If you are a Peace Activist and trying to tell your government to stop killing human beings .... BEWARE

you might find yourself thrown in prison for 25 years. 

  Kings Bay Plowshares7

Defendents Found Guilty on All Four Counts, October 24th

Peace Activists Face 25 Years for Action at U.S. Nuclear Submarine Base

Background:

DemocracyNow Vid  from April 2019

 Vid below from On Contact October 2019

 

Kathy Kelly at Dissident Voice

 Trident Is the Crime

On October 24, following a three-day trial in Brunswick, GA, seven Catholic Workers who acted to disarm a nuclear submarine base were convicted on three felony counts and one misdemeanor. The defendants face 20 years in prison, yet they emerged from their trial seeming quite ready for next steps in their ongoing witness. Steve Kelly, a Jesuit priest who has already spent ten years in prison for protesting nuclear weapons, returned, in shackles, to the local jail. Because of an outstanding warrant, Steve has been locked up for over eighteen months, since the day of the Kings Bay Plowshares 7 action.

On that day, April 4, 2018, the group had entered a U.S. Navy Submarine base which is a home port for the Trident nuclear missile fleet. Just one of those nuclear missiles, if launched, would cause 1,825 times more damage than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. The Plowshares activists aimed to expose illegal and immoral weapons that threaten all life on earth.
They had spent two years in prayerful preparation for their action. Two of them, Mark Colville and Liz McAlister, spent most of the months before their trial began in the Glynn County jail. Three others, Martha Hennessy, Carmen Trotta and Clare Grady wore “ankle monitors” and were subject to strict curfews for many months while they engaged in outreach and prepared for trial. Because federal law requires 60 – 90 days before sentencing, to allow for background checks, the seven probably won’t be sentenced before late December.

My colleague Brian Terrell, who attended all of the trial, described the chief prosecutor as a bully. In a series of accusations, this prosecutor claimed that Clare Grady and her co-defendants believed themselves to be “a law unto themselves.” Clare calmly pointed out that “the egregious use of weapons is bullying, not the painted peace messages.”

Emerging from the courthouse, the defendants and their lawyers earnestly thanked  the numerous supporters who had filled the courtroom, the overflow court room and the sidewalks outside the court. Bill Quigley, the main lawyer for the defense, thanked the defendants for their efforts to save “all of our lives,” noting the jury was not allowed to hear about weapons with enough power to destroy life on earth as we know it. Liz Mc Alister, who with Phil Berrigan had helped found the Plowshares movement, turned 79 years old while in jail. She thanked supporters but also urged people to be active in opposing nuclear weapons and the abuses of the U.S. prison system.

When I learned of the jury’s verdict, I had just signed a post card to Steve.......

Nuclear wars? Who cares! Bring them on as long as we can give them gender neutral pronouns too

It's a long read but says a lot about the mess we find ourselves in here in the West.

Paul Haeder at DissidentVoice
>Gender Neutral Pronouns While Nukes Go Unregulated

 And chlorpyrifos, atrazine* continue to cream the brains of fetuses and young kids because America is all about gender neutral pronouns but no life-saving actions

Charlie Hill, Oneida-Mohawk-Cree: “A Redneck told me to go back where I came from, so I put a tipi in his backyard.”

What exactly is the size and shape and breadth of that infamous straw that broke the camel’s back? One thousand more African-American youth murdered by cops this year in US of A? One million more people this year leaving homelands because of climate change? One billion more people making less than $2 a day? Flotilla of icebergs floating down the Baja coast? Epstein-Trump-Clinton-Woody Allen on tape raping boys and girls?................

.................... In fact, the foundation to any revolution and radical (root) change in this un-Democracy is more robust discourse, discussion, and coverage — by local entities, by local various forms of media!

This chipping away at America, or putting in better wires and cloud servers just to say new is new and better is in the mind’s eye, just allows the oppressors to do their dirty deeds quicker, more pervasively, and with a Nazi’s efficiency and Eichmann cold heart and Goebbels collective double- and triple-tap to the human brain and eco-landscape to completely confuse the population.
My thesis is to have these conversations many many more times, daily, and with more radically truthful concepts, with gusto, no holds barred, and to ram the facts down their throats — both sides of the manure pit called US Politics-Law Making-Legislative Governing.

Every single hour, now, I receive emails and texts from friends who are becoming more and more fatigued — as in Stockholm syndrome or abusive-battered spouse syndrome —  with not just the deplorable stories and vapidity of the press reporting (stenographing) on the people running the country, running the corporations, or those in the throw-a-trillion-dollars-at-their-talentless celebrity culture, or those rally goers with their chronic illnesses and vicious Christian ideology of hate thy neighbor, BUT absolutely drained with the entire project that they believe was a possibly decent American way of life in some mythical golden period of prosperity (for the rich, the white), as in post-WWII? That magical time when all things were in place —  all the bells and whistles, all the “Kum ba yah” (African spiritual song of slaves, meaning, come by here), and two cars in every driveway and smart, adorable, handsome/beautiful offspring with prominent college degrees and a trajectory that might be the envy of a Chelsea or Ivanka........................

.............. Even with this knowledge — sort of like knowing a vote for the Democrats is the same as a vote for the Republicans — one is not so steeled from succumbing to a type of despair and fatigue and paralysis even if you knew the jig was up two centuries ago. The younger ones are skeptical and so jaded — cynical — they have little push toward any sort of reckoning for the kings of this rape-thy-neighbor culture. They put noses down and push through this rotting capitalist culture, hoping that something really bad happens collectively, regionally and nationally (heat waves, tornado’s, hurricanes, earthquakes, plagues, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions, viral outbreaks, war, invasions) to wipe the slate clean, so to speak. Cynics, man, cynics. Then, the older people are shaking fists at Trump, forgetting to mind their P’s and Q’s, forgetting recent and old history. Trump is Obama is Bush is Clinton is Reagan is Carter is Ford is Nixon is Kennedy . . . . and so on. Trump a racist? Open racist, for sure, in the same bad hombre company —  Jackson, Fillmore, Buchanan, A. Johnson, Wilson, Nixon. We have to really watch those politicians and presidents who are never openly racist or misogynistic — like Willy Clinton and Joey Biden!.........

 

The selling of America's secrets by Trump and his family to the highest bidders

Anyone surprised at what Trump and his criminal family plans on doing? 



Chris Hedges at TruthDig
  Giving The Bomb to Saudi Arabia's Dr. Stranglelove
The most dangerous foreign policy decision of the Trump administration—and I know this is saying a lot—is its decision to share sensitive nuclear technology with Saudi Arabia and authorize U.S. companies to build nuclear reactors in that country. I spent seven years in the Middle East. I covered the despotic, repressive kingdom as the Middle East bureau chief for The New York Times. And I, along with most Arabists in the United States, have little doubt that giving a nuclear capability to Saudi Arabia under the leadership of the ruthless and amoral Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman would see it embark on a nuclear weapons program and eventually share weaponized technology with Saudi allies and proxies that include an array of radical jihadists and mortal enemies of America. A nuclearized Saudi Arabia is a grave existential threat to the Middle East and ultimately the United States.
The drive to build nuclear reactors in Saudi Arabia is led by the half-wit son-in-law of the president, Jared Kushner, who met Tuesday with Salman in Riyadh, the Saudi capital, to discuss “ways to improve the condition of the entire region through economic investment,” according to the White House. Prominently involved in that economic program are corporations such as IP3 International, a consortium of U.S. companies led by several retired generals and admirals and others who stand to make millions from the deal......

Reminder.  11 people from Saudi Arabia, where Trump and Kushner are selling top secret nuclear bomb information to— with knowledge of the SAME gov, sent 2 planes into the Twin Towers and 2 planes into the Pentagon.

That SAME EXACT Government  is being offered a nuclear weapon. https://t.co/EDWopYkQ1P

— IAmComplicit (@AgeDemands) February 21, 2019

From NYTimes
Saudi Arabia Jared Kushner  Nuclear

Jared Kushner slipped quietly into Saudi Arabia this week for a meeting with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, so the question I’m trying to get the White House to answer is this: Did they discuss American help for a Saudi nuclear program?

Of all the harebrained and unscrupulous dealings of the Trump administration in the last two years, one of the most shocking is a Trump plan to sell nuclear reactors to Saudi Arabia that could be used to make nuclear weapons.

Even as President Trump is trying to denuclearize North Korea and Iran, he may be helping to nuclearize Saudi Arabia. This is abominable policy tainted by a gargantuan conflict of interest involving Kushner.

Kushner’s family real estate business had been teetering because of a disastrously overpriced acquisition he made of a particular Manhattan property called 666 Fifth Avenue, but last August a company called Brookfield Asset Management rescued the Kushners by taking a 99-year lease of the troubled property — and paying the whole sum of about $1.1 billion up front....

Juan Cole: "Jared Kushner's Multibillion-Dollar Plot to Give Saudis Nukes" 
Yeh..it's ok. Kushner has secret knowledge that 9/11 wasn't done by Saudis as even now after almost 2decades they r still cavemen n won't know how 2 use em. #cdnpoli #tcot #TOpoli https://t.co/Y6GIrswssR

— MariaS Nunes (@Dodocanspell) February 26, 2019

 

From The Hill 

Sell Nuclear Plants to the Saudis? Are you kidding?

The revelations of a House Oversight Committee report on the activities of IP3, a U.S. business group, to sell U.S. nuclear technology to Saudi Arabia and other Middle East countries, make clear that Congress has to step in to block U.S. reactor exports to Riyadh. Current law gives the Executive Branch too much power in negotiating civilian nuclear cooperative agreements with other countries.
In the Saudi case, the proposed nuclear exports are all clothed in terms of providing energy to power the Kingdom’s modernization. But the first thing to understand is that the Crown Prince’s push to get nuclear technology is also about countering Iran, and that means having the wherewithal to make nuclear weapons. He has made that crystal clear in a famous CBS interview in which he said if Iran gets nuclear weapons, Saudi Arabia will follow “as soon as possible.” The Saudis already have the rockets, and we shouldn’t be surprised if they jump the gun on the nuclear warheads.....

How Kushner and other Key Trump Officials Plotted to Give Saudis the Atom Bomb in Return for Billions https://t.co/ia1Bm72D3c via @jricole

— Juan Cole (@jricole) February 25, 2019

Trump Administration To Sell Nuclear Plants to Saudi Arabia
Top Trump administration officials advocated for a plan to build dozens of nuclear power plants in Saudi Arabia despite warnings that the move could pose ethical concerns and violate federal law, according to a report released by House Democrats. 

The 24-page report was compiled for the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, chaired by Democrat Rep. Elijah Cummings, who on Tuesday also announced a widespread probe of the plan, those within the White House who were involved and the financial interests of those individuals. ...

Israel is the only rogue nation with nukes in the Middle East

Everyone knows it, but hardly anyone articulates it to be so.  Wonder why? 



Description at video: There is in fact a Middle Eastern nation that is in fact in control of a vast, undeclared stockpile of nuclear weapons. This nation does have the capability of deploying those weapons anywhere in the region. It is not a signatory to the nuclear non-proliferation treaty and its arsenal has never been inspected by any international agency. But this nation is not Iran. It's Israel.

Is the warmonger rogue nation of Planet Earth planning a nuke attack on North Korea?

The billionaires of the war industry must be full of happy anticipation and working overtime pulling the strings on their puppet Trump to do their bidding. Both Japan and South Korea will suffer equally or perhaps even worse than North Korea if the American warmongers launch a strike.  We are living in dangerous times indeed.

Bill Van Auken at WorldSocialistWebsite
Will there be a US nuclear sneak attack on North Korea?
Under the cover of the pre-Winter Olympics thaw between North and South Korea and the momentary lull in the “fire and fury” rhetoric from the Trump White House, there are growing signs that the Pentagon and the CIA are pressing ahead with preparations for a preemptive war against North Korea, including the use of nuclear weapons.

There have been multiple reports in the American corporate media of behind-the-scenes discussions between the US military and intelligence apparatus and the Trump administration of the feasibility of a so-called “bloody nose” attack, involving US air strikes on North Korean nuclear facilities, with the expectation—however ill-founded—that they would not provoke a full-scale war.

In a rare public speech, CIA Director Mike Pompeo hinted obliquely at these plans. Speaking before the right-wing think tank American Enterprise Institute Tuesday, Pompeo warned that Pyongyang was a “handful of months” away from achieving the capability of staging a nuclear attack against the US mainland.

The CIA director said that Washington was “going to foreclose that risk” and “denuclearize permanently” North Korea.

While asserting that the Trump administration was committed to a “solution through diplomatic means”—a claim belied by Trump’s chiding of his Secretary of State Rex Tillerson last October for “wasting his time” by seeking negotiations with the government of Kim Jung Un—Pompeo said that the CIA was working with the Pentagon to “prepare a series of options to make sure that we can deliver a range of things so the president will have the full suite of possibilities.”.......

He added that he would “leave to others to address the capacity or the wisdom of a preemptive strike.”

The issue of “capacity,” however, is already being decided through a series of ominous actions taken by the US military...........

Tulsi Gabbard: “Peace with North Korea requires immediate and direct talks without preconditions

Sensible woman.
 
From RT
N.Korea faces unrealistic preconditions,
US regime change policy made it seek nukes – Tulsi Gabbard

Washington's policy of worldwide violent regime change has spurred Pyongyang to develop nuclear weapons, Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard has said, adding that Pyongyang is being saddled with “unrealistic preconditions” from the West.

Gabbard pointed out on Twitter that the US already found itself “seconds away” from a nuclear attack during the Cold War in 1962. She said “peace with North Korea requires immediate and direct talks without preconditions.”

The Hawaii Rep., who is an Iraq War veteran, blamed American behavior on the international arena for creating the very preconditions for the current crisis on the Korean Peninsula.

We have seen this nuclear threat during the Cold War when the Soviet Union and the US were seconds away from an attack. Peace with North Korea requires immediate and direct talks without preconditions. pic.twitter.com/NHURYyGajN

— Tulsi Gabbard (@TulsiGabbard) January 16, 2018

“Regime change war policy is the reason why North Korea sees nuclear weapons as their only deterrent from a US-led attack. Kim Jong-un sees what the US has done to Gaddafi in Libya, Saddam Hussein in Iraq, and the effort underway to decertify the nuclear deal with Iran.”

She said the removal of Gaddafi and Hussein from power was “a mistake” and called on the White House to “end our policy of regime change, and implement a policy of de-escalation and peace.”

“Our leaders have set unrealistic preconditions to negotiate with North Korea for decades. If we set a precondition that Kim Jong-un must get rid of his nuclear weapons, there would be nothing to negotiate. We need to invite North Korea to the table and talk about peace,” Gabbard wrote.....

Daniel Ellsberg reveals how the USA planned on killing 600 MILLION earthlings

Really worth watching.
Whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg reveals he was a Nuclear War Planner, Warns of Nuclear Winter & Global Starvation

Rogue nations of Planet Earth flaunt violating Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty

One does not have to be a genius to figure out which deplorable rogues the author refers to.

Carla Stea at GlobalResearch
US Dominated Security Council Tightens Savage Sanctions on North Korea, 
Intentional Provocations to War
Rogue States US, UK and France Flaunt Violations of Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty

Introduction

On September 24, 2017, The New York Times published the following letter written by Donald P. Gregg, C.I.A. officer in Vietnam, 1970-1973; C.I.A. station chief in Seoul from 1973 to 1975; and U.S. Ambassador to South Korea from 1989 to 1993: excerpts from his letter follow:

    “I can’t help thinking about the lessons from Vietnam that might apply today to North Korea. I fear that we are headed down a 2017 version of ‘ignorance alley’ in our dealings with Pyongyang; we do not know what North Korea wants today, because we have not asked its leaders that question directly in several years. When we assume that we are always right, and our opponents always wrong, we overlook the need to ask questions. And as Vietnam demonstrated, in such a scenario, misguided decisions result.”

Another United States official, Assistant Secretary of Defense John T. McNaughton wrote during the Vietnam War:

    “A feeling is widely and strongly held that ‘the Establishment’ is out of its mind. The feeling is that we are trying to impose some U.S. image on distant peoples we cannot understand (any more than we can the younger generation here at home), and that we are carrying the thing to absurd lengths. Related to this feeling is the increased polarization that is taking place in the United States with seeds of the worst split in our people in more than a century.”  McNaughton wrote this to Secretary McNamara in early May, 1967. (Less than two months later, McNaughton, his wife and their son died in a plane collision near Asheville, North Carolina, a week before he was to be sworn in as Secretary of the Navy.) John McNaughton’s words, regarding the United States’ behavior toward Vietnam, are a precise description of the United States’ behavior toward North Korea at this very moment.

PART 1: North Korea and North Vietnam: The Deadly Chronicle of Western Imperialism

One can take passages from “The Pentagon Papers” and simply replace the name “North Vietnam” with “North Korea,” and we have an exact description of United States aggression toward North Korea today;  this juxtaposition,  on page 580 of the Bantam Edition of “The Pentagon Papers,” would read as follows:

    “There may be a limit beyond which many Americans and much of the world will not permit the United States to go. The picture of the world’s greatest superpower trying to pound a tiny backward nation into submission on an issue whose merits are hotly disputed, is not a pretty one. It could conceivably produce a costly distortion in the American national consciousness and in the world image of the United States—especially if the damage to North Korea is complete enough to be ‘successful.’ The most important risk, however, is the likely Russian, Chinese and North Korean reaction to intensified US air attacks, harbor-mining, and ground actions against North Korea.”

It seems as though little has  changed in the United States’ attitude toward the world since the Vietnam War, or more precisely, since the death of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.....

Nuclear Armageddon at hand .... courtesy Donald Trump

I wonder how deeply disappointed the anti-war folks must be who voted for this charlatan believing his lies of  anti-war.  I think the first inkling  anyone got as to the kind of liar Trump was, concerning the military and wars, was when he kept appointing and nominating warlord after warlord in his entourage.
We know the Empire is going down, but is there any hope it will be down and out without starting a nuclear war?  I don't think so.

Scott Ritter at TheAmericanConservative
Trump Quietly Promises Billions in New Nuke Contracts
This could trigger a new arms race with Russia and China.
Americans of a certain age remember things about their youth—Bert the Turtle and the ditty “Duck and Cover” (1951), Pat Frank’s apocalyptic novel Alas, Babylon (1959), and Sidney Lumet’s film Fail Safe, from Eugene Burdick and Harvey Wheeler’s novel of the same name (1964 and 1962, respectively). “There was a Turtle by the name of Bert, and Bert the Turtle was very alert”; that song was whistled by kids like myself, ironically often at the same time we whistled the catchy tune from Peter and the Wolf, Sergei Prokofiev’s classic children’s story adapted by Walt Disney and very popular at the time.

My father, a career Air Force officer who spent the first part of his career with the fighter-interceptor squadrons of North American Air Defense Command, had borrowed Frank’s biblical reference in crafting his own nuclear war warning for my mother. It took me awhile to figure out what they were talking about, and when I finally did, it was terrifying. The delta-winged fighters that futilely chase down the errant nuclear-armed bombers in Fail Safe were identical to the F-106 Delta Darts my father’s squadrons flew to shield America from similarly armed Soviet bombers that probed our borders on a daily basis, and I was able to figure this out quickly the first time I saw the movie.

Nuclear Armageddon was a pervasive reality during the Cold War, and America had an arsenal and doctrine to make it a reality. Again, flashbacks from my childhood make it all-too real: F-100 fighter-bombers .......

Unsavory in the USA and their handmaiden the MSM and the MSM of US allies ....

are deliberately taking away our attention from what they are doing at the Russian border by working hard  to divert all our focus on anything and anywhere but the Russian border and the coming nuclear war.

Johannes Stern at World Socialist Web Site
Washington is preparing for nuclear war in Europe

 Amid mounting military and diplomatic tensions between the US and Russia, the German daily Süddeutsche Zeitung reported Friday that the American Congress has taken the first steps toward Washington’s annulling of the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty.

The INF, or Washington Treaty on Mid-range Nuclear Systems, is a bilateral agreement reached between the United States and the Soviet Union on the decommissioning of short- and mid-range missiles (with a range of between 500 and 5,500 miles), and the banning of their production.

The treaty, signed on 8 December 1987 by US President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, led to a significant reduction of US nuclear weapons in Europe. The nuclear-armed mid-range Pershing II missiles, whose stationing in Western Europe five years earlier had triggered the largest peace demonstrations to that point in history, were withdrawn.

The danger now is “that the US will construct new missiles and station them in Europe,” warned the Süddeutsche Zeitung. A major shift would be set “into motion” and Europe would stand “on the brink of a new nuclear era … nuclear mid-range missiles were the horror of the Cold War … thirty years on, the spectre has returned.”

The reason for the potential ending of the treaty, according to the newspaper, is the “deep freeze” in US-Russia relations and announcements by both sides of intentions to “comprehensively modernise their nuclear arsenals.”

Characteristically, the explosive reports by the German press have been totally ignored by the US print and broadcast media.

The report came amid a hysterical campaign being mounted by the US and NATO over military exercises planned by the Russian military in western Russia, Belarus and Russia’s exclave of Kaliningrad later this month, with Washington and its allies suggesting that they could be used as a “Trojan horse” to pre-position weapons stockpiles and prepare an invasion of the Baltic states.

The Pentagon has deployed seven US F-15C fighter planes to a base in Lithuania along with an additional 600 US airborne troops to the Baltics in advance of the war games.

This military build-up has been carried out in conjunction with a major US diplomatic provocation as the Trump administration has retaliated against Russia’s expulsion of US embassy personnel from Russia (itself a tit-for-tat response to earlier expulsions of Russians from the US) by ordering the shutdown of three Russian diplomatic facilities in Washington, New York and San Francisco. Moscow has charged that the action, which it said was accompanied by FBI searches of the San Francisco consulate and the residences of Russian diplomatic personnel, constituted a violation of international law........

122 nations at the UN vote to ban nuclear weapons

Even a nuclear nation like North Korea agreed.  BUT...............
 

Carla Shea at GlobalResearch
United Nations Adopts Historic Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons
North Korea, Alone Among Nuclear States, Voted “Yes” on Res. L.41 Authorizing this Treaty
At approximately 11AM on July 7, 2017, following a recorded vote of 122 states in favor, 1 opposed (Netherlands in opposition, on behalf of all NATO states), and 1 abstention (Singapore), Ambassador Elayne Whyte Gomez, Costa Rican Ambassador to the UN in Geneva, and President of the “United Nations Conference to Negotiate a Legally Binding Instrument to Prohibit Nuclear Weapons, Leading Towards their Total Elimination,” announced the adoption of this treaty, which had been awaited for 70 years, the legally binding norm prohibiting nuclear weapons.

Following Ambassador Whyte’s announcement, the entire assembly of ambassadors, other delegates and non-government organizations in Conference Room 1 immediately stood, many embraced and all 122 States in support exultantly applauded this historic and long overdue achievement by the majority of member states of the United Nations, none of whom possess nuclear weapons, and all of whom are unified in seeking to end the reign of terror imposed on the world by certain of the states possessing nuclear weapons.

Excerpts from the preamble to this landmark treaty state:

“The States Parties to this Treaty,

    PP1:  Determined to contribute to the realization of the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations,

    PP2:  Deeply concerned about the catastrophic humanitarian consequences that would result from any use of nuclear weapons, and recognizing the consequent need to completely eliminate such weapons, which remains the only way to guarantee that nuclear weapons are never used again under any circumstances,

    PP4:  Cognizant that the catastrophic consequences of nuclear weapons cannot be adequately addressed, transcend national borders, pose grave implications for human survival, the environment, socioeconomic development, the global economy, food security and the health of current and future generations, and have a disproportionate impact on women and girls, including as a result of ionizing radiation,........

North Korea's nuclear weapons are what's keeping it from being destroyed by the USA

That's the pure and simple truth.  The moment North Korea is beguiled into signing some bullshit agreement like Iran has done, they will become a target just like Iran has become by giving the PTB loopholes in the agreement to say "See, they violated the agreement".   Better to be a pariah and stay alive then be "part of the community of nations" and get destroyed.

From RT   
N. Korea claims latest missile test ‘successful & proves
its capability to carry nuclear warheads’

 Pyongyang has claimed that its medium-range ballistic missile test carried out on Sunday under the supervision of Kim Jong-un has confirmed the “tactical specifications and technical characteristics” of the rocket which North Korea says is capable of carrying nuclear warheads.

North Korea has succeeded in launching its new surface-to-surface missile on May 14, Pyongyang’s official Central News Agency announced.
“The test fire was conducted with maximum angle of the projectile’s elevation in consideration of the safety of neighboring countries, with the aim of confirming the tactical specifications and technical characteristics of the new long-range strategic ballistic rockets capable of loading powerful heavy-weight nuclear warheads,” KCNA announced.



According to Pyongyang, the launch has enabled testing in “actual flight conditions” the missile’s “stabilization, structural, pressurization and launch systems,” as well as “reliability of the rocket’s engine” and its integrity “in the harsh reentry environment.”

“The launched rocket flew up to the maximum peak altitude of 2,111.5 kilometers along the scheduled flight orbit and precisely hit the target waters 787-kilometers away,” the communications ministry’s announcement read. The country's leader, Kim Jong-un, led the launch of a new type of rocket, the report noted.

More analysis is needed to verify North Korea's claim that it had successfully test-launched a ballistic missile, South Korea's military said following KCNA's announcement.....

The Russia-Japan relationship

Many changes in unexpected places are taking place while appearing not to.

From Oriental Review
Japan Seeks to Restore Its National Sovereignty. Japan-Russia Relations
While the new resident of the White House has been acquiring a taste for military adventures overseas, the prime minister of Japan, Shinzo Abe, visited Moscow last Thursday for his 17th talk with Vladimir Putin. But of course their normal economic agenda, intended to hammer out the final details of some painful bilateral issues, was powerfully affected by events in North Korea. So what’s the real political equation in the Eurasian Far East these days?

The memorable dinner hosted by Pres. Trump for Chairman Xi and served up with the added flourish of a missile strike on a Syrian air base was hardly a diplomatic success for the new administration. The Chinese leader has apparently turned a deaf ear to the president’s demands to revalue the yuan and thus financially offset the enormous US trade deficit with its biggest economic partner. But one of the few advantages of having a businessman in the Oval Office is that he always has a non-business argument when trapped in any sort of business quagmire. Teasing a limitrophe that is loyal to your adversary is the first-choice option in such cases.

Nearly 63 years after the end of the Korean War, during which the United States Air Force dropped more conventional and napalm bombs onto North Korea than did all the Allies onto Germany during the WWII, Washington is still officially in a state of war with Pyongyang.  And it is precisely this powerful factor of ambiguity that drives the awkward nuclear ambitions of a small and stalemated nation. A safe and manageable bogey-state offers a convenient pretext for the US to stretch a vengeful hand toward the coastline of a key economic “partner” whenever the time is right – which is almost a dream come true for US strategists. So far, this most recent “North Korean escalation” has had a single tangible result – the US THAAD anti-missile systems that monitor eastbound Chinese rockets are being deployed in South Korea and will reportedly “be operational within days.”

The only problem is that this game is not being played in a geopolitical vacuum. A symptomatic WP commentator – periodically venting his spleen against the “hermit kingdom” of North Korea – lets slip one notable point:

    If the crisis deepens, the possibility arises of South Korea and, more importantly, Japan going nuclear themselves....

Escalation .... from Trump the non-interventionist

No matter how the USA coats its aggression towards any independent nation under the sun, the reason it gives, is an outright lie time and time again.

Dr Ron Paul on the Iran Nuclear deal and the differences of opinion

Does the rest of the world really care two hoots what America or Americans think of the Nuclear deal now that the deal is over and done with ?   Let the Americans keep talking or  try to undo and even manage to undo the whole thing.  The rest of the world has moved on and most of the EU and Asia have already started signing huge contracts with Iran which are not going to be rescinded just because crazy bully  USA says it has changed its mind.  How much longer does the world have to tolerate the audacity of America!!

From RonPaulInstituteForPeace&Prosperity
Rabbis For Iran Deal   - Is Schumer Wrong?
Recently 340 US rabbis -- from the full spectrum of US Judaism -- signed a letter to Congress urging approval of the Iran deal. As AIPAC spends millions lobbying against the deal, perhaps the US Jewish community is not as unified as the neocons would like us to believe. Today's Ron Paul Liberty Report discusses support for the deal:

Iran and the Nuclear Negotiations

RT talks to Trita Parsi, president of the National Iranian American Council

It takes the warmonger country of USA five decades to admit that the other warmongering country of Israel also has nuclear weapons similar to theirs

Of course, the world knew about the weapons and knows too well about the hypocrisy of both the USA and Israel and the hypocrisy of their allies. 
 
William Greider writing at TheNation:
It’s Official: The Pentagon Finally Admitted That Israel Has Nuclear Weapons, Too

While the Washington press corps obsessed over Hillary Clinton’s e-mails at the State Department, reporters were missing a far more important story about government secrets. After five decades of pretending otherwise, the Pentagon has reluctantly confirmed that Israel does indeed possess nuclear bombs, as well as awesome weapons technology similar to America’s.

Early last month the Department of Defense released a secret report done in 1987 by the Pentagon-funded Institute for Defense Analysis that essentially confirms the existence of Israel’s nukes. DOD was responding to a Freedom of Information lawsuit filed by Grant Smith, an investigative reporter and author who heads the Institute for Research: Middle East Policy. Smith said he thinks this is the first time the US government has ever provided official recognition of the long-standing reality.

It’s not exactly news. Policy elites and every president from LBJ to Obama have known that Israel has the bomb. But American authorities have cooperated in the secrecy and prohibited federal employees from sharing the truth with the people. When the White House reporter Helen Thomas asked the question of Barack Obama back in 2009, the president ducked. “With respect to nuclear weapons, you know, I don’t want to speculate,” Obama said. That was an awkward fib. Obama certainly knows better, and so do nearly two-thirds of the American people, according to opinion polls.......

The butcher of Gaza is also an Oscar winning actor

Yes ... we can't expect anything less from evil which passes itself off as a saviour of "God's  chosen people" while aiding and abetting with  jihadis who burn people to death and chop off heads on camera.  What a despicable man!!  And, to think that this individual is held in high esteem by political parties in the Anglo nations is totally vomit-inducing.

From ConsortiumNews
Netanyahu’s False Narrative 

 
March 4, 2015
As members of the U.S. Congress bobbed up and down with applause, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu spun a tale of brave little Israel fretting about its survival, but he left out the fact that Israel has a large arsenal of nuclear weapons and has often been the one to invade its neighbors, as Marjorie Cohn recalls.

By Marjorie Cohn
On March 3, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu issued an impassioned plea to Congress to protect Israel by opposing diplomacy with Iran. Referring to “the remarkable alliance between Israel and the United States” which includes “generous military assistance and missile defense,” Netanyahu failed to mention that Israel has an arsenal of 100 or 200 nuclear weapons.

The day before he delivered that controversial address, Netanyahu expressed similar sentiments to AIPAC, Israel’s powerful U.S. lobby. He reiterated the claim that Israel acted in the 1967 Six-Day War “to defend itself.” The narrative that Israel attacked Egypt, Syria, and Jordan in self-defense, seizing the Palestinian territories in the West Bank, Gaza, Jerusalem, the Golan Heights, and the Sinai Peninsula in 1967, has remained largely unquestioned in the public discourse.

Israel relies on that narrative to continue occupying those Palestinian lands. And the powerful film “Censored Voices,” which premiered at Sundance in February, does not challenge that narrative.

But declassified high-level documents from Britain, France, Russia and the United States reveal that Egypt, Syria and Jordan were not going to attack Israel and Israel knew it. In fact, they did not attack Israel. Instead, Israel mounted the first attack in order to decimate the Egyptian army and take the West Bank...........

Mikhail Gorbachev: "America has lost its way."

Yeah, we know.  He's not telling us anything new. 

The bear is wide awake ....

and his roars can be heard all over the world. 
No .... you can't isolate Russia or scheme to bring her down with sanctions.  
To even contemplate such a move was pure insanity from the Rome of our times. The USA, Canada and the EU are no match for the chess master.  While the USA and her allies think of overcoming an enemy with the means of war and death, Russia uses diplomacy and clear sightedness to win every hand dealt against her.

Over and above the gas pipeline deal with Turkey,  Putin is also talking about plans to build nuclear facilities for the Turks.

What a mess the USA has created with its meddling in Ukraine!

From TheInterpreter:
Russia Cancels South Stream, Plans New Black Sea Pipeline with Turkey
20:48 (GMT)

As oil prices continued to fall along with the ruble's value, President Vladimir Putin announced in Ankara today, December 1, that Moscow will halt development of the South Stream natural gas pipeline to Europe due to EU opposition, the Financial Times reported:

"If Europe does not want this project to be implemented, we will not implement this project," he said at a press conference with Recep Tayyip Erdogan, his Turkish counterpart.
"We will redirect our energy resources to other regions of the world, in part through implementing our liquefied natural gas projects and speeding them up.. This would be contrary to European economic interests, this will negatively impact our economic cooperation, but that is the choice on the part of our European friends."

Putin is in Turkey to discuss further economic ties and prospective pipeline projects. Russia is offering Turkey a 6 per cent price cut on natural gas from January 1 and an increase in deliveries by 3 billion cubic meters (bcm).

RIA Novosti said Putin explained his decision as follows (translation by The Interpreter):

Meanwhile, taking into account the position of the European Commission, which has not enabled the implementation of this project, taking into account that we received only just recently permission from the relevant bodies in the Netherlands....they made a positive decision. Taking into account that we have not obtained permission from Bulgaria, we believe that Russia under these circumstances cannot continue to implement this project. We cannot begin building in the sea and wait until we get permission from Bulgaria.

At a press conference at the conclusion of the Russian-Turkish talks Aleksei Miller, CEO of Gazprom, Russia's state gas monopoly, said, "That's it, the project is closed" and would not be revisited, RIA Novosti reported.

He said Moscow and Ankara had reached agreement to build a new pipeline themselves across the Black Sea, to carry 63 billion cubic meters a year, the business daily RBC reported (translation by The Interpreter).

Today a memorandum of understanding has been signed with [the Turkish petroleum company] Botas on building the sea pipeline across the Black Sea in the direction of Turkey with a volume of 63 billion cubic meters a year.

He added that Turkey would take about 14 billion cubic meters, and the rest would be sent to the border of Turkey and Greece. Regarding the price, Miller said:

To the extent the cooperation develops, and deepens, I think that we will be prepared for a further reduction of price [for Turkey]. I think to the extent of implementation of joint projects, including in the gas transport area, we can say that the level of prices for Turkey will in the future come to the level of prices that Germany has today. .......