"UN strongly condemns North Korea rocket launch" by Edith M. Lederer | Associated Press, April 17, 2012
UNITED NATIONS - The UN Security Council strongly condemned North Korea’s rocket launch Monday, announcing it will impose new sanctions and warning of further action if Pyongyang conducts another launch or a new nuclear test.
Acting swiftly, the 15-member council, including China, North Korea’s closest ally, adopted a presidential statement underscoring its united opposition to Friday’s launch - which violated UN sanctions - and the military policy being pursued by the country’s young new leader, Kim Jong Un.
The council directed its sanctions committee to expand the list of North Korean entities subject to asset freezes and identify more proliferation-sensitive technology to be banned for transfer to and from the country.
“The swift and unanimous adoption of this strong presidential statement shows that the international community is united in sending a clear message to North Korea that such provocations are serious and totally unacceptable,’’ said US Ambassador Susan Rice, the current council president.
In Washington, Assistant Secretary of State Kurt Campbell, the top US envoy for East Asia, said Monday that the failed rocket launch is a threat to international security....
How?
Related: Push For War in Korea Falls Apart
Along with the Korean launch.
Campbell said the world is committed to discouraging future North Korean provocations. But he said the best response is a very clear and firm coordination by Washington and its allies.
While Russia and China blocked the Security Council from adopting a resolution on their ally Syria for over a year, both world powers have consistently supported tough measures against North Korea, despite their close ties.
North Korea’s attempt to launch a satellite ended in failure when the rocket disintegrated over the Yellow Sea, embarrassing its new leader at what the North had planned as the centerpiece of the 100th birthday celebration of the country’s founder, his grandfather Kim Il Sung.
Western nations have said the launch was a cover for the testing of a long-range missile, and worries remain about North Korea’s nuclear program.
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"North Korea abandons deal with US" by Choe Sang-Hun | New York Times, April 18, 2012
SEOUL - North Korea said Tuesday that it was abandoning an agreement it made in February with the United States, in which it promised to suspend uranium enrichment, nuclear tests, and long-range missile tests.
The North Korean Foreign Ministry said that it “resolutely and totally’’ rejected the UN Security Council’s condemnation of its failed rocket launching last week and that it would continue to launch rockets to try to place satellites into orbit.
The ministry’s statement hinted, but did not make clear, that the North may now conduct a long-range missile or nuclear test.
I wish they wouldn't, but it's not something I want another war over.
No longer bound by the deal, “we have thus become able to take necessary retaliatory measures,’’ the ministry said in the statement, which was carried by the state-run Korean Central News Agency. “The US will be held wholly accountable for all the ensuing consequences.’’
The United States had already suspended its side of the deal because of the rocket launching, including delivery of 240,000 tons of food aid promised to the North.
You know, I really wish the food could have gotten through. Fuck all the saber-rattling and war-mongering.
The collapse of the deal cost the United States and the International Atomic Energy Agency a chance to send inspectors into the isolated country for the first time in three years. And analysts said it made further North Korean provocations more likely.
Meaning the U.S. broke its promises and North Korea is being set-up for blame for some sort of false flag operation. We have seen it all before. This is what war-makers do.
North Korea argued Tuesday that Washington was the first to renege on the February deal, by suspending the food aid and pressing the Security Council to condemn the rocket launching. In the deal, Washington had promised not to have “hostile intent’’ against the North.
Yeah, we usually do. I think it is because we have been hanging around Israel too much.
Analysts have long questioned the effectiveness of sanctions against North Korea.
So have I.
Some analysts said Tuesday that China may have broken a Security Council resolution by providing 16-wheel missile-launching vehicles that were seen in a military parade in Pyongyang.
Yeah, so?
Ted Parsons of IHS Jane’s Defense Weekly pointed out similarities to a known Chinese vehicle: “The same windscreen design, the same four-windscreen wiper configuration, the same door and handle design, a very similar grill area, almost the same front bumper lighting configuration and the same design for the cabin steps.’’
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How do you say hypocrisy in Korean?
N. Korean military issues threat to South
With what?
N. Korea’s new missiles called fake
No wonder it couldn't fly.
"Wood horse or fake missile, martial tricks not new" by Allen G. Breed AP National Writer / April 26, 2012
In a way, the North Korean missiles-that-may-not-be-missiles-at-all are the modern-day equivalent of King Edward III's exaggerated codpiece.
The English king was fighting the Hundred Years' War and was desperate to project an air of might to his French enemies, according to historian Beth Marie Kosir. Legend has it that Edward had the armor covering the royal family jewels "enlarged to astounding proportions because he had heard that strength and military prowess were correlated with a man's endowment."
Given the situation, "it would not be surprising that he would try to seek any possible advantage available to him," Kosir wrote in an article titled "Modesty to Majesty: The Development of the Codpiece." "He then ordered that the nobility and knights do the same to their armor."
Flash forward seven centuries, and it's clear that size still matters -- at least when it comes to missiles.
Two days after a spectacularly bungled April 13 rocket launch, North Korea staged a lavish military parade featuring a half-dozen KN-08 "missiles" on massive mobile launch vehicles. But analysts who have studied photos of the event say the weapons were fakes -- and bad ones, at that.
History is replete with examples of governments and armies using deception -- the Trojan horse is perhaps the most famous instance.
EXCUSE ME? Did I just read that in an AmeriKan media article?
Often, the aim is to convince your enemy that you're stronger -- or weaker -- than you really are. There have been those who disapproved: In his "Summa Theologica," St. Thomas Aquinas argued that trickery in war was unlawful.
"Scripture says, Strict justice must be your ideal," he wrote. "But since subterfuge is a kind of deception, it would seem to be an injustice. Therefore subterfuge should not be used, even in a just war."
But Sun Tzu, in "The Art of War," famously stated that, "All warfare is based on deception."
A painful truth.
Moral or not, deception has been going on "probably as long as there have been one group of people fighting another," says Frank R. Shirer, chief of historical resources at the U.S. Army Center of Military History in Washington, D.C.
A few prominent examples:
--World War II saw strategic subterfuge on an epic scale.
For "Operation Mincemeat," the Allies planted fake papers on the corpse of a Scottish man and released it from a submarine off the Spanish coast. The dispatches suggested a major Allied attack through Greece; the real objective was Sicily.
Perhaps the biggest feint of the war occurred in 1944, as the Allies were preparing to invade Normandy.
--Historian Matthew Aid, author of the recent book "Intel Wars," says perhaps the "biggest `strategic deception' of all time that backfired very badly" was Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's claim that he had weapons of mass destruction. Although his deputies were frantically trying to convince the world otherwise, the damage had been done.
(Blog editor is stunned at the deception. Hussein claimed the opposite through the very deputies cited. They were begging the world to stop Bush-Bliar)
"We believed the boasts and not the factual evidence, and we paid for it," Aid says. "Well, he paid for it with his life. And we ended up with a war. ...
Meaning the FACTS WERE WHAT THOSE OPPOSED SAID FROM BEFORE THE WAR! And who paid again?
"Raises the obvious question of what happens when someone calls your bluff."
And what does one do with a lying media that insults you.
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