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Neither the November 24th P5+1 "deal" nor the White House summary of the subsequent agreement to continue the process deals effectively with Iran's efforts to have nuclear weapons. NOTE: I tried to address much of what follows when writing earlier about the Iran Scam and have difficulty understanding why there is very little public or even official interest in the problems the deal raises. Please let me to elaborate here a bit more on why the P5+1 "deal" is a scam, why it matters and to offer some hypotheses about the lack of interest.The text of the English language version of...

Say it isn't so. Could this actually be the next US Secretary of State (Hat Tip: Barak Ravid)? Egypt's Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry met during his visit to Washington Wendy Sherman, an adviser to the US Democratic Party's presidential primary candidate Hillary Clinton, the foreign affairs ministry announced on Thursday. The Egyptian foreign ministry spokesperson Ahmed Abu Zeid stated that during the meeting Sherman listened to Shoukry's evaluations of political and economic developments taking place in Egypt, the country's regional and international relations, as well as the country's efforts to fight terrorism. "The meeting reflected the mutual wish to...

CNN on Thursday released a group photo of the staff of a North Korean restaurant in Ningbo, China who made headlines by defecting en masse to South Korea last month. Family members of three of the workers who defected made the photo public on Wednesday, apparently under pressure from North Korean propaganda authorities. "I curse and condemn the South Korean puppet forces who allured and abducted our daughters," one of them said. "When I think of that I lie awake frightened and cannot sleep... Those South Korean puppet criminals, I want to tear them to pieces!" Intelligence authorities here declined...

Might agree with a few of their tweets.

President Barack Obama will visit Hiroshima later this month, the White House announced Tuesday. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were devastated by atomic bombs the U.S. dropped on the Japanese cities in 1945 during World War II. Obama will be the first sitting U.S. president to visit Hiroshima. He is scheduled to travel to Vietnam and Japan from May 21 through May 28 on his 10th trip to Asia, where he is expected to highlight America’s commitment to increase diplomatic, economic and security engagement with Asian nations and their people. The White House said Obama will participate in his final G-7 Summit...

SEOUL, South Korea — After years of trying to separate fact from propaganda about North Korea’s nuclear program, American and South Korean intelligence officials say they have concluded that the country can now mount a small nuclear warhead on short- and medium-range missiles capable of hitting much of Japan and South Korea. The United States and its allies have sought for nearly a decade to prevent the North from gaining such capabilities, ever since it detonated its first atomic device a decade ago. Their failure is likely to raise new questions about the effectiveness of the policy toward North Korea,...

Two weeks after North Korea threatened to launch nuclear strikes against the U.S., the Government Accountability Office (GAO) reported that the federal government has still not implemented all of the recommendations made eight years ago to prevent catastrophic blackouts caused by an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack. The recommendations were made in 2008 by the Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from Electro-Magnetic Pulse Attack (EMP Commission). Although the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Department of Energy (DOE) have taken actions to prepare against an EMP attack, they “have not established a coordinated approach to identifying...

A North Korean military statement Friday warned U.S. soldiers to stop what it called "hooliganism" at the inter-Korean border village of Panmunjom or they'll meet a "dog's death any time and any place." It said U.S. troops pointed their fingers at North Korean soldiers and made strange noises and unspecified "disgusting" facial expressions. It also said that American troops encouraged South Korean soldiers to aim their guns at the North. A statement from Christopher Bush, a spokesman for the U.N. command, said they looked into the allegations and determined they were unsubstantiated. North Korea occasionally accuses South Korean and U.S....

All eyes in the crowd fell on the supreme commander of the Korean People's Army. He emerged from the subway in one of this city's busiest nightlife areas with his trademark black suit and closely cropped hair. He hadn't lost any weight. "That's Kim Jong Un!" somebody shouted. Not quite. The reviled North Korean dictator, it turns out, has a doppelganger. He was soon surrounded by Friday night revelers holding up their smartphones and giggling in disbelief. Several rubbed his belly as they posed for their friends.

he South Korean defense ministry announced that an attempted test launch of a ballistic missile by North Korea ended when it exploded almost immediately after liftoff. The launch was the second test of the Musudan intermediate range missile in the last few days that ended in failure. The South Koreans believe that the test was rushed in order to have some sort of technological success prior to a rare meeting of the Party Congress on May 6. From Reuters: "They are in a rush to show anything that is successful, to meet the schedule of a political event, the party...

North Korea has fired what is believed to be a submarine-launched ballistic missile off the east coast of the Korean peninsula, the South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff said Saturday. The missile was fired at 6:30 p.m. local time (5:30 a.m. ET), South Korean officials said.

North Korea, which conducted a fourth nuclear test in January in contravention of U.N. Security Council resolutions, can learn from a deal struck between Iran and world powers to freeze its nuclear program, U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Tuesday. North Korea, which regularly threatens the United States and rich, democratic South Korea, also conducted a long-range rocket launch in February, defying U.N. sanctions. The Security Council last month expanded those sanctions aimed at starving North Korea of funds for its weapons program on a resolution drafted by the United States and China. ... "It's our hope...

North Korea gearing up for another 'nuclear test' after failed missile launch April 16, 2016 08:27 SGT By Jacob J North Korean leader Kim Jong-un suffered a double whammy as a medium-range rocket launch failed and ally China castigated the reclusive regime for its military misadventures. However, the setback will only spur the dictator to adopt a tougher posturing in a bid to shore up power and Pyongyang was more likely than not to carry out a fifth nuclear test, observers have said. South Korean officials and international experts said the chances of North Korea conducting another nuclear test were...

An enigmatic and dangerous giant sleeps on the border between China and North Korea. It’s quiet now, but a millennium ago, the volcano called Mount Paektu exploded with a fury rivaling the largest eruptions in recorded human history, hurling crackling rocks and ash as far away as Japan Despite that violent outburst, Mount Paektu—or Changbai, as it’s called in Chinese—remains fundamentally mysterious. Few outside the region are even aware it exists. And no one knows if, or when, the 9,000-foot-tall (2,740-meter-tall) peak might erupt again. Now, armed with an array of seismometers and almost unprecedented access to North Korea, an...

U.S. and South Korean authorities say a North Korean attempt to launch a missile failed catastrophically Friday. The AP reports: “It was a fiery, catastrophic attempt at a launch that was unsuccessful,” said Capt. Jeff Davis, a Pentagon spokesman. He said U.S. officials are still assessing, but it was likely a road-mobile missile, given that it was launched from a location not usually used for ballistic missile launches, on the country’s east coast.[…]U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter, speaking to reporters during a stop on the USS John C. Stennis aircraft carrier in the South China Sea, said that while...

Shizuo Kakutani sees no great mystery in the things that wash ashore in Monzen, his quiet fishing village on the Sea of Japan — the fishing boats ravaged by fierce winter storms, the Chinese garbage carried to land by the strong winds, the occasional body that drifts in from Yaseno, the nearby cliffs notorious for suicides. The ghost ships, however, are harder to explain. On an early morning in November, the 71-year-old retired fisherman received a call from his colleagues at the town's civilian coast guard. A black mass bobbling in the water — most likely a boat — had...

* Hitmen 'planning to kill' Kim Jong-un have been arrested, it is claimed * They were reportedly arrested near Tumen River at the border with China * North Korean guards who detained them were apparently rewarded * One suspect is said to be a defector and at least one is a Chinese national ___________________________________________ Hitmen who were planning to assassinate North Korean leader Kim Jong-un have been detained, according to reports. At least two people - one of whom is believed to be a North Korean defector, and at least one Chinese national - were arrested near Tumen River at...

Kim Jong-un’s succession to the throne (is there another more proper term for it?) of North Korea has not been greeted with universal acclaim in that country.  After executing his own uncle and conducting sweeping purges intended to solidify his control, it appears that his hold on power remains uncertain.  Now, with a very high-ranking defector reported to have fled to South Korea and numerous lower-ranking defectors fearing purges also jumping ship, the world’s only three-generation hereditary communist dynasty may be seeing its last days. Fox News reports: A high-ranking officer from North Korea's military intelligence agency fled to...

Global military spending reached almost $1.7 trillion in 2015, marking a year-on-year increase for the first time since 2011, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, which tracks arms expenditure around the world. The United States remained far and away the top spender, which despite a dip from 2014, accounted for more than a third of total global spending. It was followed by China and then, perhaps surprisingly, Saudi Arabia, which supplanted Russia in third place.

WASHINGTON, April 4 (Yonhap) -- Recent satellite imagery shows "suspicious activity" at North Korea's nuclear complex in what could be a sign that Pyongyang might be trying to harvest weapons-grade plutonium from spent nuclear fuel, a U.S. website monitoring the North said Monday. The website 38 North said in a report that the satellite imagery has shown "exhaust plumes" from a thermal plant used to heat the Yongbyon nuclear complex's Radiochemical Laboratory, where spent nuclear fuel rods are reprocessed to extract plutonium. "During the past five weeks, exhaust plumes on two, possibly three, occasions were observed at the Radiochemical Laboratory's...