Trump really has achieved a historic breakthrough – for the Kim dynasty | Jonathan Freedland | Opinion | The Guardian

A useful way to test the deal Donald Trump has reached with Kim Jong-un is to imagine what Trump himself would have said had it been Barack Obama rather than him who shook hands with the North Korean dictator. Trump and his echo chamber on Fox News and elsewhere would have poured buckets of derision on Obama for the piece of paper he signed with Kim, for the fawning praise he lavished on a brutal tyrant, and for the paltry non-concessions he got in return. He would have branded the agreement a “horrible deal” and condemned Obama as a sucker for signing it.

Look first at what Kim got from the encounter. Once ostracised as a pariah, Kim was treated as a world statesman on a par with the president of the United States, the two meeting on equal terms, right down to the equal numbers of flags behind them as they shook hands. The tyrant now has a showreel of images – including his walkabout in Singapore, where he was mobbed by what the BBC called “fans” seeking selfies – which will feature in propaganda videos for months, if not years.

 

Source: Trump really has achieved a historic breakthrough – for the Kim dynasty | Jonathan Freedland | Opinion | The Guardian

RT: Trump Puts Israel’s Interests Above America’s in Withdrawal from UNESCO

Beastrabban\'s Weblog

In this short video from RT America, they interview Max Blumenthal on the withdrawal this week from the United Nations’ cultural organisation, UNESCO, by America and Israel. The two countries have claimed that the organisation is profoundly anti-Semitic. He says that the Israelis would far rather have been in the organisation, haranguing it from inside. Blumenthal states that Israel was more or less forced to leave the organisation against its own wishes by Trump’s decision to quit. He makes the point that Washington would never have left it, if they thought it was biased against France or Spain. He also says that America owes UNESCO $500 million, which it now no longer has to pay back. The bigger question, he also suggests, is why Israel was ever allowed into the UN in the first place, considering its Talibanesque destruction of Palestinian archaeology and historic monuments. He also states that the…

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Trump sabre-rattling on North Korea has a flaw: Kim Jong-un has nothing to lose | World news | The Guardian

In the lead-up to North Korea’s latest missile test, Donald Trump had battled to convince Kim Jong-un he was picking a fight with the wrong guy.

The US president pounded Syria with 59 Tomahawk missiles and then ordered a naval “armada” into the waters around the Korean peninsula. He dropped the “mother of all bombs” on eastern Afghanistan and used Twitter to hammer home his message.

North Korea launches missile but test ends in failure

“North Korea is looking for trouble,” the US president tweeted last week as Kim’s technicians made the final preparations for Sunday’s botched but nevertheless defiant test.

But experts say Pyongyang’s latest act has underlined the futility of the billionaire’s efforts to bully Kim Jong-un into abandoning his nuclear ambitions.

“There is a problem with playing the military threat [card] with North Korea because they are inclined to call the bluff,” said John Delury, a North Korea expert from Yonsei University in Seoul. “I’m not saying they tested because of the threats. But bringing a naval strike group doesn’t help if your goal is to put off a test. If anything you are increasing the odds.”

Source: Trump sabre-rattling on North Korea has a flaw: Kim Jong-un has nothing to lose | World news | The Guardian

American Psychiatrists Fear Trump Mentally Ill, Unsuited for Presidency

They could be right for does any sane person conduct themselves as Trump does. If they do not act soon it may be too late.

Beastrabban\'s Weblog

They aren’t the only one, and this is serious.

In this video from The Young Turks, The Ring of Fire’s Farron Cousins reports that three professors of psychiatry, one from Harvard, the other two from the University of California San Francisco, have written a letter to Barack Obama requesting that he step in and force Trump to take a psychiatric examination. They are concerned that he suffers from psychological defects that render him not just unsuitable, but actually too dangerous to be given the job of president. They believe that Trump’s grandiosity, his impetuousness, the way he takes offence and responds aggressive at even the mildest criticism point to mental illness. He may just suffer from Narcissistic Personality Disorder, perhaps something rather more serious than that, or perhaps even be a full-blown sociopath. Cousins states that it could just be affluenza. Trump comes from an extremely wealthy background, and has…

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Donald Trump’s irresponsible nuclear weapons tweets: Pure whimsy, or prelude to apocalypse? – Salon.com

Donald Trump has apparently relaunched the global nuclear arms race — on Twitter, and out of sheer blinding idiocy

Source: Donald Trump’s irresponsible nuclear weapons tweets: Pure whimsy, or prelude to apocalypse? – Salon.com

More Military Tension between NATO and Russia; Pat Mills Right in ABC Warriors

Beastrabban\'s Weblog

Mike today put up a very chilling report about the escalation of military tensions between NATO and Russia. Russia has deployed Iskander missiles in its westernmost province of Kaliningrad. Formerly Koenigsberg, this is small Russian enclave between Poland and Lithuania, was formerly part of Pommerania under the old Reich. The missiles are capable of carrying nuclear weapons, and are presumed capable of reaching Berlin, or the various Baltic states.

Russia is believed to be deploying these missiles in response to NATO manoeuvres in eastern Europe, and the stationing of four more NATO battalions in Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. These were in response to Russia sending troops into Ukraine.

Mike states that he recalls either Gorbachev or possibly Yeltsin receiving a promise from NATO that it would not expand into the Russian’s back garden. He is correct. That promise was given. And broken. NATO’s borders are now right up to…

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Nuclear weapons have almost been launched accidentally 13 times – it’s time to stop believing in the fantasy that Trident keeps us safe : Independent.

Just who are we wishing to have a nuclear deterrent to safeguard us from. Is it Russia, China, or US if it is will our small capacity really make a difference. If there is a nuclear war it is more like to be between US and others, should we not be more worried whose finger could be on the button, especially with the election of a new US President.

But where do our dangers really come from, could be terrorism, if so will nuclear weapons be a deterrent, no because who could we aim them at and for some terrorists they do not appear to be concerned if they are killed.

I can not see the logic for having this deterrent, especially when we are told we are in austerity.

Norman Finkelstein on the Coming Break-Up of American Zionism: Part 1

Beastrabban\'s Weblog

I’ve put up several videos recently criticising Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians, and examining the growing disconnection – ‘distancing’, in the jargon of the sociologists who’ve studied it – of young American Jews with Israel. The speakers in these videos have included the Israeli historian Ilan Pappe, and the American historians and activists Norman Finkelstein and Elizabeth Baltzer, both of whom are descended from Holocaust survivors. As I’ve made clear in previous posts, I’ve been prompted to do this because of the smears against leading members of the Labour party – Ken Livingstone, Naz Shah and Jackie Walker, amongst others, of anti-Semitism. Those accused are not to my knowledge anti-Semites. The above three certainly aren’t. Leninspart in his 1987 book, Livingstone’s Labour, states quite clearly that all forms of racism, whether against Blacks, Jews or the Irish, is the worst form of reaction, and needs to be opposed. Naz…

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US reserves right to ‘first use’ of N-weapons

Nuclear war may be small at any given time, but if Trump wins the Presidency will this small become much larger.

Phil Ebersole's Blog

Source: Arms Control Association

Russia, China and now North Korea have renounced “first use” of nuclear weapons.   The United States has never done so.

I believe North Korea’s leaders because they would be fools to launch a nuclear attack, knowing that their nation would literally be obliterated by the USA in response.

They also would be fools to give up nuclear weapons so long as they are threatened by the USA.  Only possession of nuclear weapons prevents North Korea from meeting the fate if Iraq and Libya.

The United States has never renounced “first use” of nuclear weapons because US conventional forces are not a match for Russia’s in eastern Europe and possibly not for China’s in the South China Sea.

The U.S. government seeks to be the dominant military power in every region of the globe.  The tools for doing this are sea power, air power, flying killer drones…

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Trident’s a relic of a bygone age. Will you join us on Saturday to march against it? | Caroline Lucas, Nicola Sturgeon and Leanne Wood | Opinion | The Guardian

Trident Defence policy Nuclear weapons Military

Source: Trident’s a relic of a bygone age. Will you join us on Saturday to march against it? | Caroline Lucas, Nicola Sturgeon and Leanne Wood | Opinion | The Guardian