Korea Thread: Liberal Moon Jae In Elected

[Valmy]

Is it? Birth rates are falling everywhere. Technology will create new opportunities. We will see.

[Monoriu]

Is it? Birth rates are falling everywhere. Technology will create new opportunities. We will see.

If birthrates keep rising, then technology won't help.  Even if we have the technology to build undersea cities or colonies on the moon, we'll run out of space and resources one day if there are, say, 10 trillion people.  That's why I think humanity is doomed. 

[Eddie Teach]

Tall buildings should be around other tall buildings. Those ten story buildings don't seem to justify the expense.

[Monoriu]

Tall buildings should be around other tall buildings. Those ten story buildings don't seem to justify the expense.

I agree.  Let's demolish all the surrounding buildings and turn them into a sea of tall buildings 

[Eddie Teach]

What's the point of having lots of empty skyscrapers around?

[Razgovory]

Who knows why the Chinese do anything?

[The Minsky Moment]

Jake that story doesn't make a ton of sense.  Xi shouldn't need to be told that SK was spooked over the launch.  I suspect the reality is simpler.  Lil Kim has called China's bluff.  China isn't going to collapse the regime no matter what.  Xi has nothing to say to SK to provide meaningful assurance.

The thrust of the story wasn't that Xi didn't know SK was spooked. It was the Korean president reached out to Xi and he didn't take the call due to internal bungling.

Yes it's the premise - that Xi didn't know - that seems questionable.  I would think that is something he would know without having to be told specifically about it.  Xi is no dummy.

[Jacob]

Yes it's the premise - that Xi didn't know - that seems questionable.  I would think that is something he would know without having to be told specifically about it.  Xi is no dummy.

Even people who are not dummies can get distracted or suffer from relying on incompetent or scheming underlings.

But yeah, I have no way to verify to what extent it was an accurate reflection of actual events or not, so your guess is as good as mine. Still, I found it interesting.

[The Brain]

What's the point of having lots of empty skyscrapers around?

Chinese believe their ancestors live there. Like Americans and Florida.

[CountDeMoney]

I love tall buildings.  Humanity's destiny is to combat ever increasing insufficiency resulting from an ever increasing population.  It is a battle that humanity is doomed to lose, but the greatest beauty possible is that humans refuse to go down without a fight.  We must increase production and living capacity in whatever way possible.

Spoken like a true worker drone.

Now I understand why you didn't think you could survive in Canada.  It's not all paved yet.

[jimmy olsen]

Well, shit.

http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/defense/326094-how-north-korea-could-kill-up-to-90-percent-of-americans-at-any

How North Korea could kill 90 percent of Americans

By R. James Woolsey and Vincent Pry, opinion contributors - 03/29/17 07:00 AM EDT

The mainstream media, and some officials who should know better, continue to allege North Korea does not yet have capability to deliver on its repeated threats to strike the U.S. with nuclear weapons. False reassurance is given to the American people that North Korea has not "demonstrated" that it can miniaturize a nuclear warhead small enough for missile delivery, or build a reentry vehicle for an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) capable of penetrating the atmosphere to blast a U.S. city.

Yet any nation that has built nuclear weapons and long-range missiles, as North Korea has done, can easily overcome the relatively much simpler technological challenge of warhead miniaturization and reentry vehicle design.

Indeed, North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Un has been photographed posing with what appears to be a genuine miniaturized nuclear warhead for ballistic missiles. And North Korea does, in fact, have two classes of ICBMs—the road mobile KN-08 and KN-14—which both appear to be equipped with sophisticated reentry vehicles.


Even if it were true that North Korea does not yet have nuclear missiles, their "Dear Leader" could deliver an atomic bomb hidden on a freighter sailing under a false flag into a U.S. port, or hire their terrorist allies to fly a nuclear 9/11 suicide mission across the unprotected border with Mexico. In this scenario, populous port cities like New York, New Orleans, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, or big cities nearest the Mexican border, like San Diego, Phoenix, Austin, and Santa Fe, would be most at risk.

A Hiroshima-type A-Bomb having a yield of 10-kilotons detonated in a major city would cause about 200,000 casualties from blast, thermal, and radiation effects. North Korea has tested a nuclear weapon having an estimated yield of 20-30 kilotons. The Defense Department assesses that on January 6, 2016, North Korea may have tested components of an H-Bomb. H-Bombs are much more powerful than A-Bombs and can produce much greater casualties—millions of casualties in a big city like New York.

The notion that North Korea is testing A-Bombs and H-Bomb components, but does not yet have the sophistication to miniaturize warheads and make reentry vehicles for missile delivery is absurd.

Eight years ago, in 2008, the CIA's top East Asia analyst publicly stated North Korea successfully miniaturized nuclear warheads for delivery on its Nodong medium-range missile. The Nodong is able to strike South Korea and Japan or, if launched off a freighter, even the United States.

In 2011, the Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), Lt. General Ronald Burgess, testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee that North Korea has weaponized its nuclear devices into warheads for arming ballistic missiles.

On April 7, 2015, at a Pentagon press conference, Admiral William Gortney, then Commander of North American Aerospace Defense (NORAD), responsible for protecting the U.S. from long-range missiles, warned that the intelligence community assesses North Korea's KN-08 mobile ICBM could strike the U.S. with a nuclear warhead.

And on October 7, 2015, Gortney again warned the Atlantic Council: "I agree with the intelligence community that we assess that they [North Koreans] have the ability, they have the weapons, and they have the ability to miniaturize those weapons, and they have the ability to put them on a rocket that can range the [U.S.] homeland."

In February and March of 2015, former senior national security officials of the Reagan and Clinton administrations warned that North Korea should be regarded as capable of delivering by satellite a small nuclear warhead, specially designed to make a high-altitude electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack against the United States. According to the Congressional EMP Commission, a single warhead delivered by North Korean satellite could blackout the national electric grid and other life-sustaining critical infrastructures for over a year—killing 9 of 10 Americans by starvation and societal collapse.

Two North Korean satellites, the KMS-3 and KMS-4, presently orbit over the U.S. on trajectories consistent with surprise EMP attack.

Why do the press and public officials ignore or under-report these facts? Perhaps no administration wants to acknowledge that North Korea is an existential threat on their watch.

Whatever the motives for obfuscating the North Korean nuclear threat, the need to protect the American people is immediate and urgent:

The U.S. must be prepared to preempt North Korea by any means necessary—including nuclear weapons.

Launch a crash program to harden against EMP attack the U.S. electric grid to preserve American civilization and hundreds of millions of lives. This could be part of President Trump's infrastructure modernization project.

Beef up national missile defenses. Revive President Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), the unfairly derided "Star Wars." Space-based missile defenses could still render nuclear missiles obsolete and offer a permanent, peaceful, solution to problems like North Korea.

Ambassador R. James Woolsey was the Director of Central Intelligence from 1993-95. Dr. Peter Vincent Pry is chief of staff of the Congressional EMP Commission, served in the House Armed Services Committee and the CIA.

[Eddie Teach]

Have you looked into Australia?

[Josquius]

Well that escalated quickly.
We think they might have the ability to hit us with one nuclear weapon. Maybe. To omg that one nuke can kill 90% of the population of the country.

Maybe we can use this right wing paranoia to encourage them to take a stand about John Dere's dodgy practices with digitally locking people out from home repairs?

[garbon]

Looking at what was said, it appears to mean 90% of Americans should consider themselves potential targets. NK would still be picking a subset of that (unless author thinks they can sneak in man, many nukes...).

[jimmy olsen]

Looking at what was said, it appears to mean 90% of Americans should consider themselves potential targets. NK would still be picking a subset of that (unless author thinks they can sneak in man, many nukes...).

The second half of the article is about orbital EMP weapons.