I don't recall anything from the 'analysts' who tell us they know everything stating why the hell this fat retard from North Korea is doing what he is doing. What does he hope to gain? The moron is demonstrating that he could lob missiles here, there and everywhere - but to what purpose? He hasn't said 'if the West doesn't do this and that', I will zap you'. So, what is it all about?

Need to remember that the United States government is the world's biggest criminal organisation and threat to world peace. Look at all the wars invasions, bombings etc they have carried out under various pretexts to further interests of banksters, corporations and the military industrial complex. The illegal and improper things North Korea has done pale into insignificance by comparison. Note that the US apparently dropped about 26,000 bombs in other countries in 2016. How many did North Korea drop? I think none. Then think what the US and its allies did to North Korea during the Korean War. Bombed it into the "Stone age" and killed millions of people. Then the end result was political boundaries about the same as before the war.

Seems North Koreans are well aware of the US making agreements and they breaching them when they feel inclined - regarding themselves as exceptional. Despite this, they apparently have repeatedly asked for a proper peace treaty to formally end the Korean War but the US has not obliged. Re North Korea apparently having nuclear weapons which can quickly be launched, seem the only way a small country like them can keep a big bully like the US out. They and/or allies are likely to suffer a nuclear response if they attack North Korea. Australia should take the lead in trying to stop US provoking North Korea, such as it arranging military exercises near at rice planting and harvest times, which obliges NK to have military reservists in state of war preparedness rather than helping with food production. W

Mox,

You are a headcase.

"We are highly vulnerable to either a trade war involving the US and China, or to disruptions caused by a military conflict in our export markets."

Of course Australia is vulnerable....whether it be flatulence or a simple head cold....Australia is vulnerable because it is where it is by it's own design.
Anyone believing otherwise is delusional and a contributor to the present status.
When Australia gave up it's manufacturing base it gave up it's right to future self determination....at least make our own armaments, weapons etc.....Australia just digs it out of the ground and looks for someone to buy it with the profits going offshore to the international shareholders
The politicians line up for their turn at the trough....the public servants are overpaid with pay rises every year....everyone is in la la land preoccupied with how many friends they have on facebook...the Greenies want to turn golf courses into housing estates and everyone else wants more of what there isn't, insisting they're entitled to it.
Manus Island is a festering wound that has no intention of going away and we're paying through the nose to maintain what?....our resolve...resolve to what....to be the idiots we choose to be?

The greater threat may instead come from within.
http://youtu.be/s8h-ZzHzTFM
(Contains explicit language)

An excellent essay.
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Hi ttbn

On "I don't recall anything from the 'analysts' who tell us they know everything stating why the hell this fat retard from North Korea is doing what he is doing."

The (all Fat Boy) Kim Dynasty need to manufacture external Bogeymen (always including the US) to justify the Kims' dictatiorship over all the non-Kims in North Korea.
______________________________

Hi mox

I concur with ttbn in pointing out your headcase-ocity.
___________________________________

In this increasingly nuclear-weapon-armed-world - sooner or later Australia will need to build or buy nuclear weapons.

Cheers

mox I agree with you in that North Korea are just making sure they are not the recipients of American regime change in the disguise of protecting the people, bringing democracy, whatever there latest excuse is.

The list of backstabbing of world leaders by USA is very long, if North Korea did not have nuclear weapons I guarantee something drastic would have happened before now.

If left alone they would be no threat to anyone except themselves.

Every year America and South Korea hold large military exercises right on the border if they stopped things would be more peaceful.

Re ttbn and Plantagenet trying to discredit my assessment of the situation, note all they have done is resort to name calling types of abuse against me, a common tactic by those who know they cannot put up a strong argument to support their assertions based on facts. Seems their views are basically those pushed by the Western mainstream media, which regarding some issues at times deliberately peddles "fake news" distortion of real news on behalf of those who control it. However, it is increasingly being exposed with accessibility of a range of alternative news sites on the Internet. If critics of my comments above had kept an eye on these for a fair while, would almost certainly would not blindly accept mainstream media views or defend them as if from their own research. Note that the most experienced and informed critics of Western policies are largely based in Western countries, particularly the US. At least their work, which often the mainstream media will not touch is now becoming circulated much more widely, thanks to independent websites usually operating on shoestring budgets and without advertising support.

More reason for regime change = North Korea holds trillions of US dollars in unexplored mineral wealth.

Pepe Escobar On North Korea: Fire, Fury, Fear, & False Flags

Alarm bells ringing as rampant speculation breaks out over Pyongyang’s ‘possible’ miniaturized nuclear warheads.

The same intel “folks” who brought to you babies pulled from incubators by “evil” Iraqis as well as non-existent WMDs are now peddling the notion that North Korea has produced a miniaturized nuclear warhead able to fit its recently tested ICBM.

That’s the core of an analysis completed in July by the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). Additionally, US intel believes that Pyongyang now has access to up to 60 nuclear weapons.

On the ground US intel on North Korea is virtually non-existent – so these assessments amount to guesswork at best.

But when we couple the guesswork with an annual 500-page white paper released earlier this week by the Japanese Defense Ministry, alarm bells do start ringing.

The white paper stresses Pyongyang’s “significant headway” in the nuclear race and its “possible” (italics mine) ability to develop miniaturized nuclear warheads able to fit on the tips of its missiles.

This “possible” ability is drowned in outright speculation. As the report states, “It is conceivable that North Korea’s nuclear weapons program has already considerably advanced and it is possible that North Korea has already achieved the miniaturization of nuclear bombs into warheads and has acquired nuclear warheads.”

Western corporate media would hardly refrain from metastasizing pure speculation into a “North Korea has miniaturized nuclear weapons” frenzy consuming the cable news cycle/ newspaper headlines.

Cont

Talk about hearts and minds comfortably numbed by the fear factor.

The Japanese white paper, conveniently, also escalated condemnation of China over Beijing’s actions in both the East and South China seas.

So let’s look at the agendas in play. The War Party in the US, with its myriad connections in the industrial-military-media complex, obviously wants/needs war to keep the machinery oiled. Tokyo, for its part, would much appreciate a pre-emptive US military attack – and damn the inevitable, massive South Korean casualties that would result from Pyongyang’s counterpunch.

It’s quite enlightening that Tokyo, for all practical purposes, considers China as a “threat” as serious as North Korea; Defense Minister Itsunori Onodera went straight to the point when he said, “North Korea’s missiles represent a deepening threat. That, along with China’s continued threatening behavior in the East China Sea and South China Sea, is a major concern for Japan.” Beijing’s response was swift.

Kim Jong-Un, demonized ad infinitum, is not a fool, and is not going to indulge in a ritual seppuku unilaterally attacking South Korea, Japan or US territory. Pyongyang’s nuclear arsenal represents the deterrent against regime change that Saddam Hussein and Gaddafi could not count on. There’s only one way to deal with North Korea, as I’ve argued before; diplomacy. Tell that to Washington and Tokyo.

Meanwhile, there’s United Nations Security Council Resolution 2371. It does target North Korea’s major exports – coal, iron, seafood. Coal accounts for 40% of Pyongyang’s exports, and arguably 10% of GDP.

Yet this new sanctions package does not touch imports of oil and refined-oil products from China. That’s one of the reasons why Beijing voted in favor.

Cont

Beijing’s strategy is a very Asian attempt to find a face-saving solution – and that takes time. UNSC resolution 2371 buys time – and may dissuade the Trump administration, for now, from going heavy metal, with horrible consequences.

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi cautiously stated the sanctions are a sign of international opposition to North Korea’s missile and nuclear weapons programs. The last thing Beijing needs is a war right on its borders, also bound to negatively interfere with the expansion of the New Silk Roads, a.k.a. Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

Beijing could always work on re-building trust between Pyongyang and Washington. That’s an order taller than the Himalayas. One just needs to look back at the 1994 Agreed Framework, signed during Bill Clinton’s first term.

The framework was supposed to freeze – and even dismantle – Pyongyang’s nuclear program and was bound to normalize US-North Korea relations. A US-led consortium would build two light-water nuclear reactors to compensate for Pyongyang’s loss of nuclear power; sanctions would be lifted; both parties would issue “formal assurances” against the use of nuclear weapons.

Nothing happened. The framework collapsed in 2002 – when North Korea was enshrined in the “axis of evil” by the Cheney regime. Not to mention that the Korean War is still, technically, on; the 1953 armistice was never replaced by a real peace treaty.

The current narrative is eerily similar to the usual suspects blaring since forever that Iran is a heartbeat away from “building a nuclear weapon”.

Mox,

While you are certainly allowed to say what you like, anyone who calls the U.S government a "criminal organisation" has to expect to have his sanity called into question. But, perhaps you are a North Korean yourself. It's either that or you are a renegade madman.

So ttbn,
are you suggesting the criminal act re the invasion and decimation of Iraq was done by a benevolent government?

There is a long list of criminal acts in other countries by the US with aims of benefitting its own corporations , banksters and military industrial complex. Re the head criminals, have seen a comment that if the standards of the Nuremburg Trials were applied to US Presidents since WW2 at the end of their terms of office, every one would have been hanged. Re JFK who was assassinated,, he was trying to stop a lot of the rot going on. Supposedly killed on sole initiative of a deranged "lone nut gunman". In fact, lots of details combined indicate accused murderer Lee Harvey Oswald was just the dimwit selected and set up to take the blame with a "false flag" type shooting covertly arranged by powerful people who wanted Kennedy gone. Looks like JFK approach is need now. Had there been a more aggressive US President in 1962, probably a nuclear war against Russia would have started over the Cuban missile crisis.

Just adding to the comments by mox, philipS and ilmessaggio, even though there is not much to add, isn't this deja vu all over again?

A small (make that tiny) nation with a tragic history of imperial occupation and mind-numbing imperial destruction, steers an independent path and creates a socio-political structure of homogenised national solidarity and active weaponry deterrence.

What to do? What to do?

So the Western sanction-everything brigade goes into top gear (to ensure total economic collapse of the tiny nation) and the media regime-demonisation brigade goes into humanitarian-saviour overdrive.

Oh, dear. That silly, tiny little nation is now telling us to go screw ourselves, and anyone else who sides with us. Gentlemen, pass the port and the cigars. It's going to be a long night.

I read a report from America that said KimyongKing Kong has missiles that can reach New York or Melbourne.

I think more likely they may be able to reach Northern Australia.
I think he is more likely key to lob one at Australia, because if he aims at America
they will use their defence shield and then lob one straight back at him

If he aims at Australia it will most probably take everyone by surprise and America may hesitate to immediately respond.

Dear Cherful,

Using his 60 submarines, Kim can reach anywhere except the very middle of continents.

Dear Yuyuutsu,
Thanks for the info.

Might be time to put that missile defence shield in place.

Indonesia wasnt happy about it last time it was suggested. I guess our regional neighbours think it will give us a military advantage.

Before you armchair warriors send down the mother of all missiles on North Korea, just in case they might be thinking of nuking Melbourne, some facts on the ground:

The WHO has admonished the US for being the only OECD country to not have a universal health care system. North Korea has universal healthcare.

The North Korea national literacy rate for people 15 years and over is 99%. In the US, it's 86%.

This is despite 20 years of crippling sanctions on North Korea.

When are you fire-and-brimstone fanatics going to realise that there is more to life than living in democracy?

Dear Killarney,

Western medicine and education are a curse rather than a boon.

In Australia, the purpose of Medicare is to provide extra money and power to Western-conventional doctors and their Mafia, the AMA, while fining those who do not require their services, whereas the purpose of education is to indoctrinate the young in an attempt to turn them into dumb and useful cogs in the industrial-economic machinery.

If your percentage claims are correct, then this is an advantage for America.

North Koreans have no alternatives: perhaps (as you claim) they have access to medical doctors, but they have no other ways to care for their own health. For example, they don't even have access to simple hand/face cream, resulting in their skin drying, cracking and aging in the bitter cold and wind.

Due to streamlined impersonal care, In China, having even the simplest stomach operation (such as taking out the appendix or a Caesarean), results in a huge, rugged and ugly scar across the stomach. They may be functional, but they just don't bother to close the cut neatly. If that's the case in China, then surely in North Korea it's even worse. May I remind you that a large part of the North Korean population is starving and tortured in concentration camps, where the guards, both for punishment and for fun, use a hot iron to flatten women's chests.

«there is more to life than living in democracy?»

Lets find out once we actually have a democracy, OK?