“Soft despotism is a term coined by Alexis de Tocqueville describing the state into which a country overrun by "a network of small complicated rules" might degrade. Soft despotism is different from despotism (also called 'hard despotism') in the sense that it is not obvious to the people."
In an interesting turn of events, Judge Andrew Napolitano reveals the State Department and Department of Justice are blocking access to the emails
Conservative watchdog group, Judicial Watch announced that on August 8, 2017, D.C. District Court Judge Amit P. Mehta ordered the State Department “to search the state.gov e-mail accounts of Huma Abedin, Cheryl Mills, and Jacob Sullivan” for emails relating to the Benghazi scandal
The Same Hillary Clinton That called for "Resistance" Clinton and the Left got their "Resistance" in Charlottesville
The Warm Up Act - Here the "Resistors" Pepper Spray the Trump Supporters - Where are the cops?
The chickens came home to roost in Charlottesville.
The Left tried to shut down a lawful protest. Had they let them protest, as was their right, there would have been no riot or casualties.
You either are for free speech and the right of assembly or you are not.
I don't have any sympathy for the goof balls on the right, but only one side initiated the violence. The Left. The only victims here are the truth and those mowed down by the car.
North Korea stands no chance against US, Guam threat is a bluff – Russian general to RT
North Korea wouldn’t stand a chance against the US if the war of words between the two states escalates into a military conflict, Leonid Ivashov, a political analyst and retired Russian Colonel-General, told RT, urging a diplomatic solution to the crisis.
“It’s a total mismatch,” Ivashov, who currently heads the Academy of Geopolitical Problems, said of the possible confrontation between Washington and Pyongyang.
“The US is a superpower, while North Korea is a small regional player. North Korea can’t compete with America on any level,” he said.
President Donald Trump needs to strengthen his position in Washington, and the American attack on North Korea “can’t be ruled out,” Ivashov said.
According to the retired colonel-general, modern surveillance technologies allow the US to know “the exact location of all missile systems and nuclear production facilities” possessed by Pyongyang.
“The Americans can strike North Korea – its nuclear missile development centers, industrial facilities; try to eliminate everything that North Korea created in terms of medium-range and long-range missiles and nuclear production,” he said.
The American B-1 bombers will be able to inflict significant damage on Pyongyang’s underground nuclear development facilities and missile silos, “taking into account the weakness of the North Korean anti-missile defense,” Ivashov said.
He was also skeptical about Pyongyang’s threats to target the US territory of Guam in case of an attack.
“To some extent, it’s a bluff on the part of North Korea; an attempt to save face and avert the American blow through international rhetoric,” he said.
“The US has a powerful anti-missile defense system off the coast of the Korean Peninsula… which may well intercept Pyongyang’s missiles. The Guam Air Base, which North Korea is planning to attack, is also covered by the US anti-missile defense,” Ivashov added.
Earlier this week, North Korea said that it would fire ballistic missiles in the direction of Guam sometime in mid-August as a rehearsal of war with the US.
The announcement was made after Trump promised “fire and fury” against Pyongyang if it continued tests aimed at developing nuclear-capable long-range ballistic missiles.
On Friday, Trump came up with another bellicose statement, warning the North on Twitter that “military solutions are now fully in place, locked and loaded, should North Korea act unwisely.”
According to Ivashov, North Korea is still capable of inflicting “some damage” on the US, but it will be incomparable to the blow the Americans will deliver.
With the current state of events, it’s is important for the international community to push the crisis towards a diplomatic solution,” he said.
“China and Russia should intervene now. Political and economic pressure should be increased on North Korea, more sanctions introduced. The main thing is to get the situation out of the military perspective,” Ivashov said.
“When a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight,” Samuel Johnson observed, “it concentrates his mind wonderfully.”
And the prospect of a future where Kim Jong-un can put a nuclear weapon on a U.S. city is going to cause this nation to reassess the risks and rewards of the American Imperium.
First, some history.
“Why should Americans be first to die in any second Korean war?” this writer asked in 1999 in “A Republic, Not an Empire.”
“With twice the population of the North and 20 times its economic power, South Korea … is capable of manning its own defense. American troops on the DMZ should be replaced by South Koreans.”
This was denounced as neo-isolationism. And, in 2002, George W. Bush declared the U.S. “will not permit the world’s most dangerous regimes to threaten us with the world’s most destructive weapons.”
Bluster and bluff. In 2006, Pyongyang called and raised and tested an atom bomb. Now Kim Jong-un is close to an ICBM.
Our options?
As Kim believes the ability to hit America with a nuclear weapon is the only certain way he has of deterring us from killing his regime and him, he will not be talked out of his ICBM. Nor, short of an embargo-blockade by China, will sanctions keep him from his goal, to which he inches closer with each missile test.
As for the “military option,” U.S. strikes on Kim’s missile sites could cause him to unleash his artillery on Seoul, 35 miles south. In the first week of a second Korean war, scores of thousands could be dead.
If North Korea’s artillery opened up, says Gen. Barry McCaffrey, the U.S. would be forced to use tactical atomic weapons to stop the carnage. Kim could then give the suicidal order to launch his nukes.
A third option is to accept and live with a North Korean ICBM, as we have lived for decades with the vast nuclear arsenals of Russia and China.
Now, assume the best: We get through this crisis without a war, and Kim agrees to stop testing ICBMs and nuclear warheads.
Does anyone believe that, given his youth, his determination to drive us off the peninsula and his belief that only an ICBM can deter us, this deal will last and he will abandon his nuclear program?
Given concessions, Kim might suspend missile and nuclear tests. But again, we deceive ourselves if we believe he will give up the idea of acquiring the one weapon that might ensure regime survival.
Hence, assuming this crisis is resolved, what does the future of U.S.-North Korean relations look like?
To answer that question, consider the past.
In 1968, North Korea hijacked the USS Pueblo on the high seas and interned its crew. LBJ did nothing. In April 1969, North Korea shot down an EC-121, 100 miles of its coast, killing the crew. Nixon did nothing.
Under Jimmy Carter, North Koreans ax-murdered U.S. soldiers at Panmunjom. We defiantly cut down a nearby tree.
Among the atrocities the North has perpetrated are plots to assassinate President Park Chung-hee in the 1960s and ’70s, the Rangoon bombing that wiped out much of the cabinet of Chun Doo-hwan in 1983, and the bombing of Korean Air Flight 858, killing all on board in 1987.
And Kim Jong-un has murdered his uncle and brother.
If the past is prologue, and it has proven to be, the future holds this. A renewal of ICBM tests until a missile is perfected. Occasional atrocities creating crises between the U.S. and North Korea. America being repeatedly dragged to the brink of a war we do not want to fight.
As Secretary of Defense James Mattis said Sunday, such a war would be “catastrophic. … A conflict in North Korea … would be probably the worst kind of fighting in most people’s lifetimes.”
When the lesson sinks in that a war on the peninsula would be a catastrophe, and a growing arsenal of North Korean ICBMs targeted on America is intolerable, the question must arise:
Why not move U.S. forces off the peninsula, let South Korean troops replace them, sell Seoul all the modern weapons it needs, and let Seoul build its own nuclear arsenal to deter the North?
Remove any incentive for Kim to attack us, except to invite his own suicide. And tell China: Halt Kim’s ICBM program, or we will help South Korea and Japan become nuclear powers like Britain and France.
Given the rising risk of our war guarantees, from the eastern Baltic to the Korean DMZ – and the paltry rewards of the American Imperium – we are being bled from Libya to Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and Yemen – a true America First foreign policy is going to become increasingly attractive.
Kim’s credible threat to one day be able to nuke a U.S. city is going to concentrate American minds wonderfully.
Pat Buchanan was twice a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination and the Reform Party's candidate in 2000.
He is also a founder and editor of The American Conservative. Buchanan served three presidents in the White House, was a founding panelist of three national TV shows, and is the author of 11 books. His latest book is "Nixon's White House Wars."
The World was made safer: The US had no illusions: Anyone can make threats: A Lie, a Lie, a Lie: Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) criticized President Trump Tuesday for Trump’s hawkish remarks on North Korea, saying Trump shouldn’t threaten the regime unless he is ready to back it up with action.
Back in December 11, 2016 most folk were too busy celebrating the stunning presidential victory of Donald J. Trump, or already exploring devious ways to get him impeached. Few paid any attention to the revelation of Robert Mueller’s alleged attempts to have the Icelandic government help him frame Julian Assange and WikiLeaks via the FBI.
In August of 2011, Mueller sent a planeload of eight FBI agents on a purported mission to Iceland to sabotage Assange and WikiLeaks.
Not much notice was paid when former Icelandic Minister of the Interior, Ögmundur Jonasson caught them redhanded before sending them packing.
Jonasson revealed that U.S. authorities first told him in June 2011 that there was an ‘imminent attack’ on Iceland’s government databases; that they were sending the FBI to the rescue.
But he claims that when the FBI arrived in August, the FBI ‘sought Iceland’s cooperation to frame Assange and WikiLeaks’ in a mission that was part of a ‘wide-ranging investigation’ into Assange and WikiLeaks’.
Savvy to their real intention that had nothing to do with saving government database cyber attacks, Jonasson’s response was to have the FBI kicked out of Iceland.
The story was widely reported on in 2013, but Jonasson made no attempt of the U.S. trying to frame Assange until he became a whistleblower last December, making it the biggest “if only” story of all time.
“If only” Jonasson had come forward in 2011, would Robert Mueller have ever been appointed as Special Counsel and get to empanel a Grand Jury to probe the Russia/Trump non-stop mainstream media allegations?
