Wednesday, April 12, 2017

Korean War 2.0

Disbelievingly Stunned,

China Threatens to Bomb North Korean Nuclear Facilities if North Korea "Crosses Chinese Bottom-Line", and moves troops to North Korean border. 
Chinese diplomacy does Judo with American demands, tells North Korea, "We are not acquiescing to an American attack. This is our business and the PLA will attack if you cause problems."
China clearly defines sphere of influence, while calling for denuclearized Korean Peninsula.

As tensions over North Korea's nuclear program mount, the United States Air Force has deployed a WC-135 (a.k.a. the "Nuclear Sniffer"), an aircraft that specializes in detecting radioactive debris after the detonation of a nuclear device, to Okinawa, Japan to assist with monitoring for potential nuclear tests in the region. 

Donald Trump called President Xi on the phone to discuss trade and the developing North Korean situation. According to China's state television, Xi stuck with his objective of "denuclearization" of the Korean Peninsula, and called for a peaceful resolution of rising tension... "We hope that the relevant parties do not adopt irresponsible actions. Under the current circumstances, this is very dangerous," Lu told reporters at a regular press briefing... Translation: Trump is strongly urged not to launch a unilateral strike on North Korea as he did on Syria without express Chinese prior approval.

After the phone call, China continues hard public stance towards North Korea, and threatens oil embargo in near term.
North Korea will not be "not allowed to have a government that is hostile against China on the other side of the Yalu River."  This implies that if and when the US initiate strikes on NK, the Chinese PLA will likely send out troops "to lay the foundation" for a favorable post-war situation.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov blasted the Trump administration’s "ambiguous and contradictory" foreign policy at the start of talks with Tillerson in Moscow Wednesday calling the demand for the Kremlin to abandon Assad "absurd." Furthermore, he warned Tillerson that Russia "believes it’s fundamentally important not to let these actions happen again." The Moscow meeting will “further clarify areas of sharp difference so that we can better understand why these differences exist and what prospects for narrowing those differences may be,” Tillerson told Lavrov. 
(Tillerson and Lavrov got that out of the way and are now being joined by Putin for further discussions.)

"Idlib was a false-flag attack, and we have learned that more are coming." Vladimir Putin

Putin's specific comments are actually more nuanced, as seen here:

Americans kill Syrian moms and kids on ferry boats, who knows how many? 
It's OK, because it's just regular bombs and drownings, and we don't have to look.

Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii) has a message for the liberals attacking her criticism of President Trump’s missile strike on Syria, warning that a rush to aggression risks repeating the same mistakes that led the United States into the Iraq War. “We need to learn from Iraq and Libya — wars that were propagated as necessary to relieve human suffering, but actually increased human suffering many times over,” she said in an email to The Hill. Gabbard, a major in the Hawaii Army National Guard who served two tours in Iraq, has been highly critical of Trump’s decision last Thursday to launch 59 missiles at a Syrian airfield in response to a deadly chemical attack that killed scores of civilians, including children, in a western Syrian town days before... Gabbard’s position — particularly her skepticism that the Syrian government was behind the chemical attacks — has led to an outcry from some establishment Democrats, including former Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean, who want her out of Congress.

Trump clarifies everything: 
“We’re not going into Syria,” Trump said. “Our policy is the same — it hasn’t changed. We’re not going into Syria.” “We’re not exactly on the same wavelength with Russia, to put it mildly” — again called the nuclear deal with Iran “the single worst deal ever,” and said of the worsening nuclear situation with North Korea: “I knew I was left a mess, but it’s worse than I thought.” Trump also damns Steve Bannon with very faint praise. (Neocons/Neoliberals appear to hold most face-cards again.)

"Who is playing the long game (in geopolitics) and what's their game plan?" Charles Hugh Smith is not ready to cede (pyrrhic) victory to neocons just yet.

Ground water depletion by agriculture is vast and accelerating and acutely regional. It ran out in Saudi arabia, already. Their green revolution is over. They're buying up Africa now.
About two-thirds of the GWD calculated for 2010 was in just four countries: India (7.35 km3), Iran (3.33 km3), Pakistan (2.75 km3) and China (2.40 km3). Almost 85 percent occurred in 10 nations — the top four plus the United States (1.62 km3), Mexico (1.11 km3), Libya (.25 km3), Turkey (.20 km3), and Italy (.20 km3). During the decade that ended in 2010, the acceleration of GWD was most rapid in India (23 percent), China (102 percent) and the United States (31 percent).

Latest development in crisis of refugees fleeing war, drought and famine in MENA, for pleasant Europe is that refugees in NGO feedlots will be integrated into Greek apartments, abandoned by Greeks who can't pay rent, and given a little cash for groceries, to help-Greece-out. Thanks EU! Thanks NATO! Thanks UN!

Mish Shedlock looks again at specific polling results in French elections, like "OK, then what would you vote for if your first choice fell through and you were left with these two? Stay home? How sure?" The first round might not give the LePen/Macron second round that the elites seem to have planned.

Yves Smith explains why the brutal beating and forced removal of an elderly physician, already seated in a reserved and confirmed seat, aboard a United Airlines flight, in order to get United Airlines employees to work on time the next morning was Way-Worse-Than-is-Being-Reported. 
It was not "overbooking" and prevention-of-boarding. 
This man had legal rights that were violated, even before his face was bloodied.

The Friendly Skies used to be different. 2000 photo-shoot with a Slovenian model named Melania on an airplane is revisited here. Thanks Ray.

You can think what you like, "commit adultery in your heart", as it was once famously put, but if you (publicly) say that model crossed the carnal line, it will cost you $2.9 million.

Mortifying the Flesh

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