The “what” of North Korea’s nuclear weapons is a known thing. It’s a copy of a 1960’s Polaris missile. An old US design. This design was copied by Israel, France, Russia and China; probably even India. It is also the Israeli Jericho 2 design, copied from the Polaris A1 design. The UK also had it in their older nuclear submarines.
The good news is that the warhead does not separate from the missiles’ main body, so it’s easy to intercept. The re-entry platform is quite crude. The bad news is that with 150kt yield, it’s still dangerous.
What puzzles most analysts is how fast North Korea got from rudimentary designs to this latest improved version. In other words, who has been helping them.
The notion that it’s Iran is pretty bizarre. Iran doesn’t have a nuclear bomb. It seem to make more sense to look at who does have them and see who would have an interest in North Korea having one too.
This site below makes a strong argument that it’s China. This is the part of the post that drops down from knowledge to mere information. It’s a good argument, but for now I don’t know. You would think our zillion dollar intelligence agencies would have an answer.
If you are a conspiracy minded person, you might be inclined to believe that they do know. …
Imagine if one of our allies in the world acquired a few thousand acres of land in the US. Then they brought in their military to this area and spent the next 14 years training and equipping a group like black lives matter or Antifa to overthrow our country? I imagine most Americans would be very upset with our “ally”.
Well, Israel has been training and equipping the Kurds in northern Iraq to do just that thing since 2003. An ally training another ally to fight another ally.
What’s really sad is that we’ve pretty much ignored that. The European press reported this in 2003. A few more reports since then.
Yesterday’s media reported that it’s moved on to a much bigger issue than mere rifles, machine guns and artillery. They are actually training them to fly F16s! Other than the sheer stupidity of the US allowing this, we are the ones who give F16s to Israel. Foreign military sales and arms proliferation laws are very clear on how the countries that get our equipment can use it. They specifically prohibit their being given to someone else.
The US (who never should have been in Syria) has declared that we’ve stopped the CIA from fighting in Syria. Are we allowing Israel to be our proxy to continue the war?…
We're in the middle of Alabama, Nate's a tropical storm now. Will resume posting Monday!!…
Foreign language speakers in America have always existed. Heck we had translators to deal with the Indians. Immigrants to our country usually lived amongst those who spoke their native language. History shows all sorts of areas in cities where the historic culture prevailed. Growing up in Chicago, my grandparents were first generation immigrants from Germany.…
Anytime there is some heinous disaster, we fixate on wanting to find out why. In the case of airplane or train or vehicle disasters it makes sense in a way. If it’s a mechanical problem, we want the manufacturers to make such repairs so it doesn’t happen again.
In the case of human errors, the motives to figure out “why” it happens has many different motivations. When guns are used, the quest to discover the motivations are always political.
Those on the left always want to use the disaster to effect more fund raising from the rabid anti gun crowd. For them, a white male Republican who hates Democrats would be their ideal shooter.
Those on the right want the shooter to be a crazed and rabid anti American radical. It helps their fundraising too.
Both sides are incredibly confused right now. There aren’t enough facts out there to make any instant conclusions, and both sides know that in a couple of weeks the outrage will die down.
What happens if President Trump was right, and this guy was merely “evil”?…
Growing up in the 50s and 60s, we were all sold on the notion of nuclear powered energy. Cheap, clean and unlimited supplies of electricity. The idea boomed and for a while it seemed that the world loved the idea. In the US the love of nuclear power has dimmed, but in the rest of the world it continues to boom. There are 450 plants around the world, with more being built.
The US is trying to build more but the construction in the US in incredibly expensive and we no longer have a domestic manufacturer since the Toshiba/Westinghouse debacle.
From my perspective the challenge has always been handling the nuclear waste. Trillions of dollars have been spent on all sorts of schemes to reuse, recycle and even just store the stuff. We Americans were extorted out of $36 billion to fund the construction of the Yucca Mountain storage facility via our electric bills. This was supposed to be safe storage for 1 million years. The Obama administration stopped the potential use of the place after it was built.
Although this article is written by a Greenpeace activist, it’s a good overview of Japan’s challenges in storing waste. It explains why their last disaster could have been worse. With the closing of Yucca Mountain, waste continues to be stored in America’s power sites, perhaps waiting for a disaster.…
Foreign policy in this country has sadly fallen to the purview of the defense department, not the state department. This isn’t anything new, and has been this way since the end of the cold war. We conduct foreign policy at the end of a gun, sending drones, rockets and missiles at those who we disagree with.
Some of this is a function of the fact that we were the only super power left at the end of the cold war. We could bully countries with ease and there was little that they could do to stop us. We damaged and destroyed a lot of countries, but have little to show for it.
The tide shifted when we decided to mess with countries that had powerful allies that weren’t intimidated. Syria is the perfect example, where the Russians came to Syria’s aid.
We’re reaping the seeds that have been sown in decades of intimidation and it’s not working. North Korea presents a lot of issues. Ignoring how we got to this situation in North Korea is foolish, but going forward in the face of “lack of cooperation” in our process from China, Russia and South Korea is a disaster waiting to happen.
North Korea currently has no capability to hurt America. Sure they would like to, but they can't. China has consistently stated that if North Korea starts a war, they would be on our side, but if we started it, they would be on North Korea’s side.
Are the neos that crazy that they would want to start WWIII?…
As a dyed-in-the-wool capitalist, the notion of government support to private industry raises some big concerns. Certainly as it’s practiced now in America via crony capitalism it reeks of evilness. Solyndra, Tesla, GE and many others are examples of funding things that politicians think are “good ideas” is at best stupid, and at worst stealing from the American people.
But what if it is strategic interests? The best example right now is our virtually non-existent nuclear power industry. The last company that existed in America that built reactors is bankrupt. Westinghouse doesn’t build them anymore. For that matter, Westinghouse isn’t even owned by an American company.
Liberals in the US hate nuclear power, so they don’t really care that we don’t have that capability. Yet, most of the rest of the world does like nuclear power and in developing countries and eastern Europe in particular, new construction of nuclear power plants is booming.
China is taking huge advantage of our withdrawal of the playing field. Unlike the US, when China provides aid, they take equity positions and will have control of much of the electrical grid of eastern Europe.
We can never take politics out of the equation, but a serious discussion on strategic industries in needed now. Identify the industries and figure out a free market strategy to create economic incentives to nurture innovation and production.…
Politician screws up and resigns. Not really news. What I want to address is the parting comments from the Speaker of House, Paul Ryan to the resignation. For those who aren’t aware, Pennsylvania GOP Rep Tim Murphy was having an affair She got pregnant and this staunch anti-abortion foe asked her to get an abortion. Here’s what Ryan had to say upon the resignation: “We thank him for his many years of tireless work on mental health issues here in Congress and his service to the country as a naval reserve officer.” In other words, we’re sorry you got caught and we’ll miss you. That’s what’s wrong with Washington and politics. No honor, no shame. Here is the text of what I would have said: “Rep Murphy resigned today. In his 15 years of service he authored and pushed through some laws that were good for America. All of that goodness does not overcome the fact that he dishonored his wife and family by violating the oath of marriage. He dishonored the US House of Representatives, and is a disgrace to the great people of Pennsylvania. If it was within my power, he would be stripped of all future benefits that is associated with true and faithful service as a US Congressman. As Congressmen we all must be held to the highest ethical standards, and in this case Representative Murphy failed. Our thoughts and prayers are with his wife and family at this time.…
