COLLECTIVE MADNESS


“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."

Saturday, August 12, 2017

Russian General Stating the Obvious On US/North Korea

North Korea stands no chance against US, Guam threat is a bluff – Russian general to RT


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.

42 comments:

  1. NK could inflict some damage on the US but the US could take out all long range and medium range missles and all nuke sites says the Russian. Cool. Easy Peasy. Who cares about the conventional mortars armed and aimed at Seoul. They are just Koreans dontcha know? We can't have a little pissant like Kim make threats at US.

    ReplyDelete
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    1. Now you've got the correct attitude, Ash.

      We will protect Canada, too, since you can't do it yourselves.

      You will be watching hockey and can thank us later.

      Delete
    2. Here's your guy, Ash -

      August 12, 2017
      Democrats’ Vice Chair Rep. Keith Ellison flirts with treason and tars the party brand
      By Thomas Lifson

      Keith Ellison declared yesterday that North Korean dictator Kim Jong un was “acting more responsible [sic] than” President Trump. Despite appearances, Keith Ellison is not giving aid and comfort to the enemy, and need not fear a predawn raid by the FBI. Even though technically we never ended the Korean “conflict,” the United States never declared war on North Korea, and acted under the banner of the United Nations there. But Ellison is weakening the position of the commander in chief as he faces down a nuclear armed tyrant.

      In doing so, he may be damaging the Democrats’ brand, of course. I suspect he and most Dems assume that whatever the president does, it will end in disaster, and then they will be able to say, “We told you so.” They’d never admit to it, of course. The rest of America understands how important it is to finally end the threat of North Korea's nukes, after kicking the can down the road all these years.


      Jack Heretik reports on Ellison’s statement in the Free Beacon:

      Speaking at the left-wing Netroots Nation conference in Atlanta, Ellison, who serves as Vice-Chair of the Democratic National Committee, spoke briefly on the latest tensions between North Korea and the United States.

      Ellison spoke critically of Trump's handling of the situation and called the North Korean despot more responsible than Trump.

      "North Korea is a serious thing. You have this guy [Trump] making bellicose threats against somebody else who has very little to lose over there," Ellison said. "Kim Jong-un, the world always thought he was not a responsible leader. Well, he's acting more responsible than this guy is."

      The video clip below is less than one minute.

      VIDEO

      http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2017/08/democrats_vice_chair_rep_keith_ellison_flirts_with_treason_and_tars_the_party_brand.html

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    3. I think it would be a good thing if Kim & Company were gone just for the sake of the North Korean people.

      They have become shorter by two or three inches, and have lost a lot of weight too. Many have lost so much weight they die. What was it, back in the 1990's I think it was sometime, an estimated couple million died of starvation.

      As a farmer this irritates me.

      Bad diet. Strike that, no diet.

      Further all the tens or hundreds of thousands in the gulags might catch a break.

      Delete
    4. Here's Henry Kissinger on how to resolve the entire situation:

      https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-to-resolve-the-north-korea-crisis-1502489292

      I can't access it though as I've read my free articles for the month.

      Delete
  2. AshSat Aug 12, 08:15:00 AM EDT
    NK could inflict some damage on the US but the US could take out all long range and medium range missles and all nuke sites says the Russian. Cool. Easy Peasy. Who cares about the conventional mortars armed and aimed at Seoul. They are just Koreans dontcha know? We can't have a little pissant like Kim make threats at US.


    No we can't, mainly because we don't have to and more importantly we can back it up. Canada recognized that through the entire Cold War and was part of BMEWS, the DEW line and provided bases for nuclear weapons on SAC basis.


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    1. The NORKs have been uttering threats for years but now thin skinned Trump is firing them back. Either Trump loses face or man6 many die. You do like to carry his water. A trumpette to the end.

      Delete
  3. Morons of all descriptions in Virginia are disturbing the peace of my morning cable viewing here in Idaho.

    I am trying not to become irritated.

    ReplyDelete
  4. OOHHH....oooooo

    Discrepancies emerge in Jane Sanders' Burlington College donor list....DRUDGE

    Love it !

    ReplyDelete
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    1. Add Jane to your growing list of Women Who Should Be In The Slammer.

      Delete
  5. .

    Guam Governor Says Trump Told Him North Korea Threats Will Increase Tourism

    I understand adventure tourism is supposed to be big this year.

    .


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    1. The ultimate bungee jump, the last white water rapids, the final running with the bulls.....

      Delete
    2. It all sounds so shocking only because O'bozo was such an uber wimp.

      We are just returning to normal.

      Delete
    3. Besides, the Bible gives The Donald the command to kill Kim Jong un, and all like him.

      Delete
  6. Mr. Trump, It’s Time For You To Get A Dog

    From a physician’s point of view, I can tell you that pets do generally improve your health, especially dogs. To me, one of the greatest benefits they bring is keeping you fit and active. In a study of dog owners published this year by BioMed Central, dog owners typically walked an extra 20 minutes each day, the recommended length of a normal workout.

    Thus, if the president had a dog and didn’t delegate dog-walking duty to an aide, he would be walking outside more. The exercise would help to keep his weight in check. At the same time, he would definitely improve his heart health by lowering his blood pressure and even controlling some of the blood chemistries.


    http://hotair.com/headlines/archives/2017/08/mr-trump-time-get-dog/

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    1. That's the trouble with the Asiatics. Aren't they the ones that eat dogs ?

      Delete
    2. .

      Be advised, you have been reported to the ASPCA for even suggesting Trump get a dog.

      .

      Delete
  7. BIG LIAR

    How Theodor Adorno redefined Fascism.

    August 11, 2017 Dinesh D'Souza

    Fascism and Nazism are both phenomena of the left. This makes ideological sense, because at their core they represent ideologies of the centralized, all-powerful state. Moreover, fascism grew out of Marxism, and fascism’s founder Benito Mussolini, was a Marxist and lifelong socialist. Hitler, too, was a socialist who headed the National Socialist Party and in fact changed the name of the German Workers Party to make it the National Socialist German Workers Party.

    How, then, did progressives in America re-define fascism and Nazism as phenomena of the right? This sleight-of-hand occurred after World War II, once fascism and Nazism were discredited with the reputation of Holocaust. Then progressives recognized it was important to cover up the leftist roots of fascism and Nazism and to move them from the left-wing column into the right-wing column.

    The man most responsible for the progressive redefinition of fascism is Theodor Adorno, a German Marxist intellectual and a member of the influential Institute for Social Research, otherwise known as the Frankfurt School. The Frankfurt School scholars were leftists and most of them were refugees from Nazi Germany. Some settled in Europe; others like Adorno and Herbert Marcuse came to the United States.

    Adorno’s influence in defining how fascism came to be understood in America cannot be underestimated. When he and Marcuse arrived, America had just waged war against the Nazis, and after the war Nazism became the very measure of political horror and evil. Not much was known about fascism and Nazism, outside of superficial newspaper and radio coverage. In academia and the media, there was an acknowledged curiosity about what had attracted so many people to fascism and Nazism, with its attendant anti-Semitism.

    ReplyDelete
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    1. Marcuse and Adorno were Jewish, and so could be expected to know about anti-Semitism and the fate of the Jews. And they were refugees from the Nazis, so they could claim to be speaking about Nazism, as it were, “from the inside.” Their work was embraced by the American Jewish Committee, which naturally felt that these two German exiles would know precisely the nature of Nazism, fascism and anti-Semitism and how to overcome them. The two Frankfurt School scholars basically shaped what was considered anti-fascist education in the United States.

      In reality, the American Jewish Committee had no idea that Adorno and Marcuse had their own agenda: not to fight fascism per se, but to promote Marxism and a leftist political agenda. Marxism and fascism are quite close; they are kindred collectivist ideologies of socialism. Their common enemy is, of course, free markets and the various institutions of the private sector, including the church and the traditional family. Marxism and fascism both sought to get rid of capitalism and remake the social order. So did Marcuse, Adorno and the Frankfurt School.

      Adorno decided to repackage fascism as a form of capitalism and moral traditionalism. In effect, they reinvented fascism as a phenomenon of the political right. In this preposterous interpretation, fascism was remade into two things that real fascists despised: free markets and support for a traditional moral order. With a vengeance that appears only comic in retrospect, the Frankfurt School launched a massive program to uproot nascent fascism in the United States by making people less attached to the core economic and social institutions of American society.

      The classic document in this regard is Adorno’s famous F-Scale. The F stands for fascism. Adorno outlined the scale in his 1950 book The Authoritarian Personality. The basic argument of the book was that fascism is a form of authoritarianism and that the worst manifestation of authoritarianism is self-imposed repression. Fascism develops early, Adorno argued, and we can locate it in young people’s attachments to religious superstition and conventional middle-class values about family, sex and society.

      Delete
    2. With a straight face, Adorno produced a list of questions aimed at detecting fascist affinities. “Obedience and respect for authority are the most important virtues children should learn.” “Homosexuality is a particularly rotten form of delinquency.” “No insult to our honor should ever go unpunished.” “No matter how they act on the surface, men are interested in women for only one reason.” Basically, a yes answer to these questions showed that you were a budding fascist.

      The underlying logic of Adorno’s position was that German and Italian fascism were, at their core, characterized by internal psychological and sexual repression. A moment’s reflection, however, shows why this position is nonsense. By and large, the social attitudes toward religion, the family and sexuality were actually quite similar across these countries, allowing for some modest variation. One might speculatively argue that the Germans of the time were more uptight than, say, the French, but who would argue that the Italians were more repressed than, say, the English?

      So Adorno’s F-scale had no power to explain why fascism established itself so powerfully and destructively in Germany and Italy but not elsewhere. Most real fascists, historian A. James Gregor dryly observes in The Ideology of Fascism, “would not have made notably high scores.” Now there is one question that would in fact have uncovered fascist affinities: Do you support increasing the power of the centralized state over individuals, families, churches and the private sector? Significantly, Adorno did not include this question on the F-scale, presumably because it would have brought enthusiastic yes responses from progressives and Democrats.

      Given the patent absurdity of Adorno’s antifascism, with its obviously fraudulent and pseudo-scientific F-scale, why did the mainstream of American academia fall for it? Why did they go along with Adorno and proclaim his work the definitive basis for antifascist education? The short answer is that even then academia had a strong progressive tilt, and the progressives discovered the benefits of embracing Adorno’s thesis.

      Here, after all, was a German Jewish scholar declaring fascism a phenomenon of the right. Clearly he was sticking fascism on conservatives who supported capitalism and affirmed religion and traditional families. This was a lie—real fascists detest those institutions and want to destroy them—but it was a politically convenient lie.

      So the progressives delightedly climbed aboard the bandwagon and cheered him on, and the cheering continues. In 2005, for example, the progressive sociologist Alan Wolfe admitted flaws in Adorno’s work but praised The Authoritarian Personality as “more relevant now” because it “seems to capture the way many Christian-right politicians view the world.”

      Adorno’s value to such people is that he empowers them to say, “Down with fascism! Now let’s get rid of conservatism and expose those evil people on the right.” And today Adorno’s deception enables the left to call Trump a fascist and Republicans the modern incarnation of the Nazi Party. Only by understanding this big lie can we inoculate ourselves against it and correctly locate fascism and Nazism where they have always belonged—on the political left.

      Dinesh D’Souza’s new book The Big Lie: Exposing the Nazi Roots of the American Left is published by Regnery.

      https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/267543/big-liar-dinesh-dsouza

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    3. .

      So, you're saying Trump is a Marxist?

      .

      Delete
    4. ?

      Not trying to say that.

      I think The Donald is just what he seems to be - a pragmatic businessman,and, to please you - with a little arsehole rolled in.

      Delete
  8. Meanwhile in WV white nationalists in support of the Confederate flag chant "We won you lost" and then one of them drives a car into the counter protesters march.

    Nothing like irony!

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    1. David Duke is on the prowl down there.

      They are all idiots.

      It might be time to invest in a Confederate statue though.

      They are becoming scarce.

      The guy that drove the car into the crowd is now in jail, where he ought to be.

      Delete
    2. 20 years old.

      His life is ruined.

      Thoughtless.

      Delete
    3. Oh, isn't that sweet, b00bie feels sorry for the perp.

      Delete
    4. Moron.

      Where did I say I feel sorry for him ?

      I said his life is ruined due to a thoughtless act.

      Put me on his jury I'll find him guilty.

      If there were charges of stupidity, I'd find you guilty too.

      Delete
    5. Yeah, right. You expressed similar sympathies for the muzzie driving into a crowd- not. Putz.

      Delete
    6. Dumbshit.

      20 years old.

      His life is ruined.

      Thoughtless.


      That is not a statement of sympathy, it is a statement of fact.

      The following is a statement of sympathy -

      "Poor Ash, I feel for him so. He obviously doesn't have two brain cells to rub together. It is hard to see how this is his fault. If there were anything I could do for the unfortunate fellow I'd do it."

      Delete
  9. North Korea just might be able to win a war, if it begins with an EMP in Tokyo

    North Korea has nuclear-armed missiles and satellites potentially capable of electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack. EMP is considered by many the most politically acceptable use of a nuclear weapon, because the high-altitude detonation (above 30 kilometers) produces no blast, thermal, or radioactive fallout effects harmful to people.

    EMP itself is harmless to people, destroying only electronics. But by destroying electric grids and other life-sustaining critical infrastructures, the indirect effects of EMP can kill far more people in the long-run than nuclear blasting a city.

    In this scenario, North Korea makes an EMP attack on Japan and South Korea to achieve its three most important foreign policy goals: reunification with South Korea, revenge upon Japan for World War II, and recognition of North Korea as a world power.

    http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/defense/346073-north-korea-just-might-be-able-to-win-a-war-if-it-begins-with-an

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    1. Water just might start running uphill if the World starts spinning backwards.

      Delete
    2. Dr. Peter Vincent Pry is chief of staff of the Congressional EMP Commission.

      He served on the staff of the House Armed Services Committee and at the CIA.

      Delete
    3. n a final act of vengeance, Kim detonates the super-EMP warhead in his KMS-4 satellite, blacking out the United States.

      Airliners crash. Communications and transportation stop. Natural gas pipelines explode, causing firestorms in cities. In seven days, 100 U.S. nuclear reactors go Fukushima. In a year, most Americans are dead from starvation.

      The United States, Japan, South Korea, and North Korea are in ruins.

      Russia and China are the winners.

      Mr. President, harden the U.S. electrical grid to defend against an EMP attack, and shoot down those North Korean satellites!

      Delete
    4. Lil Kim destroys life on Earth aside from Russia and China.

      Give Dr. Pry a raise.

      Delete
    5. There are 99 U.S. nuclear reactors, but what the hey.

      ...66 Nuke Powerplants.

      Delete
    6. The KMS-4 satellite takes pictures and weighs 400 pounds.

      Probly uses a Go Pro.

      Delete
  10. Can we put Ash on trial for stupidity ?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Or should we just institutionalize him for his own protection ?

      Delete
  11. I once read that after Robert E. Lee signed the surrender documents he went to a black church and prayed with a black fellow.

    ReplyDelete
  12. Maybe The Donald should pull Henry Kissinger out of retirement to work the North Korean problem.

    Super K says he knows how to do it.

    ReplyDelete
  13. Berkeley Teacher Assaults Man, Keeps Job

    Milo, Bannon, and Trump are Fascists according to this lady.

    Alt Right is a Neo Fascist Movement.

    Milo is a homophobe, also!

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YqAv-kYTIsY

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vfLrK1210VY

    SELF DEFENSE!

    https://news.google.com/news/search/section/q/Berkeley%20teacher%20Yvette%20Felarca%20assault/Berkeley%20teacher%20Yvette%20Felarca%20assault?hl=en&ned=us

    ReplyDelete