How the hell has North Korea managed to build a massive military stockpile?

News.com.au ^ | April 19, 2017 | Charis Chang news.com.au

[2ndDivisionVet]

FROM the outside North Korea looks like an impoverished state cut off from the rest of the world.

But during its weekend procession, the isolated regime managed to put on an impressive display of its rockets and military strength, in defiance of growing American warnings about its military capability.

While many have the impression of North Korea being a poor country that can’t feed its own people, Leonid Petrov told news.com.au that it had large stockpiles of natural resources that it used to fund its weapons research.

“North Korea is a mountainous country that has huge natural resources including deposits of high quality coal, gold, silver, uranium, iron ore and rare earth metals,” said Dr Petrov, a visiting fellow at the Australian National University College of Asia and the Pacific.

He said North Korea had exported its minerals to allies such as China and the Soviet Union for decades until the collapse of the communist bloc.

Since then it had been more proactive in international trade, although the tightening of sanctions has seen its export ability curtailed recently.

Dr Petrov said China in particular had maintained trade in North Korea and was keen to keep a monopoly on its rare earth metal trade.

“So China buys everything North Korea is prepared to offer (of its rare earth metals),” he said.

These metals are important because they are used the production of many 21st century products like mobile phones, computers, LCD screens and cars....

[Redwood71]

“If I recall correctly, North Korea’s federal mint prints off US $100 bills totaling billions every year.”

You are correct there. But as with our government, printing off the bills, it doesn’t create more worth, it cuts the worth of every bill they print. Every time they print a bill at any denomination that can be used in the financial world, they cut a prior bill’s worth in half. So instead of having a dollar, you have two fifty cent pieces.

It like getting counterfeit bills in mass amounts. Our government does it to bolster confidence in a clobbered economy while they are further hammering it by doing so. Printing more money doesn’t gain an economy, it splits it and harms confidence in our financial arrangements. When the dollar goes down we lose things like our S & P rating. And the foreign market recognizes this just like the local supermarket.

A high DOW doesn’t mean a good econnomy, it means we have overspent our worth.

rwood

[Redwood71]

“Have I missed anything?”

Yep, one thing. Clinton also sent supercomputers to North Korea under the rouge of trying to give them the ability to electrical power to bolster their failing agricultural programs. But when they got them, they upgraded them from industrial grade to weapons grade so they could enrich uranium they got from Africa and from their own mines. The technology to upgrade came from Pakistan.

rwood

[Yosemitest]

I remember reading about the Clinton Administration approving that Super-computer to China for "Weather Modeling".
Leave it to the DemocRATS to sell the United States out EVERY TIME !

[caww]

It’s the gulag work camps that mine those resources.....no overhead. Same with the clean up after Kims Missile’s flop...and many die cleaning that crap up. But people are not people in the camps, their guards are drilled for hours before they take positions at the camp to genuinely believe those at the camps are terrible people and to be treated as one would an animal or worse. At any rate Kim makes a huge profit that goes right into his coffers from the peoples work. Furthermore Kim “invests” outside the country in Vietnam etc from banks to industries that are as corrupt as they come......bogus companies where he rakes in millions from because they are so corrupt.

[caww]

I was recently listening to a defector speak about their mines, who was one of the guards there.........the gulag prisoners are the ones doing the mining at no cost to Kim.....the defector says there are zero safety precautions or restrictions so deadly accidents are a daily happening..they simply pile the bodies up in designated areas and continue to work...... think worse than the Holocaust. Additionally the people are so traumatized and weak that it's not uncomman for them to topple over....they simply replace them with others. Like they did in the Holocaust.

[Redwood71]

Yeah, that was an interesting one.

For those of you who don’t know this one, in 1996, two of the Podesta companies, IBM and Silicon Graphics, sold super-computers directly to Russian nuclear weapons labs Arzamas-16 and Chelyabinsk-70 under so-called “commercial” contracts. IBM has since settled for a fine of $8 million on the $7.5 million dollar sale to Arzamas-16. Silicon Graphics, however, has not been charged.

A Commerce Department 1994 Presidential trade trip document on James Treybig states, “Tandem and China Great Wall Industry will announce in August their joint venture.” Another document found in the files of former Commerce Secretary Ron Brown states that Treybig “negotiated a $100 million dollar joint venture for Tandem Computers while in China.”

The Commerce Department does not have the authority to authorize export of super-computers to foreign military units such as Russian nuclear weapons labs and PLA owned Great Wall Industries. Transfers of any equipment for the development of nuclear weapons to military units constitutes a “defense service” as per the United States Munitions List (USML) and the International Trade in Arms Regulations ITAR 22 C.F.R. Part 120.9 and is strictly under the authority of the State Department and the Defense Department

Yet, the CSPP, the Computer Systems Policy Project chaired by Ken Kay a Podesta associate employee, and Tony Podesta sought out the Commerce Department for access to the White House. According to a May 1995 CSPP document sent to Ron Brown, “controls on computer exports to Russia and China for commercial, civil end-users should be eliminated; controls on exports for actual military end-uses may be appropriate until there is greater certainty that neither country poses a threat to U.S. national security.”

Ron Brown, the secretary at the commerce department found out about these illegal operations and meetings, and most likely told Clinton he was going to go public with it to cover his own backside. He died in a plane crash on his way back to the US in Europe.

I was watching the newscast of the autopsy when it was originally telecast and when they showed the x-ray pictures of the wounds that killed Brown, a comment was made by the telecasters that the wounds in his skull were most likely caused by either a drill or a gunshot. And not by natural causes.

The broadcast ceased immediately and a new one was broadcast a week later without the x-rays. You tell me.

rwood

[Yosemitest]

"Ron Brown, the secretary at the commerce department found out about these illegal operations and meetings, and most likely told Clinton he was going to go public with it to cover his own backside. He died in a plane crash on his way back to the US in Europe.

I was watching the newscast of the autopsy when it was originally telecast and when they showed the x-ray pictures of the wounds that killed Brown,
a comment was made by the telecasters that the wounds in his skull were most likely caused by either a drill or a gunshot.
And not by natural causes."

I knew a USAF R.N. at Eglin AFB that survived that crash, ands told me that even though she was a R.N., after she 'came to' the White House advisors wouldn't let her into the secured area where they had the pilot, copilot, navigator, and Ron Brown.

She said they wouldn't even let the Air Force Security Police up to the crash site, until well after the 'white mice' had secured the area'.

I also knew one of the Air traffic Controllers who was stationed at that mobile G.C.A. unit when it happened, and he also said that there were some very unusual event surrounding that crash.

HE said the weather conditions were pretty much "WOX0F".

[shanover]

Recent events prove yet again that MacArthur had it right and Ridgeway and Truman had it wrong.

Patton had it right also in regards to the stinking Russians. A revisionist view sees the possibility that Communism could have been snuffed out by 1950 and I speculate that Islam thus could never have gone radical. Yes, it's ludicrous and fantasy, but what we have now is a very dangerous time in the history of mankind. The USA since WWII has a very bad track record in making wise decisions and standing up for liberty while picking the right fight.

[Redwood71]

“I knew a USAF R.N. at Eglin AFB that survived that crash”

That’s a new situation. According to the NTSB, the converted Boeing 737 was on ILS procedures and was on course at 119 degrees at the next to last beacon. For unexplained reasons the aircraft veered over and went into the largest mountain in the area, killing all but one Tech Sergeant names Kelly, who died on the way to the hospital. And as she was enlisted, she wouldn’t have been an RN. So if someone lived, they are doing a good job hiding it.

rwood

[Yosemitest]

I could be mistaken.
She might have been on the first UH-60 sent to the crash sight, but I'm pretty sure she said she survived that crash.
But that conversation took place back in 96 or 97, at the flight surgeon's office, and, after 60, a man's mind ain't what it use to be.

[Redwood71]

“after 60, a man’s mind ain’t what it use to be.”

Know it well, brother.

And she could have been misusing the language meaning to say she was part of the crash investigation in the wrong way, and may have been part of the first responders. And unless she was something more than a body finder in the woods as she was medical, she wouldn’t have had access to the NTSB pile in the hanger. Nothing she could do there but possibly disrupt the evidence they were combing. NTSB is a pain in the back-of-the-lap.

rwood

[Yosemitest]

At the time I spoke to her, she had become a Captain, and was a Flight Surgeon.
She said that the White House "White Mice" got there before the first medieval helicopter did, and she had no idea of HOW they did that (how they arrived).
But she said they did have H&K G-3s and were prepared to use them to keep the military 'away' from the site until they were finished with their "securing the site".
She said it was VERY unusual, and it didn't "feel" right, especially given the location and the people on board the aircraft that crashed.

[Redwood71]

Two thoughts here:

When an aircraft of that nature carrying sensitive information along with the Sec of Transportation is dispatched, their transponder is monitored exclusively. The most used device for this is Pave Paws. I’ve been invited into two of them, one in Florida and one in California during MSET inspections and they are amazing. They can find the exact location of any aircraft in the world at a moments notice. And you can be assured they were watching this aircraft in particular. They knew exactly when it hit the mountain and had security teams in the air in minutes.

And the other thought, it was planned and they were cleaning it up prior to the NTSB could get in there and file a report.

Take your pick. But when you do, records show that Commerce Secretary Ron Brown used his position to raise illegal donations for the Clintons. Brown turned the Commerce Department into a shakedown machine, just the way the Mafia shakes down businesses. Commerce under Clinton was a protection racket. Donate to the Clintons or something bad might happen to your company. Or your kids.

After a religious experience, Ron Brown’s confidante Nolanda Hill told her story to former Wall Street Journal and Washington Post reporter Jack Cashill.

Ron Brown’s desperate meeting with Clinton. Guess how Bill and Hillary dealt with Brown’s threat of coming clean about Loral. And to add insult to injury: In June 1994, the CEO of Loral Space and Communications, Bernard Schwartz, made a $100,000 contribution to the Democratic National Committee. He then joined a Ron Brown trip to China that led to a $250 million telecommunications deal for Loral’s satellites to be launched by Chinese rockets [in violation of US law at the time].

After the crash that took out the US Secretary of Commerce and 33 others, the Clinton Administration covered up everything. They prohibited an autopsy of Ron Brown’s body despite evidence of a bullet wound in Brown’s skull. The military general in charge of the “investigation” repeatedly lied to the press and to Congress. The US Air Force released false press statements claiming the plane’s wreckage was found in the Adriatic. The US government said the plane crashed in the “worst storm in a decade,” which was a laughable lie even at the time. And many involved in the investigation died by accident or gunshot wound before testifying.

So again, you tell me. One’s a possible, and one’s feisable.

rwood

[Yosemitest]

Take a close review of this:

Boeing T-43

Here's what I've found:

The U.S. Air Force T-43 had been carrying U.S. Commerce Secretary Ron Brown and 32 others.

The crash site (at the southern tip of Croatia, the light yellow in the lower map on the left), on a 2,300 ft (700 m) hill, was 1.6 miles (2.6 km) northeast of where the aircraft should have been on the inbound course to the NDB.

The pilots failed to identify the missed approach point and IFO-21 (Implementation Force Two One) impacted a rocky mountain side at 2:57 p.m., more than one nautical mile beyond the missed approach point and 1.7 nautical miles to the left of the Dubrovnik runway.
Ground speed at the time of impact was 140 knots.
The aircraft was configured for landing and all aircraft systems were operating properly at the time of accident.

An E-3 Airborne Early Warning Aircraft and later an EC-130 with a mission commander onboard provided primary communication links between NATO and Croatian search and rescue assets.
U.S. helicopters would join the search later after flying one hour from Brindisi, Italy.

Progressively deteriorating weather and erroneous information concerning the crash location severely slowed down the Croatian and NATO search and rescue efforts.
They were also hampered by dense fog and low visibility.
The Croatian search began around 4 p.m. after numerous radio and land communication efforts to locate IFO-21.
French helicopters arrived in the area around 5:15 p.m.
Their initial search efforts began at the last known location of the aircraft at KLP and proceeded along the coastline between the KLP beacon and the airport.
At approximately 6 p.m., when the clouds briefly lifted a Croatian civilian living in the remote village of Veljido.
Because there was no phone in his village he traveled 45 minutes to the next village where he notified the local police.
The police responded to the reported site and confirmed the accident location at 7:20 p.m.
Meanwhile, U.S. helicopters from Brindisi, Italy, had also joined the search and French helicopters now low on fuel departed.

Unaware that a Croatian civilian had located the crash site, U.S. helicopters continued to search until they, too, ran low on fuel.
At 7:48 p.m., they landed at the Dubrovnik airport. At the site, the police began looking for survivors.
By this time, it was dark at the site and low clouds had dropped visibility to less than 30 feet.
Low visibility created extremely hazardous flying conditions and the helicopters could not reach the site.
At around 10:30 p.m., Croatian police informed rescuers they had found a survivor with serious injury.
Because the Croatians feared causing additional injury they requested NATO helicopter support to evacuate the Air Force crew member from the mountain.

Learning of a possible survivor, one U.S. MH-53 helicopter launched at 10:36 p.m. and made repeated attempts to reach the site, but again, weather prohibited them from reaching the area.
Upon receiving word that the U.S. helicopter was unable to reach the site, the police began moving the crew member down the mountain by litter at 11:15 p.m.
At that time, the crew member showed no signs of life.
The police reached the bottom of the mountain and transferred the crew member to a waiting ambulance.
An accompanying Croatian physician pronounced her dead on the way to the hospital.

Callsign "IFO-21" (short for Implementation Force), a military CT-43A did NOT have neither a flight data recorder nor a cockpit voice recorder.
Official US Air Force accident investigation board report noted several reasons that led the Boeing CT-43A to crash.
Chief among the findings was a "failure of command, aircrew error and an improperly designed instrument approach procedure".

Niko Jerkuić, head of navigation at Čilipi Airport where the Ron Brown Aircraft was intending to land, was found dead three days after the accident with a bullet wound to his chest.
The police investigation concluded that the case was a suicide.

Now here's the Transcript of US Department of Defense News briefing held on 7 June 2006 "Results of the Accident Investigation Report of the CT-43 Accident".

It reads a good bit different than what my follow military controller told me, who was stationed at the USAF mobile Ground Controlled Approach Facility at that airport.
He said that the Precision Radar Approach scopes were working at that "trailer", but I can't recall if they were open for hours of operation at the time of the crash on April 3rd 1996, in Croatia.
I believe he said that they were an "on call unit" for the fighter aircraft that had to make an emergency landing during that Croatian conflict.

Now, all of this information is to help you get a mental picture on what might have happened.
But base on my experience overseas, you can't trust the weather reports of airports overseas at small airports, unless there's a US military weather observer on duty, and measuring and reporting the current conditions.
So I don't trust the report to be accurate.

I can only speculate based on what I've been told, and that given, I'd vote for ...
"it was planned and they were cleaning it up prior to the NTSB getting in there and file a report."

[Redwood71]

The NTSB report from their files turned into congress in 2006, almost nothing:
https://www.ntsb.gov/about/Documents/SPC9901.pdf
Dubrovnik, Croatia - Crash of Secretary Brown’s Aircraft On April 3, a U.S. Air Force CT-43A (B-737-200), carrying Secretary of Commerce Ronald Brown, other government officials, and a delegation of business executives, crashed on a mountainside while on approach to Cilipi Airport in Croatia. All 35 people aboard the aircraft were killed. The NTSB provided technical assistance to the Air Force investigation in the areas of flight control systems, structures and aircraft performance. As part of the investigation, the flight control system, including the rudder system, was examined in detail and certain components were shipped back to the U.S. for extensive tests and analysis. The Board advised the Department of Defense (DOD) to equip military transports with cockpit voice and flight data recorders similar to those required on civilian transport aircraft.
___________________________________________________
I reviewed news articles from the LA Times and the Chicago Trib and the only things they mentioned consistent were the lack of updated compasses and the lack of a cockpit recorder and that the air force had decided to violate policy and have them land there in rainy weather.
We both know there was no rain. There were low clouds, but the airport was not set up for ILS as no beacons for that purpose were in place and the radio compass they were using was supposedly stoned knives and bear skins. They never should have landed there no matter what we are guessing. It could be done, but someone had already determined the odds were bad enough to set policy it shouldn’t and that was ignored by unidentified air force command level staff. Can’t find who on that one.
So, I surmise that were told to land in an unsafe condition, against air force policy, by someone at command level that was not identified, using an aircraft and an airport that was not set up to handle the task, basically for no reason. There were airports capable of easily handling a 737 at Zagreb, Split, Zadar, Pula, Rijeka (on the island of Krk), Osijek, Bol and Mali Lošinj. Croatia isn’t exactly Alaska so most likely all of these were within the capacity of the aircraft and the craft would have been set up with additional fuel and/or refueling capacity in the air. This was not a transport.
And the real irony of this is that the aircraft, Boeing 737-200, was built as a navigational trainer. And nothing I can find tells me just how much of the training equipment was still on board that both pilots had probably used at least in sims.
“it was planned and they were cleaning it up prior to the NTSB getting in there and file a report.”
Still stands with me also.
rwood

[Yosemitest]

If what my fellow controller said is true (and I've served a 12 month remote in South Korea with him, and I DO trust him) then a Radar Precision Approach was available from a USAF G.C.A. unit, IF the pilot would have only ask for it.
But if that unit was for emergency military fighter type aircraft only, the the pilot might have not even know that it was there at the time of his approach.
Also, since the pilot was a military pilot, he should have been experienced with a P.A.R. Approach, even if the military was in the process of phasing out that type of approach.

All being said though, I believe it was a planned "hit" and the Clinton Administration didn't care who they hurt in the process.

[Yosemitest]

"We both know there was no rain. There were low clouds, "

The weather at the time of the approach was reported as 400 feet broken, 2,000 feet overcast, 8 km or about 5 miles visibility, rain, surface winds for 120, 12 knots, because of the weather, the crew is required to fly an instrument approach procedure into Dubrovnik.

At seven minutes prior to impact, a pilot on the ground at Dubrovnik made a radio call to IFO-21 and told them he had landed about an hour earlier and the weather was near minimums for the approach.
This same pilot who had flown the U.S. Ambassador and the Croatian Prime Minister to Dubrovnik testified that the crew acknowledged his radio call.
Five minutes before impact, IFO-21 reported to the Dubrovnik tower they were sixteen miles from the airport.

Be sure, I REPEAT, Be real sure ... to view and read

Dubrovnik-bound Flight Crew’s Improperly Flown Nonprecision Instrument Approach Results in Controlled-flight-into-terrain Accident
(Flight Safety Foundation - Flight Safety Digest, July-August 1996)
Pages 1 through 25 .

[Yosemitest]

One other point reference your comment:

"We both know there was no rain.
There were low clouds"

As a retired controller, both USAF and FAA, what you may not know about the reported weather at the time of the approach:

400 feet broken, 2,000 feet overcast, 8 km or about 5 miles visibility, rain, surface winds for 120, 12 knots

That weather had to have been reported earlier and no other official change to the weather requiring a new report had happened.
That weather could have been as old as about 4 minutes prior to the top of the current hour, or as close as 4 minutes to the aircraft commencing the approach.
Realize that even if the rain had stopped after the aircraft had started the approach, it would take a few minutes to gather the new weather information together and transmit the new report.
But all of that information is just a minor detail about that crash.

My main question is HOW did "the White House "White Mice" get there before the first medieval helicopter did..." ?

[Redwood71]

“My main question is HOW did “the White House “White Mice” get there before the first medieval helicopter did...” ?”

I think this is consistent with the possibility that the pilots never saw the crash. They were dead before the impact. There never was an autopsy of them that went public. They were disposed of and someone veered the aircraft to the location of the highest mountain there. And if that happened, the mice could have been at the bottom of the mountain even before the plane arrived. They were in place.

I don’t think the one for Brown was ever intended to be public. For years I’ve been smiling at that mistake. They could easily have said the body was identifiable, but there wee no unusual marks or signs of foul play, as they call it. I think that was a monster mistake. But they closed it before they got their entire foot in the mouth and satisfied everyone with another one, homogenized to make it palatable, and got out of Dodge, or dodge, either way you wish to look at it.

rwood