By nearly having an intercontinental ballistic missile and not quite nearly having a nuclear warhead and detonator small enough to fit on it, North Korea has brought its military technology almost to the point of being just sixty years out of date.
The panic this has caused is not unjustified, as nuclear weapons are a terrible thing. Hundreds of thousands of column inches have been deployed by mainstream media all round the world. This from the Economist is a fine example of the top intellectual thinking upon which the elite consensus prides itself.
It is also a perfect exemplar as it illustrates a defining characteristic of all this week’s analysis following the North Korean missile test. Nowhere at all does it mention Trident missiles. Nobody does, because they are obviously a total irrelevance and in no sense enter the calculations of Kim Jong Un.
When the establishment writes serious stuff about North Korea, they never ever mention Trident, because they would look stupid.
Yet strangely, when they write about Trident, they always mention North Korea. We need Trident, they say, to deter rogue nuclear states like North Korea.
Extraordinary, isn’t it. Apparently we have no need at all to worry about nuclear attack from North Korea, because we have the perfect deterrent by spending an astonishing amount of our national income on Trident missiles.
Except when people actually think about North Korea, when they realise that Trident is as much use as a chocolate teapot.
It is exactly the same with ISIS/Daesh. Nobody writing any of the millions of articles about ISIS/Daesh has ever written “but you don’t have to worry about them because we have Trident missiles.” Because they would look very, very, stupid.
But when Trident is under discussion, we hear it defends us against, err, North Korea and ISIS.
Now they throw in Russia. In all the reams of analysis of Putin’s Russia, nobody has ever been crazy enough to argue that nuclear attack on the UK (or even conventional invasion of the UK) is something Putin would wish to do. Because to claim that would look absolutely stupid. Plainly the desire of Russia to attack with nuclear weapons is at absolute zero. Anybody writing otherwise would rightly be written off as crazed.
Yet the Trident argument takes place in an entirely isolated political bubble, in perfect quarantine, in isolation from reality, where the elite are allowed to stand there and say it protects us from North Korea, ISIS and Russia and the mainstream media pretends this is not absurd.
London, Saturday February 27, assemble at noon:
http://www.cnduk.org/
http://scraptrident.org/
http://www.stopwar.org.uk/index.php/events/stop-the-war-events-national/2713-20-feb-2016-london-stop-trident-national-demonstration
Ba’al
” Which leads me to respectfully suggest, Mr. Obama, Sir, if you want us to keep your proxy attack dogs in our yard, you can bloody well pay for them yourself.”
Excellent Point.. But they can “Keep” them elsewhere, and Not in My River, Most Scots want rid of the WMD’s
A GLASGOW MSP has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for efforts to rid the world of nuclear weapons.
Bill Kidd SNP MSP for Anniesland has been singled out for praise within a nomination by a Turkish MP for his work with PNND Parliamentarians for Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament.
Mr Kidd is the co-president of the group representing 700 parliamentarians around the world campaigning for a nuclear free world.
PNND has been nominated for the prestigious award and Mr Kidd mentioned for his role in securing a vote in the Scottish Parliament committing Scotland to supporting a ban on nuclear weapons.
The nomination praised the work of the group in using parliamentary actions to promote campaigns for a nuclear free world and to encourage disarmament.
Mr Kidd said he didn’t just want nuclear weapons removed from Scotland but around the world.
He said: “It’s a real honour to be included in this nomination but more important is the recognition of the work done by parliamentarians around the world to oppose nuclear weapons, including the renewal of Trident.
“The SNP have always been resolute to our opposition to nuclear weapons. Our commitment is not just to a nuclear free Scotland but to a nuclear free world.
http://www.eveningtimes.co.uk/news/14262618.Glasgow_MSP_in_Nobel_Peace_Prize_nomination/
Apparently Lord West was apoplectic after hearing Emily Thornbury correctly point out that Trident won’t stay stealthy for long. Seems the old admiral can see 20 years into the future which may already be here according to Paul Ingram of British American Security Info Council:
http://www.basicint.org/news/2016/making-sense-trident-debate-requires-open-mind-defence-emily-thornberry
North Korea, is a paradoxical state, take for instance the years NK has existed, officially (Juche) NK is only 106 years old, dating back to its glorious great leader Kim Il-Sung, who died in 1994.
In my opinion, NK, is a state existing on self imposed isolation, and paranoia, with regards to its Southern neighbour.
Former US president Bill Clinton described the Korean peninsular as, “the Cold Wars, last divide.”
Clinton whose wife Hilary is in the running to be the next US president, didn’t forsee the US and Russia reigniting the old Cold War, mores the pity. NK, was in the 50’s seen as a Soviet satellite, now it’s seen a Chinese one.
It is said that the 38th Parallel is still the worlds most heavily militarised border between to countries.
Who knows what the line of thought is regarding nuclear weapons, in NK. Is it all bluff and bluster, or would NK attack South Korea, a likely target.
It was former US vice president Walter Mondale, who said- “Anyone claiming to be an expert on North Korea, is either a liar or a fool.”
I third the motion with a caveat of “Mr. POTUS”, as Obama is on his last term and the new comer will be full of piss and vinegar putting the world to right and start a whole new NEW WORLD ORDER!! What is it with all these megalomaniacs they all seem to be bent on world domination stuff!!! Did their mammy not love them enough or their daddy did not buy enough toys for them?
Although it seems it is with our pocket money they (megalomaniacs) are busy dominating the world instead of paying their own way!
Which brings us to the latest miracle of Osborne the tooting chancellor whose advisor was photographed in the crack houses/dens and had to resign! the same advisor that included the drugs takings and proceeds of the prostitution in the GDP, that is despite the legislation that prohibits living off immoral earnings!
Anyhoo this is the latest;
Weak UK tax revenue could thwart Osborne’s surplus aim, thinktank says
No shit Sherlock the biggest spender ie the government stopping to pay it’s way and is passing the buck of the duty of care to the “charities” with wages declining in real term, and people sat on the bones of their arses, there is still the fairytale tax returns that
toothtax fairy will be leaving in the treasury so that the super rich oligarchs and corporations pay zealch taxes*!!However fear not because despite the inadequate taxation returns, there is hope; tax the poor more!!!! The same nostrum as before (yea olde apothecary would be proud of this leach treatment, if it did not work it means the numbers of the leaches were not enough) tax the poor more and then double tax them by taking away the services they rely on! that ought to do the trick.
* Have you ever seen Mr. Google use the NHS? or the Metro system, or go to the GP? So why should the poor billionaire pay so much taxes, when he is not using any of the services? Oh the humanity of it, can a billionaire not keep his money and become a trillionaire? The politics of envy and darn right communistic bastards can go to hell, let the oligarchs keep their hard earned dosh, let the poor pay their own way the malingering swine that they are, wanting everything for nothing! (pushing the right buttons there).
A good discussion of the ‘independence’ of our nuclear deterrent can be found here-
http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/commentators/dan-plesch-lets-clear-away-the-trident-delusion-2083256.html
Plesch approvingly quotes disillusioned cold war warrior Denis Healey, who describes Trident as a ‘rent-a rocket agreement’ that leaves us humiliatingly dependent on the US
I’m in total agreement with Corbyn on this, immoral to have them. Peace ? No. Constant threats is what they are, constantly used to enable US centric hegemony that makes us all less safe.
No respect to sovereignty, nothing civilised about “western civilisation”
…And to top it off TOTAL hypocrites, because if citizens ever threaten or try to use violence (not that I endorse it) they are up in arms. But they use it CONSTANTLY through institutions of brutality across the country and aboard.
How they maintain such astounding Levels of doublethink ill never know.
“Trident. Not Even Wrong. Doesn’t Even Fail”.
Not even functional enough to be tested!
Why would Westminster consent to waste £167 billion pounds on renewing Trident, when clearly warfare has changed.
Wouldn’t that money (if it had to be spent on the military) be better spent on conventional weapons, and equipment for the troops.
Is the logic to renew Trident, a vainglorious one? How could Britain be a permanent member of the UN Security Council and not posses nuclear weapons, is that the lateral thinking of Westminster?
Or is it a financial one, renewing Trident would keep many influencial businessmen (with connections to politicians) on both sides of the Atlantic very happy indeed.
In my opinion, the answer lies in both options. Virtually the only way that Britain could be on the end of a nuclear explosion, is if a extreme organisation acquired a device and detonated it in the London. The mostly likely target, Trident of course would be useless as a retaliatory weapon.
But why would that scenario occur in the first place, when the culprits have the whole of Europe to choose from.
Well first you’d have to look at British actions around the globe, are they, and have they been for the most part, incitive?
This should cheer Craig up no end. A vociferous supporter of our nuclear deterrent will apparently not be taking the ermine and helping himself to £300 daily of our money for God knows how long.
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/feb/09/jack-straw-denied-knighthood-peerage-jeremy-corbyn
I guess he will have to make do with what he can negotiate off private money in secret, as he tried to do recently. Nice one Jeremy!
Kind regards,
John
“It was former US vice president Walter Mondale, who said- “Anyone claiming to be an expert on North Korea, is either a liar or a fool.”
What nonsense. Start with The Korean War by Bruce Cuming. Then there is Everyday Life in North Korea 1945-50 by Suzy Kim.
The “enigma” of North Korea is quite easy to understand once you have grasped its history in the past century. South Korea is a US puppet grafted onto Japanese colonial despotism. Underneath which, as observation regularly conforms, there is a people struggling to be free.
Returning to North Korea, in some articles I’ve read they claim the US government, believed that left to its own devices NK would simply implode, in a similar fashion to that of the USSR, and the Eastern bloc collapse.
A staggering 1 million troops from NK face down 700,000 South Korean troops, along with 20,000 US troops along the (DMZ) Demilitarised Zone. There’s a well know phrase amongst the Souths troops, ” There ain’t no D in the DMZ.”
“Well first you’d have to look at British actions around the globe, are they, and have they been for the most part, incitive?”
I think it’s obvious and factually documented that the development of genocidal weapons by others is because of the threat’s of use by western nations, and the invasion doctrine they maintain.
While accusing everyone else they invade of it, ‘naturally’…
“What nonsense. Start with The Korean War by Bruce Cuming. Then there is Everyday Life in North Korea 1945-50 by Suzy Kim.
The “enigma” of North Korea is quite easy to understand once you have grasped its history in the past century. South Korea is a US puppet grafted onto Japanese colonial despotism. Underneath which, as observation regularly conforms, there is a people struggling to be free.”
_______________________
My dear Bevin, what exactly do you mean by nonsense? When I quoted Mondale, did I suggest that I agreed with his supposition? Of course I didn’t, do pay attention.
Oh and Bevin, do you honestly think that you’re the only one that has books on NK.
update on the Norks here : Plutonium alert! http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/north-korea-restarts-plutonium-reactor-and-could-have-stockpiles-within-weeks-a6863066.html
but then contrast what the eminent Clapper says about everything Nork/ISIS/Russki with this entertaining story from Holland, {suitcases of Dollars, special ‘pressure’ on key personalities, keeping local agencies out of loop, active furniture & US doing everything they accused the others of doing,} but this is obviously a historic doc. . .https://decorrespondent.nl/3789/Operation-Easy-Chair-or-how-a-little-company-in-Holland-helped-the-CIA-bug-the-Russians/194107605516-a8038819
To call a state “rogue” is just idiotic, rogue from what?
I think the fact of NK being so isolated, and the awful things that’s led to such a nationalist government, is integral to Western actions and attitudes toward that country…
But that’s all down the memory hole innit.
And note how nobody talks about mass surveillance when regarding them nowadays do they.
Chris Rogers.
Sorry but it’s you who have got it wrong. The UK’s nuclear warheads are built by AWRE at Aldermaston based on US designs. The missile bodies are leased from the US and have to be returned every five years or so for servicing. The missile guidance system is an entirely self contained inertial system and does not use GPS. It would be a bit silly to rely on anything that could be jammed or might be knocked out by the time the war has gone nuclear.
Would anyone like to speculate on how long it might take North Korea to build a workable system and whether or not Kim is barking enough to use it?
If North Korea did not exist, we would have to invent it.
States like this are western whipping boys. Only focus outward, we are just because we are just. What we actually do is simply ignored, or what our regime does.
True very true, the fact that to date there is no peace agreement between DPRK and US as it is only an armistice agreement that has been in place since the end of the Korean war. The war that was instigated by the US to stop the domino effect of communism taking hold, and fought with a particularly vicious mode that included chemical and biological warfare*. The mass extermination of the Korean communist fighters buried in mass graves that to this date is not acknowledged or accepted as facts, are the facts the DPRK will never forget.
DPRK is a country that has been build around defending itself after the massive losses inflicted on it by the god’s right hand man aka Douglas MacArthur the general who wanted to nuke Moscow and Beijing while he was at it in Korea!!! That is until Truman had to fly out to meet him and pull him into line!
All too often the infantile historical narrative based on the white hats and the black hats or goodies versus the baddies has obfuscated the degrees of the inhumanity that the Koreans were subjected to (as it is doing so now WRT Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, Gaza) by both the earlier empire of Japan, that was later replaced by the US empire.
The only reason DPRK exists to date is because they have eleven thousand howitzers trained on Seoul (in the DMZ) and it’s districts and at the start of any hostility they will inflict a massive numbers of capsulises and dead, in fact the US forces are situated well outside the reach of these howitzers! the whole of the DPRK is a massive tank trap and every structure is designed and built with the defence of that country in mind! Hence the inaction of the US in attacking that country and instead concentrating on sanctions and the efforts in isolation of DPRK.
* Frank Olson the bacteriologist and a captain in the U.S. Army Chemical Corps. was pushed out of his hotel room on the thirteenth floor in New York as he was about to blow the whistle on the extent of the use of biological agents in Korean theatre.
“I think it’s obvious and factually documented that the development of genocidal weapons by others is because of the threat’s of use by western nations, and the invasion doctrine they maintain.”
_______________
Yes Uphill, I tend to agree with that, have you ever known a country, to be invaded (or if you prefer the propaganda version, liberated and democratised) by Nato/West that had nuclear weapons? Is then any wonder that Iran pushed to develop them.
“It would be a bit silly to rely on anything that could be jammed or might be knocked out by the time the war has gone nuclear.”
Considering what’s silly or not in such circumstances is pretty astounding…
To seriously consider it is sick in the head to the extreme.
“Is then any wonder that Iran pushed to develop them.”
Wasn’t it actually under western ‘influence’ that they did. Where encouraged?
“Frank Olson the bacteriologist and a captain in the U.S. Army Chemical Corps. was pushed out of his hotel room on the thirteenth floor in New York as he was about to blow the whistle on the extent of the use of biological agents in Korean theatre.”
_____________
Indeed Fedup, I watched the documentary on his death, the fall covered up injuries he sustained, whilst struggling in the hotel room with his killer.
His killer was well known him, and when the police entered into the apartment, the killer was sitting on the toilet pretending to cry, saying “he just jumped why.”
Olson’s son had his fathers body exhumed, and a second autopsy “suggested” homicide.
The documentary which can be found on Youtube, is a fascinating insight into the machinations of the CIA’s earliers years.
Republicofscotland
“..nuclear weapons? Is then any wonder that Iran pushed to develop them.”
_____________________
Whoa there, RoS – what do you know that the Iranian govt doesn’t?
Surely the Iranian govt has always denied it was pushing to develop nuclear weapons and that its nuclear programme was entirely pacific?
“Surely the Iranian govt has always denied it was pushing to develop nuclear weapons and that its nuclear programme was entirely pacific?”
________________-
Before some smart-ass intervenes, read that as:
“Surely the Iranian govt has always denied it was pushing to develop nuclear weapons and claimed that its nuclear programme was entirely pacific?”
‘IMO: No Problem with Genocide? Britain, have a word with yourself’
http://novaramedia.com/2016/01/imo-no-problem-with-genocide-britain-have-a-word-with-yourself/
“Wasn’t it actually under western ‘influence’ that they did. Where encouraged?”
______________
Not to sure about that Uphill, however:
The United States acknowledged Iran’s right to nuclear power, and joined with the EU-3, Russia and China in offering nuclear and other economic and technological co-operation with Iran if it suspended uranium enrichment.
This cooperation would include an assured supply of fuel for Iran’s nuclear reactors.
@Kempe,
Always happy to stand corrected, and should have checked wikipedia first before engaging keyboard, that said, please read section three, which is why i get a little confused, suffice to say Trident is not “INDEPENDENT”, but this does not mean the UK could not have an independent nuclear capability, its just that we prefer being US arsewipes I’m afraid to say.
Here’s the wiki link:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UK_Trident_programme