Both the Korean media and my social network in Seoul are running away with the idea that this is a serious turning point, especially on the official end of the Korean War. I'm a lot more skeptical. I'm not alone. NK has reneged on similar promises in the recent past. A peace treaty after 68 years is just a formality. Lil Kim still has nukes. He still presides over the economic deprivation and enslavement of millions of people. He still holds Seoul hostage with hundreds of conventional artillery units. When some of that changes, I'll celebrate.
Side-note: best Forbin commute dashboard camera footage yet! I definitely think Kim missed his I-95 exit......am I right? BTW not saying "they all look alike" or anything but......ya feel me? They are all wearing neck ties! What did you think I meant you bigoted fuckers?
All this is is Trump getting played for the fool he is. Kim gets everything he wants but will never denuclearize in a verifiable way but Trump doesn't care about facts or reality. He only cares about appearancesbecause he is a showman and a conartist.
Also, here's the rebuttal for those claiming these developments are Trump's accomplishment: https://www.forbes.com/sites/trevor...-korea-stopped-its-nuclear-missile-tests/amp/ NK is now venting radioactive dust into China and elsewhere. This would most definitely piss off Beijing and lead them to rein in Lil Kim. So we have a show of rosy diplomacy.
That the Nobel Peace prize is politically motivated and an absolute joke ? Trump winning would only reconfirm that.
While I agree, I was thinking more about the folks who were saying that when Obama got it and will switch positions when "their guy" gets it. (And I've long said that the only Nobel Prizes which matter are those given out for the hard sciences. The Peace Prize has been a joke since before Kissinger got his.)
Hm. Without having too much insight I'd say it was like this (chronologically): 1. Their nuclear test site goes boom. Not a problem in itself, just have your slaves dig a new one. 2. Kim visits China. Xi likely voices concerns about NK nukin' it up. And nuclear fallout from the test site going boom. And getting the US even angrier over the nuclear issue. Xi might have mentioned that a US-NK clash is not in China's interest and Kim better see that it doesn't happen. Or else. 3. Mike Pompeo goes to Kim. As ex director of the CIA he probably has a bit of information about how things are in NK. Might have mentioned that thanks to information about the (scarce) resistance the CIA is capable of stirring the pot to the point of removing Kim by inciting a popular uprising. Kim has a few weeks to think things over. Kim decides he wants to keep his puppet house. 4. Trump meets Kim, they develop a bromance and Trump screams how he alone brought peace to Korea all alone.
This. A thousand times this. China told NO we are unhappy there is radioactive dust floating over China this must stop or else we will cut off all aid. NO figures out it will take 5 years to dig new nuclear test site so they decide to tell the USA they are pausing nuclear tests. Trump declares he is a God among men and that all of this is due to him. Mental midgets believe it while intelligent people understand it was China's threats and being upset about radioactive leaks along with the time to dig a new one to replace the destroyed one that did. No one has ever accused Trump or Republicans of being intelligent.
It does indeed. The sad thing is he has less than daddy gave him 35 years ago. Well, now he is stealing directly from the US treasury so who knows? But he failed at businesses no one could possibly fail at, like casinos where the house always wins, so hos many, many, many bankruptcies prove he just isn't that good at business. He truly was born on 3rd base and thought he hit a triple despite finding himself back on first base for most of his life. Just a guy who got handed everything yet completely failed.
I'm cautiously optimistic about this. Peace would be great, but as others have stated, North Korea has dangled similar carrots before and has reneged. The biggest difference is the photo op of Kim and Moon shaking hands and stepping foot on one another's territories. But if it does happen, I think we all know who should win the Nobel Peace Prize:
Peace is bad for business? Last week the defense industry lost $10 billion in market cap. http://fortune.com/2018/04/27/north-south-korea-nuclear-friendly-handshake-defense-stocks-boeing/
so is there a direct connection between the Korean talks and a dip in stock? Or does the dip/rise do so at a regular basis regardless/independently of the current Korean situation? Just wondering.
I can't find a link to the article, but according to a defense industry thinktank, if the Pentagon's budget doesn't grow by 5% a year, the industry won't "stay healthy." You can hear an excerpt from the article here.
fuck me running - they have military exercises EVERY FUCKING YEAR in SK and they take months to plan. It's not like the US and SK military wake up one morning and say "hmmm.....let's have some large scale military exercises in a week or so". And you can't just say "let's wait a few weeks to have the exercises" because logistics don't work that way. But Kim is probably banking on the fact that most people don't have a clue about how the military works and will try to put the blame of any failed talks on Trump rather than Kim.
And it's not as if Your Boy Donnie has the intellect to say "Yanno what? Let's hold off on the exercises for a coupla weeks because of the summit."
So Kim is jerking off Trump. What a surprise. My only real question is how Trump will blame this on Obama.
The blame lies with John Bolton and his Libya comparison. Trump has responsibility for running such a shitshow that his own advisers aren't 'on-message.' I have little time for spin, but a lot less for this brand of chaos. It's time this administration got its fucking act together. And we know enough about how the military works that exercises that have been delayed once already, can be delayed again for important enough reasons. And to think I was giving Trump some leeway on Iran, mainly as many of us thought his attitude to NK would lead to a war, and it looked like it was going to end up in peace talks. Sheesh.
His approach to Iran should have been enough to tell you his NK policy was written on the back of a fag packet. Bolton, for one, has always been a moron whose sense of diplomacy is “bomb first”. If this administration manages a diplomatic achievement with NK it will be in spite of their talents, not because of it....and of not it will be a shallow recognition of the weak position the US has had in regular for years, despite its naval presence.
I thought that at first, but Scott Adams has been weighing in on the Trump Presidency, and an awful lot of it makes sense. Trump may - may - not be the blithering idiot we've taken him for. I've taken a step back from the automatic approach that he's being a moron, and trying to take a more measured view. Admittedly, it's not easy... Wasn't too long back we were all mocking his "look at my bigger nuke button" rhetoric, and confidently assured that the Korean peninsula was going to shit and we'd be in a war before Easter. Then we got a sudden thawing of relations. Remains to be seen if it was Trump being smart, Kim being smart or just a temporary alignment of sanity for all too brief a moment.
I hear what you’re saying but I think Trump is winging it a bit. His formula is campaign promises and tough talk. It seems to m sooner or later that well will run dry, and then we’ll see just how much of a world leader he really is. Personally I think he will be all at sea and will just become a puppet. He’s already proven he doesn’t really think for himself.
At least we now see little Kim's goal. He actually played trump like a fiddle and waited for him to start bragging and then is popping the blame on him and making demands. I was wondering when they were going to come. Trump fell for it and now his supposed nk peace is gone and now what is he going to say he accomplished at the midterms? Oh well, looks like little has changed with north Korea. Trump won't have peace falling into his lap unless he gives up and concedes which would go against what he normally does, and what we should be doing with nk.