Trump v Kim

[Shaka_Khan]

[rory_20_uk]

One button triggers this? There are no safety checks / the requirement for a two stage sequence??!?#

[Seamus Fermanagh]

One button triggers this? There are no safety checks / the requirement for a two stage sequence??!?#

Holdover from the bad old days when a sub launched missile was at target in 7 minutes....not a lot of double check time.

[Shaka_Khan]

[Montmorency]

@Xiahou
@Husar

[Husar]

Yes, what? Why?

Is there a pun in that picture or do you expect me to be familiar with US emergency alert codes?

[Montmorency]

Yes, what? Why?

Is there a pun in that picture or do you expect me to be familiar with US emergency alert codes?

Compare "DRILL — PACOM (CDW) — State Only"

to

"PACOM (CDW) — State Only".

Now select.

[Husar]

Compare "DRILL — PACOM (CDW) — State Only"

to

"PACOM (CDW) — State Only".

Now select.

You mean that is the interface of their software and the guy clicked the wrong "link"?

https://hotair.com/headlines/archive...missile-alert/

This suggests that.

I thought this was maybe a list of some website about triggered alerts or so...

[Seamus Fermanagh]

Sadly, whereas Japan can get a false alarm up and running in seven minutes, Hawaii takes 40. Had it NOT been a false alarm, the Hawaiian alarm would have been issued 5 minutes or so after detonation.

[Shaka_Khan]

The reasons why South Korea wants to calm the North Korean regime down.


A year before the 1988 Seoul Olympics:




During the 2002 World Cup (the same day as the South Korea versus Turkey match):




There's an intent to ruin South Korea's image as a safe country.

[Shaka_Khan]

Kim Yo-jong (Kim Jong-un's sister), Mike Pence, and Shinzō Abe are all in South Korea now. They'll attend the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics today. Ivanka Trump will attend the closing ceremony. This will be interesting.

[Fragony]

Wouldn't want to be a North-Korean athlete, they tend to disappear when they don't win

[Kralizec]

Wouldn't want to be a North-Korean athlete, they tend to disappear when they don't win

I'm not sure if that's intended seriously, but they could use the opportunity to apply for asylum in South Korea. I suspect however that North Korea only sends people abroad when they have some leverage over them, such as family back home.

[Fragony]

I'm not sure if that's intended seriously, but they could use the opportunity to apply for asylum in South Korea. I suspect however that North Korea only sends people abroad when they have some leverage over them, such as family back home.

Their entire football team has vanished. I hope for them that they can get asylum in South-Korea, but yeah family. Basicly hostages. Sick country.

[Gilrandir]

Their entire football team has vanished.

According to NK media, they took the World Cup. Now they are enjoying their hard-earned fame somewhere on white sand beaches in the Maldives.

[Strike For The South]

North Korea should be given a gold medal in the propaganda department. The mere stately presences of Kims sister has sent the western media on some rehabilitation tour no one asked for.

[Shaka_Khan]

This is a Kim Jong-un impersonator on front of the North Korean cheerleaders.

[Seamus Fermanagh]

This is a Kim Jong-un impersonator on front of the North Korean cheerleaders.

Look of disgust on cheerleader at right side of picture just guaranteed her family food for 90 days.

[Shaka_Khan]

Ivanka Trump arrived in South Korea to attend the closing ceremony of the Winter Olympics.

[Shaka_Khan]

[Montmorency]

I've come around to a different view of the Trump-Kim summit. I see it positively now.

For one reason: Inertia, or overcoming it.

Trump taking the brunt of pushback for opening to Kim, in itself, can facilitate future admins doing same but with actual substantive aims and efforts. In the future now diplomats and ministers will meet on initiative with no or few political preconditions.

(In fact, many of the process changes the Trump admin is doing in general could arguably be repurposed by an aggressive left-wing admin just as well as a more overtly-authoritarian one.)

Now, the actual summit was insubstantial and damaged American "political capital" in the short-term more than would have Trump simply not antagonizing Kim anymore. We have nothing concrete to this point to show for it. All that is true, but we also have another hard truth to acknowledge in this: America has lost on North Korea. Resoundingly and historically. We have failed in most of our objectives, and what remains is the conservative shepherding of the South Korean and Japanese states that we built.

America lost. As we often do, though we desperately want to believe otherwise. And often flail in the face of.

But it's also not about us, in the end. We're not the protagonists here. Trump's approach, though it has a different and objectionable logic, will be helpful to any government that seeks to 'de-imperialize' American foreign policy. Now we're pushed more to act on behalf of the international good, rather than narrowly-construed national interests. That means letting the North have most of what it wants, and to claim its nuclear victory over the big-nose imperialist pig-dogs, but so be it. That horse is out. All we can do now is work as helpful accessories on behalf of primary actors Japan and South Korea, and that's just what we should do. The summit may raise the cost of, and increase the institutional and public resistance toward, a petulant Boltonian effort to hold our grip on the manger. We can learn acceptance of setbacks.