazation and is granting more power to the Parliament over time and had the support of most of the populace. The horrific and public execution of the captured Jordanian pilot and the bold reaction of their monarch to the provocation won the King great favor and admiration from the Jordanian public. Jordan is one of the few stable republics in the Middle East. Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the Gulf States are relatively stable even if much of the stability is due to the Saudi Military which was utilized to quickly put down the Arab Spring revolt in Bahrain. The sole problem in the Arabian Peninsula is with Yemen which again relies on arms and IRGC support. The war became sufficient of a threat that Saudi Troops soon backed by Egyptian air support were required to prevent a total collapse of the government from Iranian insurrection. This had prevented Iranian control of the Bab el-Mandeb Strait which controls the southern passage of the Red Sea into the trade routes to Africa and Asia.

 

This brings us to Northern Africa where we can begin with Tunisia. There has been some discontent with the government and the lack of positive economic improvement. This was partially defused with new elections and things appear to be moving ever so slowly in a positive direction. The nation is still in the grasp of what might be called a malaise similar to the Carter years in the United States but hope exists and the elections have been judged to be open and fair. Tunisia is one country where there exists a degree of hope going forward. This is especially true considering their neighbor, Libya. Libya is a nation in ruins with several disparate warlords controlling separate areas and the supposed central government ruling a central area of the capital city and little else. Libya will be a ruin for the next several decades and might never again operate as a single nation and instead operate as several fiefdoms with constant clashes and wars over territories never again forming any singular rule.

 

Algeria has yet to collapse but is also teetering on financial implosion and has several challenges which could at any time explode causing universal unrest resulting in another failed state similar to Libya next door. Algeria is one to watch as to the direction they may end up heading as things are uncertain at best. The rest of the nations bordering northern Africa have a completely different problem as many are divided north from south. In nations such as Nigeria, Cameroon and their neighbors the Islamic forces control much of the northern areas with Boko Haram operating against the Christian and Animist southern regions. These nations are all on the verge of full blown civil wars. Unrest between Islamic force and Christian and Animist populations exist all the way eastward to the division between Sudan and Southern Sudan. These clashes also reach to Kenya which borders Eretria and Somalia where Islamic warlords control separate areas and also are waging a war with Kenya and other neighboring nations in an attempt to spread Islam into Central Africa. The Kenyan Army thus far has held their own but without outside aid they will eventually lose ground as they get worn down. This is an area where the Western Powers could do some good along with Nigeria, Cameroon, South Sudan and the other nations thus threatened.

 

The next stop is Egypt which is a crucial and unusual place. The most prestigious Islamic Studies Institution, al-Azhar University is located in Egypt’s Capital City of Cairo and thus shares the seat of power in Egypt. Egyptian President Sisi has twice addressed the faculty and ruling Imams of al-Azhar University expressing the crucial need for an Islamic reformation allowing for Islam to coexist with other religions and not be based on world conquest and the destruction of all which is not Islamic. Though he has not mentioned some of the cultural crimes such as the destruction of the Buddhas of Bamiyan which were exploded by Taliban forces as they were judged an offense to Islam and idolatrous, President Sisi has challenged the Imams of al-Azhar University to spend effort in retrospective evaluation of Islam and to seek a less violent and strident path (see below). President Sisi of Egypt is true and honest in his hopes to lead a reformation of Islam but is facing an uphill battle which may at some point cost him his life. His position is every bit as treacherous as was that of Anwar Sadat for making a peace with Israel. He too saw the need for change and President Sisi has taken up the challenge which will be required if Islam is to survive as eventually the world will rise up and that would result in the termination of Islam as a world religion possibly leaving small bands scattered about the Middle East.

 

Buddhas of Bamiyan before pictured on the left and
being destroyed with explosives by Taliban forces on the right

 

Moving to Iran, as far eastward as our travels will take us, and here we find the appearance of a representative democracy which appears to be functioning with only minimal upheaval as is witnessed elsewhere including right next door in Iraq. On closer inspection, a different reality becomes evident. The elections for the Parliament are a complete and total sham where the candidates must find approval before they, or even their party, are permitted to field candidates. Even then the candidates are vetted by a higher level of government. The reality is the government is a dictatorship and the office of President provides Iran with the appearance of normalcy. The truth be told, the Supreme Leader is the nation and the sole limitation on his power is the Council of Elders, the same body which selected Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to replace Supreme leaders Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini after his death. Since the 1979 revolution aided by United States President Jimmy Carter under the premise that Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini was necessarily a desirable and principled leader being an Islamic Holy Man, such misplaced logic has been indicative of American Middle East policy proving their presumed knowledge of Islamic culture and designs are woefully inadequate to even begin to formulate a cohesive and supportive strategy which would bring some semblance of peace to the region. The Supreme Leader is accountable to the Council of Elders which is constituted by elderly and respected Shiite clerics, Imams, who assure that the Quran is followed and that all the Islamic codes and other orders derived from the Quran are in fact obeyed and do indeed limit even the Supreme Leader. The reality is Iran is an oligarchy based on a religious hierarchy. Like other Islamic sects, the Shiites too seek to lead the final Caliphate which will unite the world under the banner of Islam and all will bear witness and surrender to Allah and his true heir in a lineage derived directly from Mohammad. Many Iranians believe in the Twelfth Imam who will rise from his solitude and hiding place from a well in Qom. Once the Twelfth Imam has risen, all Islam will unite behind Shia Islam and complete the struggle in a world war of unimaginable death, destruction and pure horrors. In the end there will stand the Twelfth Imam, the Mahdi, victorious and ruling over a unified world under Islam.

 

One of the serious problems with this interpretation is that the Twelfth Imam cannot appear until the world is already soaked in blood and a great conflagration engulfs the globe. The Shiite End-Times depiction is one of horrific terror and warfare engulfing the entirety of the planet. Some descriptions are so over-the-top that they appear to describe an all out nuclear exchange by every nuclear armed nation either against their main adversary or a broader attack on as many nations as possible. Some experts have claimed that just such a conflagration, with EMP pulse weapons destroying entire electrical grids and all the systems which rely upon them, would set civilization back centuries and cause the death of over three-fourths of the population in affected areas. It is also known that both Iran and North Korea have jointly worked on just such a weapon, a super EMP weapon using a heretofore unknown use for a hydrogen bomb as the driver of their EMP device. The power of such a device exploded four to five hundred miles above the center of any continent would disrupt and destroy virtually ever electronic device including those not even powered at the time of the strike. Virtually, if not actually all, any large generator with their massive windings would melt down into a shorted blob of copper and become useless. The United States and Europe are woefully unprepared neither to prevent such an attack nor to have hardened their electrical grids and specifically their largest transformers. Such a strike was exactly what makes Iran such a threat to the world and their sharing test results on nuclear weapons, especially EMP weapons, and rocket and missile specs and dimensional schematics showing exactly how to construct these weapons of war. Iran and North Korea are not working with such dedication to develop a true ICBM (Intercontinental Ballistic Weapon) just to be capable of striking Israel as that ability is and has been a part of their inventory for at least the past decade. Their desired targets are London and the British Isles and North America, more precisely, the United States.

 

The people running the military from deep within the Pentagon substructures which are capable of taking a direct strike partnering with NORAD Command (North American Aerospace Defense Command) which has recently been reconstructed flushing out full personnel and returning to their Cheyenne Mountain facility beneath an entire granite mountain suspended on necessarily huge shock absorbers and blast doors which once closed can withstand virtually anything coming through the mountain in its arching tunnel and the initial blast door is backed by a second blast door just as thick, capable and closed along with the primary to protect those inside. The return of NORAD to their Cheyenne Mountain facility from the Colorado Springs facility attached to the Air Force Academy was deemed a necessary and prudent reassignment. This was an expensive move as all the systems throughout the complex required rewiring to accept and facilitate the newer and more powerful computing capabilities. This was the stimulus to compel the Air Force and NORAD Command to reestablish the Cheyenne Mountain facility which was left due to its inability to power and transfer technical data and other necessities with any accuracy or alacrity. Cheyenne Mountain had reached the end of its road offering but one saving grace; it can withstand as many as a dozen direct strikes on the mountain and continue to function. No other Military facility can boast of such protection. Something in the intelligence community impelled NORAD to seek shelter in her nest egg in the Rocky Mountains and despite the fact that anybody can order a map of the area and find the Cheyenne Mountain facility, it will remain as close to indestructible as anyone can boast. To give one the real scope and size of the Cheyenne Mountain Complex, one need start with the entire mountain and move inward to grant the place its full, impregnable glory (see series of images below).

 

Cheyenne Mountain Complex
Mountain & Main Entrance

 

Cheyenne Mountain Complex Main Entrance

 

Cheyenne Mountain Construction

 

Cheyenne Mountain
Power Generators

 

Cheyenne Mountain Complex
Main Entry Corridor & Blast Door

 

Cheyenne Mountain Complex
Main Command Center Representation

 

After the fall of the Soviet Union, the Air Force and NORAD believed, as did many all too optimistic futurists, that the years of war and unrest had finally arrived and democracy and human rights would spread throughout the world and all the nations of the world would slowly but inexorably reach advanced cultures and finally an age of peace would rule. This might have actually been possible except for another warrior class culture stepped onto the world stage where all were forced to take notice. As long as Islam was solely an Israeli problem with minor flare-ups which were thought to be unrelated and easily put down and managed, then all was well and the world would allow unrest against Israel knowing that the Islamic thrusts were limited to Israel. September 11, 2001 ended that sleepy little mirage where all was well with the world and the only rough spot was against the Jewish State. The burning collapse of the Twin Towers in New York bringing down three of the main buildings from the World Trade Center also destroying one of the main subway stations in New York, the ramming of another passenger liner into the Pentagon and a final passenger plane whose target remains unknown was brought down by the passengers in a desperate assault on the cockpit leading to the craft crashing in a field outside Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, signaled the onset of World War III upon the western and developed world with the Islamists ready to wage a war of attrition, infiltration and subsuming the governments of the non-Islamic world. The other half of this offensive thrust would be the purification of the Islamic world forcing all to obey strident and violent forms of Islam. The leading nation initially appeared to be Afghanistan and possibly Iraq. The truth was that another source was moneyed individuals and organizations from Wahhabist interests and financiers from Saudi Arabia, Muslim Brotherhood associated groups including Hamas, al-Qaeda and other Muslim Brotherhood entities, the PLO (Palestinian Liberation Organization) who were initially a pan-Arabist nationalist group but have slowly been taken over by Islamists which has left Mahmoud Abbas in a delicate and threatened position. These all have a single common denominator in that they were all Sunni groups. Standing against these Sunnis was a highly organized and capable Shiite Arab fundamentalist force led by Iran. There was Syrian dictator Bashir al-Assad, as well as Hezballah led by a figurehead Hassan Nasrallah whose wars against Israel and the Lebanese Christians would have left Hezballah all but utterly destroyed if not for the resupply of missiles and associated weaponry including scud missiles and even larger missiles as well as rifles, explosives, mortars and other weaponry whenever they could successfully pass them past Israeli intelligence and interception, sometimes even intercepted while transiting the Sudan. Further assistance was provided for both Narallah’s Hezballah and the Syrian forces supporting al-Assad with Special Forces from the IRGC. These forces trained and were deployed from Iran and would have stood against Israel until the Arab Spring turned Arab Winter destroyed Syria causing a struggle for supremacy between Sunni and Shiite forces in largely Syria and spreading into Iraq as the Islamic State, another Sunni terror groups whose barbarity is almost beyond measure. The Islamic State made great advances initially but they were eventually slowed and have since held their grounds with losses and gains equaling out in the current stalemate.

 

Currently Israel is facing potential attacks from Hamas in the south out of Gaza where Hamas is the government and Israel has completely removed all their forces and citizens from the area. They face terror attacks coming from Fatah and other Palestinian Arab forces as ordered by Mahmoud Abbas associated terror squads. There are also lone wolf attacks from these Arab forces and even Israeli Arabs who have complete rights in Israel have attacked Israelis with knives, hatchets and other implements and also ramming with vehicles into crowds similar as what occurred in Nice, France recently. The same style attacks which have plagued Israel for the past century even before the state was formed, often at the behest of the Mufti of Jerusalem, are now striking innocents beyond Israel and across Europe and North America. What Hamas and Fatah bring upon Israel, the Islamic State and al-Qaeda take unto the rest of the world. Much of this build-up of Islamic fighters is directly due to the surrender of the easy grounds by President Obama in his belief that the United States was the problem and native forces such as the Islamists were the cure. President Obama went so far in his trusting of Islamists that he prepared the ground for Iran to become a major nuclear power within five years of his leaving office. The question that need be asked in every election in the free world going forward is which candidate is best prepared to face a nuclear Iran led by a religious fanatic who regards the destruction of his nation as a simple price to pay to destroy Israel, the United States, Europe and the rest of the free world allied with the man-boy ruling North Korea with an equally sufficient nuclear weapons stockpile and both sharing ICBM technology aiming at a new world with vast tracks turned into nuclear wastelands with no electrical production after massive EMP pulse weapons are deployed followed by city buster hydrogen thermonuclear bombs reducing their centers to rubble and the external areas into radioactive piles of rocks and bricks. This is the near future within a decade if actions are not initiated to end the madness allowing for religious fanatics who believe that dying for Allah guarantees them a place in heaven with seventy-two perpetual virgins allied with an irresponsible child who murdered his uncle simply for his disagreeing with the man-boy ruler and had him hung immediately without a moment of consideration. How could anybody believe this lunatic would not join the Iranian fanatics in the destruction of the world in the hopes of ruling the ruins. This is the world that faces the voters in elections going forward, so think hard and long for it may end up as your last vote ever taken.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

 

Welcoming NORAD Back to Cheyenne Mountain

 

The United States military has decided that the conditions are currently of sufficient threat that they have decided to send NORAD (North American Aerospace Defense Command) to scurry back to the warm confines of the Cheyenne Mountain complex and its independently supplied internal electricity generations and grounded steel walls where they have no susceptibility to an EMP pulse no matter the degree of severity, even the most fearsome solar storm which might char and disintegrate the entire North American electronic grid. Apparently the decision to reposition to Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado Springs has struck a snag or two or more. They claimed the savings and ease of commute made the move economic and practical sense, especially as the Cold War had past and there is no overriding threat demanding they continue using a base which provides the level of protection as the Cheyenne Mountain Facility. Well, well, what could have occurred to alter that line of reasoning and should the average American be concerned, well, concerned at least as much as the military and the commanding staff of NORAD apparently are being. Perhaps if we view the reasoning we can decide exactly how much of a threat there is and whether serious concern might be necessary.

 

The reason announced by the military for returning NORAD was that it is now feared that the North Koreans and potentially their allies in Iran have perfected miniaturizing of their nuclear warheads and might place one atop a North Korean mobile KN-08 mobile launch vehicle. This sent the military command of NORAD scurrying within one of the world’s safest locations deep within Cheyenne Mountain buried deeply under a few thousand feet of rock, mostly granite, and encased in steel and concrete with two sets of blast doors unrivaled, one backing the other making a double door with a dead space between them to absorb any force which might manage to pierce the outer door. These blast doors close making the tunnel reaching the Cheyenne Mountain a perfect arc opened at both ends so as to pass and blast-wave from a nuclear or other device detonated near either entrance an easily followed natural flow-path right through the mountain, past the blast doors, and on out the other side. The Cheyenne Mountain location not only easily houses the necessary personnel to cover and maintain their functions without break along with their families and a full garrison of Marines but also hold the supplies that would permit operating completely closed-off safe from any attack, especially any nuclear or EMP attack. We described a means by which both Iran and North Korea could launch and use a weakness in the radar protection and by mimicking the orbit of a weather satellite, an orbit both nations have used previously for launches, near the end in the final paragraph of our article titled, ”Is North Korea Sabre Rattling for Attention or Real Threat?”

 

There are further reasons for moving NORAD back to its original safely, armored, buried, EMP proof and self-supporting location which they abandoned in favor of easier access as they have been monitoring since 2013 as reported by an ABC News reporting coverage from 2013 by Martha Raddatz ABC News Chief Global Affairs Correspondent which can be viewed below. Needless to say that placing NORAD back where they should never have left will be a far cry from ending the threats from a nuclear armed North Korea, who has been threatening a nuclear EMP first strike against the United States, or Iran as they also could use such weaponry to cover far more evil intents than just striking NORAD. There is the possibility that either Iran or North Korea could launch at a closer target causing just as much harm on the global scale and have a dastardly effect on the world or the United States. North Korea has regularly threatened their South Korean neighbors and even regularly launched rockets into their waters and threatened far worse. Iran, on the other hand, has threatened not only the United States but also Israel, Saudi Arabia and other of her neighbors. Iran is currently engaged in three wars already, there is the Syrian Civil War where Iran and their terror allies of Hezballah fight the plethora of Sunni militias all having some degree of attachment to al-Qaeda or other terrorist organization, fighting in Iraq against ISIS, a Sunni terrorist organization which follows a strident version of the Quran by which they have destroyed numerous historic relics and other precious items claiming that because they were objects which they determined were un-Islamic and thus unworthy of being displayed and especially considered precious or of any value to the human race, and now Yemen where they are arming the Houthis and may even provide them with intelligence as well as command and control assistance.

 

 

 

 

The threats made by the likes of the Ayatollahs of Iran and those made by Kim Jong-un are usually merely saber rattling meant for domestic consumption and to give the people faith that their nation is able to stand against anybody. The fact that they get media coverage as well bolsters the belief making them appear more important. The other problem is that in many ways the leadership of both Iran and North Korea actually do mean those threats they make and would act upon them if they felt they were readily executable. This makes the North Korean threats to use a hydrogen bomb on the United States as an EMP generator to destroy the North American electronic grid far more serious. The fact that these leaders continue to allow their people to suffer unnecessary hardships due largely to their leaderships’ threats of warmongering which leads their nations to face sanctions is just as monstrous and evil as one can get. The further fact that they and their coterie live lives of lavish excess eating caviar, roast duck and champagne while their people, especially the people of North Korea, starve or make do with tree bark and grass soups can only be defined by Evil as the word for such extravagances and lavish life styles and the unbelievable difference between the lives of the privileged few enjoy as compared to the lives of their military members is only exceeded by the further difference approaching the same scale between the lives of apparent excess lived by the members of the military compared to the veterans and the population as a whole. The members of the military are not the problem as in many cases parents push their children towards the military such that they can have a better level of life than the parents had suffered. These radical differences exist almost as a caste system between the political leadership at the top, the military in between and the population and the elderly living lives beyond any desperations than most of us are capable of even imagining, let alone understanding. The most absolute depravity is displayed with the fact that the North Korean elite actually will make these threats and back them through actions which if ignored might actually lead to the North Korean leadership in particular to reigniting the state of war which continues to exist between the North and South Korea simply to hold talks where along with the demands from the leadership is also requests for food and other aid to be given the people to prevent even more deaths due to starvation, malnutrition, and the desperate lack of medical attention to treat and care for the people.

 

What makes these situations even more horrific is that these conditions are not all that uncommon throughout many of the third world nations. Contrary to the apparent belief, very few if any of these situations would be alleviated by changing their governance to a democracy as this would simply result in their electing the elites back into power. The first step the world needs to take also is not necessarily food aid and other such generosities as providing such aid deprives the farmers of a local market for their produce which results in their requiring aid because they are unable to sell their produce. Where aid most likely will be required to feed the entire population, the farmers must also be able to market their produce. The kind of aid which would go the furthest would be to allow corporations to set up factories and thus provide a basis for an economy and set the nation on the road towards a functioning economic base which is currently nonexistent. These factories also need to provide jobs not solely in the major cities but throughout these nations. Currently many of these nations lack even a rudimentary base for economic production which stands between them and receiving such investments.

 

Of course there are indicators that these problems may be coming to what are currently considered first world nations as the economic bubbles have begun to deflate one after the other and in some economies the house of cards is already collapsing. This is evidenced in Europe where the attempt to place all nations on a single currency has simply led to exposing the disparate economic models causing economic collapse as this unitary currency system collapses where had these nations retained their own currencies then there economies could have survived these downturns as their currency would have been permitted to respond to the change in their economic situation according to each individual nation allowing for a more favorable return on investments which cannot be had under the unified currency of the Euro. That their currency was beyond their control simply exasperated their financial difficulties and making any response simply beyond their control as they have no means of altering the value of the currency to respond to the situation and difficulties faced. This problem was unavoidable for as long as each nation was permitted to set their financial and economic policies while sharing a single currency. This removed their ability to control the single most important item in their economies, the cost of labor. Once the cost of labor separated sufficiently from the values set for the Euro itself made the problem become irreconcilable. These problems which are only growing while those nations with healthy economies are increasingly pressed to support the less wealthy nations within the European Union in particular, and to an extent throughout the third world, the difficulties are only going to be pushed to a point where the whole financial constructs begins to fray to the point where there are no longer solutions under the current systems. In too many cases simply continuing to patch the problems while ignoring the central causes will lead to what we would call the “point of exasperation” which is where the nations giving support are brought down as the cost and needs for support reach levels beyond any reconciliation and all hope is lost and the people then turn to their governance and demand relief leading all too probably to revolutions where the violence makes even the hope for investment to flee and refuse to make investments where such expenditures are the only hope for salvation and the start of normalcy.

 

Still, where is one to take the first step towards addressing the problems, and in the case of North Korea even coming to grip with the reality the people face, and after making that assessment then turning the nation around and giving the people hope. There exists no single solution though in many cases it is the leadership’s setting of priorities which has simply aggravated the situation leading to a downward cycle which results eventually, if permitted to continue, to the unsettling set of conditions in North Korea. Solutions, and not just feel-good knee-jerk reacting, must be found and those solutions are not pumping food and funds as simply feeding the hungry for a week, a month is not going to provide the hope and the means for the people to help themselves which is so desperately what is needed. In many of these situations there exists a disparity where the very wealthy live almost in a different world than do the masses. These situations are of a kind which led to revolutions which is what eventually led to the changes in the Western world though not all nations benefitted fully from the gains made since the industrial revolution and now the information age. The efforts to attempt to bring a third world nation into the information age in one fell swoop are not the solution as such an economy is unsustainable when considering the education and familiarity with such tools is taken into consideration. One needs to walk before they can run and the same can be said for national economies. The initial problems are infrastructure, both materially and by the population as a whole. When these problems are what is addressed then there can be progress but simply shipping tons of food aid which sometimes sits unloaded and goes bad rotting in place for the lack of trucks and a distribution network as even aid packages require a certain level of infrastructure before even that is of any substance. And yes we realize that in places like North Korea and Iran part of the problem is the governance though that is an even more difficult nut to crack. There is no universal solution and as far as the threats from North Korea and possibly Iran, there is no solution beyond preparing for the worst and hopefully cutting the head off the hydra and preventing it from simply replacing that bad head for another. Iran is a nation with the wherewithal to save itself if only the people can be freed to take on the challenges directly, but that cannot happen while their leadership is intent on spreading their version of Islam to the world. Such belligerence is not to be tolerated and must be opposed, something the P5+1 negotiations is apparently refusing to oppose rather than complying in the hope that things will improve before World War III is launched from the missile pads within Iran. North Korea will remain beyond help for as long as the leadership is tolerated rather than opposed and the situation resolved. Step one is provide a path to better governance through ending the state of war between North and South Korea, until that is addressed there can be no change to the situation. These are stark and difficult challenges which is why they are also the most pressing and dangerous challenges the world is currently facing with the growing gap between the first and third worlds, a gap that is threatening to become unbridgeable.

 

Beyond the Cusp